An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Vallermoore]

Megatron Mansion


Under normal circumstances, walking past the Megatron Mansion too many times might have attracted unwelcome attention from Domintel, but walking past once a day generally was not enough to do that, even more so with Domintel being somewhat distracted. Many dictators simply closed off the entire area around where they lived, but Megatron didn't want to seem cowardly, although the Government District was a no-fly zone for most bots. He considered his guards and his own strength and fusion cannon enough of a deterrent to would be attackers.


Earth


With the planet now flying the Marketeer flag, Marketeer decided to turn on the planet that was closer to the sun next.

Qingzhau

Thanks to the "drunk" Jetfighter could be tailed. So when he left the planet heading for a small concealed villa of his built on the far side of the planet's moon to relax and smoke some meth, Domintel knew exactly where he was going. For now though, they held back, not wanting to risk being turned into biologicals.


The Flesh Realm


Once there was a risk of invasion, be it robotic or not,the Lady of Flesh put Her servants on alert. The first wave of soldiers took the shape of huge mosquitos and gigantic spiders, that could drink a foe dry or trap them in strong web and fang them. There were also tentacles sprouting from the flesh ground to atch the foe and huge stomachs to drop them in and digest them. There were ranks of humans with swords that in this realm could harm even robots, and a few were saints with the ability, like the Lady Herself, to turn metal into flesh, although there were only a few of these. The Lady herself put on her battle armour and a light silver and amethyst war crown. She already suspected Megatron, whose bots had slain Her husband and who had cut off the flow of new souls to Her realm.

Paranormal Division Introductory Training Session

Loyal Star took in all his trainer had to teach him, and managed to master his new soul powered armour relatively quickly. It helped that his old pony magic had made the jump with his soul from his old pony body to a robotic one, so he did have genuine paranormal abilities. It was still hard work, harder then normal military training since it was his mind boards rather then his strong robotic body that was kept active. It would be worth it though to be one of those bots who helped to conquer the Flesh Realm and end the menace of the Flesh Priests once and for all so that no other bot would ever be turned to flesh. He ended up having to defrag once his day's training was done, as did the other bots. Before he defragged he saw some soldiers mastering levitation. The realms of the Otherworld were clearly very different indeed.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The Flesh Realm

Unknown to the biologicals as they made their defensive preparations, a single drone remained and beamed back images and audio of what was going on. The Decepticons at the secret base cringed at all of the biologic "stuff" that had sprouted up everywhere; though they also laughed at the idea of spiders and mosquitoes standing any chance, no matter how huge they were. One good blast each would surely take care of them. Plus, what blood could either of those things suck?

A biological spider or mosquito would surely die an awful death if it tried to drink a Decepticon's fluids - that is, if it could manage to find any of the tubing that carried them, or its fangs were actually long enough to reach the Energon tank. As they thought of this, the drone-operating team almost became eager to barge into the Flesh Realm themselves just to let these creatures try to drink their fluids and enjoy the schadenfreude when the biologicals realized (the hard way) how bio-incompatible things like hydraulic fluid and transmission oil really were. Still, they stayed in their current positions, fulfilling their duty as the controllers of the drones that were the advance eyes and ears of the Decepticon Forces.

Elsewhere, Leader Megatron was watching screens showing a feed of the same information. He, too, thought it would be funny to do something like send a bunch of droids and let the arthropod-form first wave drink itself to death on fluids meant to run machines. However, he also realized that there were a great number of these things, and that their webs could cause a big "traffic jam" if the first wave of Decepticons got caught up in them.

"We need a way to get rid of all of this garbage in a hurry," Megatron thought to himself. "I don't want to have to waste hours blasting through it myself, either." He pushed a button on his viewing console, and the sound of a phone ringing started up. Megatron braced himself a bit, for it would be about 7AM on the other side of that line.

~~~~~~~~~~

Carjack Agriculture
7AM, Florida Time

Normally, no phones could possibly ring here at this hour of the day. They were all physically turned off when General Carjack chose to defrag, because every time this step was omitted, some idiot or other would manage to get the number and wake up the general. Many sapient and semi-sapient entities, whether telemarketers or robocallers, had met their end shortly after getting a groggy "what!" over the phone.

Fortunately for Leader Megatron, who would not have been happy if he'd known that the no-phones-on policy also applied to the hotline, Carjack had actually still been up. He had the game Tactics Ogre to thank - Carjack had just started playing it again after a long hiatus. Still, when Carjack saw who it was on the Caller ID, he answered as if he hadn't been awake. He'd learned that it was imperative to never let anyone know he might actually be up in the day, lest they get wild ideas of that being anything other than a wild fluke.

"What!" Came the usual "the-next-thing-out-of-my-mouth-will-be-the-kill-order" response.

Megatron described what he was seeing, and then got to the point. He wanted to know how to delete it all so that the Military could go charging in without interference.

"It's just BS spiders and mosquitoes? And some tentacles and stomachs? Easy, nothin' to it." Carjack said without skipping a beat. "You'll need to get a few flyers in, but that's it. Then hit 'em with some Star of the Tal variety."

Megatron glared at the radio speaker. "Will you speak plain Binary! I have no idea what your quip is referring to!"

Carjack sighed a little. "Talstar. It's an old pesticide. It was common right before the Invasion, and it still works great. The generic is bifenthrin. What you need to do is mist that all through the attack zone. It'll be genocided within hours. Give it about 10. Twenty-four is better. Sometimes it works faster, but it's generally on the slow end, as pesticides go. What makes it so great isn't incredible speed, but incredible effectiveness. Any biological that gets that on it and can't remove it in time is a goner. It's especially effective on arthropods, but it will kill anything else that gets a big enough dose and leaves it on long enough, too."

Carjack continued, "the reason I don't use it on humans is that they'll run and take baths or jump in lakes before it can work. However, even if all of your targets realize they should do that, they'll have to leave their positions to do so. So they're boned either way. Hopefully by not realizing what it is, though. The name-brand version smells pretty good...almost like what people think fresh rain should smell like...so if they're not familiar with the stuff, they'll probably miss its intent until it's too late."

The outright good scent of name-brand Talstar was because it had originally been sold to greenhouse operators. No one would buy the plants if they reeked of obvious chemicals, so the pesticide company made sure it was completely retail-friendly. As a human, Carjack had always thought it was funny when walking through an establishment where people mentioned how "clean" it smelled there, and recognized the scent as actually going with what was the deadliest legal pesticide on the market.

~~~~~~~~~~

Megatron did a bit of research, and soon agreed with Carjack's assessment. The enemy would surely know that any sort of sudden spraying meant a bad thing, but likely wouldn't realize just how lethal the material was until it was too late. Even if they did, they would indeed have to abandon their positions to go wash it off - if there was even a place in that weird realm to do the washing! No water seemed to be available there. Normally, biologicals couldn't live without water, but these were already dead, so maybe that requirement had been done away with.

In any case, a spray-down would surely cause plenty of chaos, destruction, and a total abandonment of their current positions. Now, it was just a matter of getting the material. Megatron knew that he could order Cybertron's chemical companies to make some up, and that at least one would have already been commissioned to make it by Carjack Agriculture. That one would have some on hand as well as the formula and the machines to make it. However, all of this would take time, and he didn't want to wait...

~~~~~~~~~~

General Carjack was only somewhat surprised when the liquid-tanker cargo-bots showed up at the main farm, saying they had been ordered to commandeer all of the Talstar currently available. He went along with it, knowing that this was the most strategic way to get the first wave in flight fast, but resolved to take the cost of the stuff out of Megatron's hide one way or the other. First, he would directly demand payment, but if that didn't work, he planned to lower the cost of biofuel to dumping prices until he'd cost Megatron Energon a suitable amount of money in lost business. Carjack also made sure to keep a secret stash of Talstar back - he would not have pests overrunning his farm, dammit!

~~~~~~~~~

Soon enough, the Talstar was on the military asteroid, but it was not loaded into sapient Decepticons. Instead, it was being transferred to a fleet of larger drones that had been modified with crop-dusting sprayers. Megatron hoped that by continuing to use remote-controlled, non-sapient drones - this time with full cloaking technology - he would be able to regain the element of surprise. The further he could fly them through the portal, the more Fleshlings he could spray with the pesticide.

Megatron would be ready with the first wave of invaders at the same time the drones flew, but he wouldn't necessarily order an immediate penetration of the enemy territory. Instead, he would wait and see what they did about the spraying. If they panicked and left their positions, he would immediately charge in. However, if they obstinately stayed in place, he would have to wait until the pesticide killed them off.

For now, he figured that it would take a few days to get everything - and everyone - ready. The Paranormal Strike Force was still training its latest batch, and on top of that, some more drones needed to be built. He was willing to wait for this, but just to be sure that the targets didn't get too ready, he kept sending in spy drones for quick monitoring peeks.

~~~~~~~~~

Paranormal Division Introductory Training

The next day, the difficulty level of the training jumped a surprising amount.

"Usually, we would wait a while to bring you to this stage," the trainer said, clearly looking right at Loyal Star. "However, you have deployment orders, and they explicitly mention that you MUST know this particular skill, and NOW."

Loyal Star looked up with some nervousness when he heard this, but didn't yet say anything.

"You must know how to mentally shield yourself from directed psychic energy. Transformative energy. In short, you will have to be able to block that bio-transformation spell garbage with your own power, combined with the power of the soul-energy you now command. Leader Megatron has informed us that while this energy is powerful, it is not nearly as effective if you're already prepared for it. This is why that enemy uses it for surprise attacks so often."

"Training will involve you shielding yourself against other forms of psychic attack since we don't have access to the actual bio-transformation spell. However, with the proper practice, you should master the principles well enough. Personally, I think that you may already know some shielding magic, so let's see how well that works first. Your training partner will be Sparkstorm here. As his name implies, he will be trying to short you out with magic..."

[Vallermoore]

The Flesh Realm/Cybertron


The giant spiders of the Flesh Realm were throwing up huge webs-webs which could as it turn out stop even a Decepticon in flight, but they hadn't thought it through that if they did trap a Decepticon and fang through his armour with divine fangs-sucking his fluids would very quickly kill them dead. It was the same with the mosquitos-whilst in this realm they could jab through solid Decepticon Steel like it was biological flesh, their first sucking would kill them if they were any less then 100% divine, which they were not. The tentacle-pits were a bit more dangerous-they might die, but they would take a Decepticon body or two with them in their acidic stomachs. There were individual bots who would have loved to barge in themselves just to show those oversized biologicals that sucking their "blood" would mean instant death, but they had the discipline not to do so. Leader Megatron was tempted Himself to send in droids just to poison them, but those webs could cause a traffic jam. Even a High General could have trouble, at least until he blasted himself out. Too many stuck Decepticons would have to be manually rescued which would be a PITA. He decided to call on High General Carjack.

Carjack suggested using pesticide to deal with them and handed over all but a secret stash, quietly deciding to cost Megatron Energon money in lost business if he was not paid back.


The small drones could get through gaps in the web and what they could see-giant puffballs, various bitey creatures, dragons-well, the dragons might be a problem with fire breathing, but the rest didn't seemdangerous-although things in this realm could be more dangerous then they seemed to be. They deliberately stayed away from the Flesh Lady herself, being divine, She might be able to see them. Plans were made so that if any bots did end up turned biological, they could be rescued alive if possible and then changed back. After all, they were on active service and the Decepticon Military didn't like permenant losses if it could help it.

Paranormal Division Introductory Training


A trainer said to Loyal Star "Usually, we would wait a while to bring you to this stage, However, you have deployment orders, and they explicitly mention that you MUST know this particular skill, and NOW." Loyal Star was inwardly a little worried by this. You must know how to mentally shield yourself from directed psychic energy. Transformative energy. In short, you will have to be able to block that bio-transformation spell garbage with your own power, combined with the power of the soul-energy you now command. Leader Megatron has informed us that while this energy is powerful, it is not nearly as effective if you're already prepared for it. This is why that enemy uses it for surprise attacks so often. Training will involve you shielding yourself against other forms of psychic attack since we don't have access to the actual bio-transformation spell. However, with the proper practice, you should master the principles well enough. Personally, I think that you may already know some shielding magic, so let's see how well that works first. Your training partner will be Sparkstorm here. As his name implies, he will be trying to short you out with magic..."

Sparkstorm was a bot in blue paint with silver stars all over his body. Loyal Star cast a spell he had known as a pony, one that most unicorns knew how to cast-a shield spell, but a lot larger and stronger then the ones ponies used, and hoped that would be enough to fend off the magical attempt to short his wires out.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Strategy Meeting
Military Asteroid

Now that the information was in, and the pesticide had arrived, it was time to discuss the finer details of the planned invasion of the Flesh Realm. All of the High Generals had been summoned, along with several experts ranging from Paranormal Division researchers to biologists and structural engineers. Soon enough, many of the specifics had been figured out.

"Spider webbing is some of the strongest and stickiest stuff known to nature," the biologist informed them, "but it has one big weakness: fire. Many biological children have discovered that an entire web will pretty much evaporate if exposed to the flame of a match or a cigarette lighter. These webs are much bigger, so I believe that flamethrowers are more appropriate. But that's all it should take."

This idea was noted and agreed with. It would be easy to outfit the troops with secondary, flamethrowing, barrels that would sit next to their usual ones.

General Carjack, who had been dragged down from Earth, now gave some input. "On Earth, it is typical to repel tough pests by dipping clothing in pyrethrin, which is a pesticide. Whether the bugs know to stay away, or try to land and then die, I'm not sure. But I do know that it worked. Hikers swore by it for keeping ticks and chiggers off of them. My suggestion here is that a temporary coating be used by the troops over their paint. Pyrethrin can easily be mixed with some kind of oil, and this should last long enough to prevent any unfortunate results from befalling troops who manage to get caught in the webbing and have to wait to be freed."

Humans were well-known for using DEET-containing repellents, but these didn't work against highly motivated bugs or those that were simply tougher than the rest. The pyrethrin clothes-dip, on the other hand, was nearly impervious.

Next, another biologist spoke. This one had focused his studies on digestion, out of a desire to figure out how biologicals' "internal refineries" worked. "Those pits there are open stomachs," he said, pointing at one of the pictures of the target realm. "The acid in them is quite deadly, and by the way the place has grown hundreds of them, I'd say they're pretty sure they can digest metal. However, stomachs are actually quite weak if they're hit with the right things. I suggest a few hundred kilos of cyanide if you want to at least sicken the material of the realm. Unfortunately, the place looks too big for even that much cyanide to kill it all. Another thing you could dump in there is a few cargo-bots' worth of stale milk. This would either force the stomachs to eject their contents all over the place - digesting any defenders that are in the way, along with a large portion of the floor - or forcefully speed up the passage of the contents out...well, wherever they're supposed to go out of, in this strange realm. Or, more likely, both. Accelerated ejection in either direction is quite unpleasant to a biological..."

As he said this, he nodded towards Carjack, who was visibly cringing by the end of this part of the plan. "It causes hideously painful cramping, along with a giant mess," Carjack agreed. "But it would be more than a bother to anyone trying to live in the way of the stomach-acid ejection. Depending on the acid level present, it could cause the softer creatures to suffer massive chemical burns."

The gastroenterologist-type grinned. "And that's just the start of what we can do. Those stomachs being open pits makes them very easy points of attack. We can dump anything in there that we want, as long as we can get into position to do it. It's a simple matter to make sure that the 'anything' is bio-incompatible. Used oil, Low Standard, spoiled biological foods, you name it. If we had time, we could even get the Cloning Centers to produce a few thousand tons of e-coli or salmonella. For the best effect, all of this should be liquid. Liquids often make it through to the next part of the system before said system realizes what's up, and this makes the effects that much worse."

Next, an expert on sea life spoke. "I never thought I'd be addressing the heads of the Decepticon Forces," he said a bit nervously. "But, I'll offer what I can. These tentacles here look similar to those found on octopuses and squid. One of the notable things about those types is that they can keep grabbing, or at least strongly twitching, for quite a while after they're cut off. However, they don't do any of that if they're cooked. Also, if they're cooked until they dry out too much, they become rubbery on top of that. This would interfere with any repair attempts by the realm or its operator."

Megatron listened to all of the advice, and began to formulate a plan. Now, he addressed the generals.

"The plan that's coming to mind goes something like this," he said. "First, we send in the drones and spray bifenthrin on all of the front-line defenders. Then once they either die or evacuate, we send in live troops with flamethrowers to clear the webbing. Once it's clear, they go into plane mode if they aren't already in it, and drop napalm on any tentacles that are below them. Others are equipped with upward-facing napalm sprayers, and they get any tentacles hanging down. Once that's done, we bring in some tankers - smaller transports will have to do, since the area is too confined for the big cargo-bots - and have them drop noxious substances and poisons into the stomachs."

"While chaos is ensuing from that, I come in with my division. We blast our way through these dragons, and just to be safe, kill everything else that gets in the way. Behind us come the Genociders, to make sure that anything new doesn't get to come up our rear and attack us. They also ensure that everything that was in the way is truly dead."

"Finally, we get to this pile of reject parts and her family, and I attack her directly. You High Generals take care of her kids. They may be kids, but they probably have that same evil magic going, so general troops won't be enough."

Megatron paused. "Does anyone see any flaws that could be important?" Megatron emphasized that they would have to be important flaws in order to be mentioned. He doubted that there were any, given his Divine Quantum Processing System, but also knew that there were some rare times when someone would see an entirely different angle than he would.

If everything went forward as he had outlined, the high-speed factories would have the needed materials produced within a day or two. Then, everyone who was to be deployed would need to be outfitted with the stuff. Non-deployed troops would be ordered to do this work, which would provide enough laborers to get it done within just a few more days. After that, the invasionary force would fly.

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

The Flesh Realm

The Queen sat nervously on a throne that appeared to be made of bundles of tentacles. Blood could be seen throbbing in the tentacles' veins.

"I don't like it," she was saying to her eldest child. "We saw that drone a day ago, but there has been no further activity. I can only figure that it's Megatron, and that he's preparing some way to defeat us right now."

The kid tried to comfort her, but it was no use. She kept looking at all of the openings to the throne room as if Leader Megatron was going to come through at any moment, his fusion cannon blazing. "There is only one thing to do," she finally said. "I must send a spy onto that horrible ball of metal they call a planet."

Just how she would manage to get a spy onto Cybertron remained to be seen. A biological would stand out, and even if they didn't realize it was a spy, they were likely to either kill it or enslave it. The one robot who had weirdly been on her side, her divine vision showed her, was now tweaking too hard to be of any use, not to mention that he was also several planets away. Not only that, he appeared to have a government tail watching him from a distance, so he wouldn't be able to sneak anywhere for her.

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

Paranormal Division Training

The short-out energy came at Loyal Star almost immediately, and for a while, there was a hard battle of wills as the latter defended himself. However, after a few minutes, Sparkstorm gave a full rev, and not long after that, Loyal Star felt a tiny pinhole form in his shield, and then the disconcerting feeling of a spark spitting out somewhere in his chest area. As soon as he diverted some attention to that, it was all over. Sparks and shorts soon consumed his motion boards, and the challenge was over.

The trainer strode over with an appraising look. "Pretty good for someone not used to that particular type of attack," he said, "but as you've seen, there is room for improvement. The first thing you need to do is learn how to use the enemy's magic as a fuel source for your own. This builds on what you learned in your last session. Remember how they taught you to use that soul-resistance energy as power? Use that same principle to neutralize the intent of the incoming spells, collect the remaining energy, and apply that energy to your own shielding."

"One thing to be careful of when you do that," the trainer warned, "is hack-transmissions. Savvy enemies will hide 'hack' spells within other ones, so if you don't filter them out, you get possessed or at least influenced in bad ways. A good general rule is to avoid using any foreign energy that's below a 'neutral' type of frequency. That's evil energy, and evil entities are notorious for trying to hack/possess everybody they can. For that, it's better to redirect their energy to some neutral spot - like the sky or the ground - if you can't brute-force override it with energy that's 'good' enough to burn theirs up. Whatever you do, don't just let them keep whalin' on you until you get tired or distracted, or you'll lose."

As the trainer was talking, a repair-bot came through one of the practice room doors holding a new set of motion boards. Apparently, this was a quite normal part of this training. Sparkstorm didn't even give the new arrival a look, but maintained an appearance that was slightly proud (as from a job well done) but still very professional and soldierly. He had learned long ago that openly gloating would result in a payback duel later on, after his mark got his skills up, and he preferred to avoid that if he could.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

Marketeer played on, not even aware that there was a real war brewing near the Metal Planet. His virtual forces returned to his base world for repairs and to unite with his new troops before they went to attack their next target.

At this point, the game showed his budget and a selection of possible upgrades. As is common in games, these conveniently included heat-resistant armor, cooling system upgrades, and other things that would be useful for invading a planet closer to the sun than his own.

[Vallermoore]

Earth


Marketeer decided upon some better heat resistant armour and improved cooling systems and sent a few spy droids out to see what sort of alien life he would be facing on the planet nearer the sun.

Paranormal Division Training

At once Loyal Star's sheild came under attack, but at first it held it's own, sparking off shimmering multi-colored arouras as the magics interacted with each other. After a while Sparkstorm revved and managed to pop a tiny hole in the sheild, which made it easy to rip open, before frying Loyal Star's motion boards. Loyal Star fell to the ground, unable to move, and the trainer came over. "Pretty good for someone not used to that particular type of attack, but as you've seen, there is room for improvement. The first thing you need to do is learn how to use the enemy's magic as a fuel source for your own. This builds on what you learned in your last session. Remember how they taught you to use that soul-resistance energy as power? Use that same principle to neutralize the intent of the incoming spells, collect the remaining energy, and apply that energy to your own shielding. One thing to be careful of when you do that, is hack-transmissions. Savvy enemies will hide 'hack' spells within other ones, so if you don't filter them out, you get possessed or at least influenced in bad ways. A good general rule is to avoid using any foreign energy that's below a 'neutral' type of frequency. That's evil energy, and evil entities are notorious for trying to hack/possess everybody they can. For that, it's better to redirect their energy to some neutral spot - like the sky or the ground - if you can't brute-force override it with energy that's 'good' enough to burn theirs up. Whatever you do, don't just let them keep whalin' on you until you get tired or distracted, or you'll lose."

Loyal Star had new motion boards installed, thanked the mechanic and gave a middle-ranking bow to Sparkstorm to show respect. Sparkstorm was not a bot he wanted as a foe, that was for sure. He considered himself good with magic, but clearly there were others out there who were much better at it then him.

The Flesh Realm


The Queen of Flesh first sent a spy pretending to be a pegasus-of which there were a handful as tourists at any one time on Cybertron that were tolerated by Domintel as long as they didn't spy. In seconds, Cybertron's air choked it to death. So she made the flesh and bone equivalent of a droid, with two sets of lungs, and adapted it to breathing Cybertronian air without damage. Looking rather like a fly and the size of a human head, she flew it fast and at the knee level of Decepticons to help it stay out of sight. When it crossed a red line onto a military base, the presence of flesh and bone set off an alarm with Milintel and security cameras zeroed onto it quickly. The very fact that it was biological and in a place where biologicals were very firmly banned was enough to give it away.

The webbing and other defences continued to be made ready.

Strategy Meeting
Military Asteroid


Webbing, whilst strong enough when scaled up to catch a jet plane in flight! was, it turned out, easily burned by fire. It was uncertain how blaster fire would effect it, but normal fire would destroy it quickly. Flame throwers would soon burn the web walls from end to end. Pyrethrin could prevent bug attacks, plus if any did attack with success, they would die very quickly from ingesting a small amount of Energon. The stomachs, whilst they had tentacles and were a menace to any Decepticons who got too close, were wide open to being attacked with anything from cyanide and Energon, to spoiled milk and oil If it didn't outright kill them, it would make them throw up all over the place, killing any biological defenders near them. Tentacles themselves would need to be cooked, and dragons blasted. Saves would be made before combat, just in case of unfortunate results. Finally, the rulers of this realm being the most dangerous would need to have Megatron Himself and the High Generals involved.Megatron paused. "Does anyone see any flaws that could be important?"

Soundwave suggested "What if when we invade here the Flesh Realm tries some sort of counter invasion of Cybertron?"

[Victorious Decepticons]

Paranormal Division Training

Normally, Paranormal Divisioners would practice for months to get as immune to enemy magic attack (and proficient at doing their own attacks) as possible, but Loyal Star only had a few days to get ready. Therefore, this and other training sessions were highly truncated. Fortunately, he did have natural magical skills and know a bit about fighting this way already, so he wouldn't be completely lost when it was time to deploy. His trainers hoped that their emphasis on psychic warfare skills, as opposed to general magic, would give him what he needed in order to avoid getting killed, magically hacked, or otherwise pwned when he went along with the strike force.

Despite the intensity of the training, it seemed like only an instant before he was summoned for the drills that were to prepare him and the rest of the strike force for the invasion of the Flesh Realm. As he was told when he had first reported in, he was indeed situated near the back. The very last three rows, however, actually contained elite troops - he was placed in the row in front of them. "Sometimes an enemy will try a rear assault," one of these troops said upon seeing confusion on Loyal Star's face. "So we put some seriously-experienced soldiers in the true last rows in order to give them a big surprise. But don't worry. Usually, there isn't any action back here at all. It's just a precaution."

~~~~~~~~

Strategy Meeting, Military Asteroid

Leader Megatron considered the question without much concern.

"Flesh beasts on the Metal Planet will suffocate quite quickly," he said, "and if they don't, there are billions of Decepticons who'll be glad to send them back where they came from on wings of blaster fire. If they manage to corrupt the Metal of a few citizens, it will be a shame, but the enemy will surely be swamped by how many billions of us will still be blasting away. Biologicals aren't too good at multithreading, either, so they're unlikely to be able to target entire groups of Decepticon defenders."

"Another big problem they'll face is the fact that I'm going to be busy blasting their goddess and her offspring all the way to oblivion. Once those piles of reject parts are deactivated, the regular ones won't have that stupid metal-to-flesh power any more; nor any divine way to bring their own oxygen, or water, or food. So, if they attack us, I would suggest blasting for as long as necessary - and then building a huge biological rendering facility right next to the Main Foundry once their divine support is shut off and they keel over dead!"

~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, Leader Megatron gave out his orders for the operation. He had considered the options and the data he'd gotten from the drones, and decided on a plan.

"First, we'll send 5,000 smallish drones full of bifenthrin through our war portal," Megatron announced. A "war portal" was bigger than one used just to spy, and could admit a row of full-sized Decepticons 1,000 troops wide. It would easily be able to let an entire swarm of "smallish" - ie, scout-sized, drones in at once, assuming the enemy had no way to close it on him and keep it closed.

"These drones are just small enough to make it in between the strands of the infernal webbing they have everywhere. Once in, they'll spray the poison on every biological that isn't part of the ground. The first few will be ordered to hit the spiders in the webs so that they can't make any more - or, at least, can't make them for long. It likely won't be long before chaos ensues, though if they are properly disciplined, they will deal with this initial attack in an orderly way and could remain dangerous until the bifenthrin works. This part will have to be adaptable enough to adjust for any inconvenient reactions on the part of the defenders."

"Next, we'll send in more drones, but this time, they'll have flamethrowers. Our sapient troops will have flamethrowers, too, but we'll use drones first in order to get the enemy to waste ammo...if they even have any ammo, that is, instead of just trying to bite us like a bunch of ultraprimitives."

"Once the flamethrowing drones clear out the web mess, they'll go over these pits here" - he pointed at the picture and indicated the stomachs - "and drop their other payloads. These payloads will be cyanide. The creatures here seem to be of types that need oxygen, and cyanide blocks the ability of cells to gain oxygen from the blood. It's an almost instant shutdown. Many other things can damage these stupidly open pits, but I see no point in bothering with that. If these bio-refineries are connected to the flesh the rest of the realm is made from, via a digestive system, a few tons of cyanide could - if we're lucky - kill or at least completely incapacitate their entire universe. That all depends on how big it is. If it's really an entire universe, as many nonphysical realms are, the effect will be - relatively, at least - merely local. But if it's a smaller realm, the war might be all but over once we drop the poison in."

"Of course, it's possible that the stomachs are NOT connected to anything, and are grown purely for defensive or metaphysical reasons. Then, the cyanide will deactivate them, but leave the rest of the place intact."

"Once all of this is done, it'll be time for us to charge in and blast everything that gets in the way. I will be going for the queen of the place as well as her two offspring. The mission objective is to deactivate her and them. As for the rest of the place, we really only need to eliminate any active opposition and any chance of more opposition arising before their 'royal family' gets to taste my fusion cannon fire. Once those twerps are dead, I wouldn't be surprised if the entire realm went to rot. Be warned, though: those there are likely actually already dead. So they may turn into zombies, or wraiths, or some weird garbage like that. Keep your blasters hot and ready even after you hear my victory gloating coming over your radios!"

"We will begin the assault in two days. Make sure everyone is properly outfitted with enchanted shielding armor and has a full tank of Supreme, as well as two cylinders of extra Energon in case the battle runs long. It should take one day to be sure everyone has the needed materiel, so we will invade the day after that."

After a bit of discussion, the meeting adjourned. Everyone was eager for the fight and sort of cheerful, except for Megatron, who just looked angry at those who he intended to kill. He clearly would have rather saved his Cubes instead of having to finance a war against these lousy pests!

As Megatron walked out, he wondered how that bio-priest could ever say that biology was superior when he openly used his bio-transformation magic to make enemies weaker, while retaining his own robotic nature! That tactic alone was a staunch statement of the inferiority of biological life!! Megatron put it out of his mind, reasoning that there was no way to really understand the delusions (and delusion-driven non-reasoning) of the insane. There would be only one fix for that guy, and it'd be the same fix he was about to give the Flesh Goddess and her pestilent offspring: Death.

~~~~~~~~~~

Rustproof Military Base

This military base had the unusual name of Rustproof not because it resisted literal rust, but because the main duty of troops here was usually to serve on death squads. The "rust" in question was cultural corrosion, and it did quite well at stamping it out. Most of their deployments in the past had been to a nearby area that once held several un-Decepticon types, but it had long since wiped them all out. Now, it engaged mostly in drills, and assignment here was considered fairly boring. Of course, those who weren't as eager for war as they should have been were glad to get deployed to this installation.

"What in the SLAG is THAT!" Said one of the sentries when the alarm went off and his screen showed a giant fly buzzing over the Restricted Area line. He called over a couple of other sentries, who joined him in staring at the weird...construct? Creature? Lovecraftian anomaly? They couldn't be sure what it was.

"It looks like some kind of biological," one noted. "and strangely, it's one that my SEDP says is supposed to be non-sapient. A 'fly.' One thing is clear, though...that one is not as non-sapient as the ones my SEDP talks about. It's actively trying to avoid detection, and it seems to have come to this place quite deliberately. Still, that doesn't mean that it's very intelligent, either. It could..."

"Damn right it's not intelligent! It's trying to infiltrate a Decepticon base! The only way that's smart is if it's trying to die!" Another sentry cut him off, sounding like a smart alec.

"Yeah, let's just go kill it!" The third sentry agreed.

The sentries left a report in the system, and then exited their monitoring booth to go delete the alien thing they had seen. They were smiling and eager, for sentry duty was normally one of the most boring things ever, and now they finally had something to do! Soon, one had a tablet computer out, and on it, he kept track of the fly's current location. They easily adjusted their course as needed as they sped up into a jog. Soon, they would intercept the thing and be able to open fire on it.

Meanwhile, one of the soldiers walking around on break happened to look down at just the right moment. There, only a couple of feet from him, was the apparent insect. The entire thing was about the size of the end of his little finger, but thanks to the acuity of Decepticon optics, he was able to see that it was, indeed, some kind of biological thing! In a flash, he reached down to grab it in his hand, only to find out what humans already know: It's quite hard to grab a fly just by closing a fist around it. He began to chase it as it flew, as fast as possible, down one of the base's roads. Finally, he became frustrated, and pointed his blaster at the thing. He then activated his aiming module, needing a bit of help to hit something so small, as it tried to find cover in time to beat the module's calculation speed...

[Vallermoore]

Rustproof Military Base


As it turned out, the sentries who normally had a deeply boring job suddenly had something to do and headed out to deal with the insect. The attempt to grab it failed, but it was unable to take cover in time to avoid being blasted, burning up totally.

Paranormal Division Training

As a novice compared to the properly trained Paranormal soldiers, Loyal Star was firmly placed in the back ranks when it came to the final drills-next to elite troops that were there to fend off any rear attacks on the Decepticon forces. In the dimension where he would be heading when it was time for the real thing he would be at a disadvantage despite his knowledge of combat magic and shielding.

Strategy Meeting, Military Asteroid/Flesh Realm


It was decided that if there was an attack on Cybertron, the civilians could deal with it with a minimum of losses and damage to the Metal Planet-which was a sturdy place that had survived many attacks on it in the past-from Autobots in the distant past, from Tavans-from God-sent plagues of water and other such nasty stuff.


When the drones went in-there were times like this that it was better to send drones rather then living soldiers. The drones could send back information to show what they were facing. First they came up against thick web-web capable of trapping full sized Decepticons who throught they could fly through. Web with Decepticon sized spiders upon it with fearsome looking fangs. A few of these drones made a wrong move and got stuck-a few were fanged-only for the spiders to die quickly, either shocked or poisoned by Energon. Other droids followed and started rapidly burning down the web for the Decepticons to follow. Beyond the webbing was the next defence-stomachs with tentacles capable of pulling down any droids-or bots-who got too close and digesting them. Only a few droids fell victim to the stomachs. With some droids spraying and killing the spiders whilst others dropped cyanide into the stomachs, the whole realm seemed to shudder and shake. The Queen of Flesh ordered her reserve troops, mighty dragonflies of Decepticon size, to find the portal and attack anything or anyone else who came through it, whilst the dragons themselves gathered around her.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Staging Area
Decepticon Military Asteroid

The Paranormal Division had now been called to action, and everyone - including Loyal Star - soon arrived and took the positions they'd practiced in their drills. Once they were all in place, Leader Megatron arrived along with all of the High Generals except for Shockwave. Shockwave would remain behind and control the remaining drones. He would also provide information based on what some small spy-only drones were picking up and relaying back to his equipment.

"Troops, we now go to invade one of the weirdest and most disgusting realms I have ever come across. The entire thing is made out of meat! Within it, are other biological creatures of dubious sapience levels. That isn't what we're going there for, though. We're going because within all of that overgrowth of biological cells, there are three beings that think it's a good idea to turn proper Decepticons into useless biological twerps and then kill them! Obviously we cannot let this threat to national security stand! We have already begun our assault with drones, and now, it is time for us sapients to invade and rectify the situation in its entirety! We will be burning a path through all that stand between us and the leaders of this place. Once we blast and exhaust-fume our way to the Throne Room, I shall engage these pieces of scum in battle to the death, and put an end to their royal family forever!"

Megatron paused. "Once these piles of cellular reject parts are deactivated, it is likely that the entire Flesh Realm will implode or spontaneously rot away. If that happens, blast your way through the mess and back to the portal if you can, but if you can't, mind-transfer back to the Save Vault and we will do a proper recovery operation to get the bodies later. The flesh won't be an active threat once it's deactivated, of course, but there are likely literal teratons of it making up the 'ceilings' of this place. It is a whole realm, after all. If you see it catastrophically collapsing down after my duels, be sure to mind the laws of physics and evacuate if there's a chance."

After that somewhat somber warning, Megatron ended with some rousing patriotic sayings about the vast might of the Decepticons and how the enemy stood no chance. Then, he turned toward the portal, as did the High Generals. Megatron gave a loud command to "fully open the War Portal," and a soldier very far off to the side hit a master switch.

In an instant, the relatively small opening that had been there before expanded to over a mile wide. A loud, dramatic buzz accompanied the activation.

"DECEPTICONS, ATTACK!!!" Came Megatron's well-known command, and in an instant, the entire formation took to the air, transforming into plane mode behind the now-flying leadership line. Seconds later, Leader Megatron and the High Generals were through the warp point, with thousands of Paranormal Divisioners right behind him.

Notably, not everyone was flying at the same altitude as each other. This made it so that if something forced someone in front to slow down, the troops behind them wouldn't end up bashing into them. Instead, they could fly by and then take up positions as needed.

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

Upon entry into the Flesh Realm, Megatron was surprised to see dragonflies. Despite their large size and dangerous-looking back ends, Megatron knew that normally, these insects had no stingers. Instead, they hunted by grabbing their prey and then trying to eat it with brute force chewing. "Chew on THIS!" He yelled, firing his fusion cannon at those closest to him. His tone of voice made it clear that he was eager for the upcoming fights. To him, this part was just fun and games, and it would be up to the enemy to try to convince him otherwise - if it lived long enough to even seriously try. It didn't seem like it would, since the ones in the way of the blast were quite quickly cooked to char.

Around Megatron, the other High Generals began to fire their weapons. These ranged from upgraded blasters all the way to small homing missiles, depending on who was doing the firing, but all of the weapons were quite powerful.

Despite the fun of the initial assault, Megatron's mind was churning with a disconcerting thought: He hadn't seen anything biological here that seemed sapient other than the Fleshly royal family. Yet, at least twice, Decepticons had run into sapient-class followers of the Flesh God/Goddess outside this realm. Were there really no sapients actually inside, or were there some hidden away and just waiting to spring a surprise on him? It wasn't impossible for the Realm itself to have none; after all, many religion-related realms had turned out to be not what the religion had said they were. Still, there was a possibility of greater opposition than mere bugs, and he remained on guard just in case. For all he knew, the dragons the spy-drones had caught sight of were actually thinking beings instead of attack dog-like animals.

~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

Marketeer's drones began to send back images from the planet closest to the sun, and they showed very strange vistas. There were no plants growing, and no animals roaming. At a distance, it looked stark and barren, with glaring yellowish-white sunlight blasting on its day side. However, when the drones got closer, their cameras clearly picked up a wet sheen all over everything.

Wet? Marketeer examined the scenes closely. How could that be? It should be way too hot for liquid water there... He checked the in-game thermometer. "800F/427C."

As he was deciding whether to land a drone for an even better examination of the surface, or go ahead and send an advance platoon, his gaming was interrupted by the loud roar of about 1,000 Decepticons. He paused the game and looked out the window. There, to his surprise, were a large group of Genociders heading for space.

"I wonder where they're going?" Marketeer thought to himself. For a moment, he wished he was getting the chance to see some real action right now, instead of having to go through training, but then he reminded himself that he didn't want to be part of that battalion. Just going into places and blasting everything wasn't his idea of a good time. He turned his game back on, and began to consider the question at hand. Land a drone to check out the slime, or go ahead and send an advance platoon to start claiming territory?

In-game, each option had some benefits and drawbacks. Landing a drone was the safest and cheapest bet, but a speedy invasion would bring a higher score. If nothing was amiss, the use of a drone would just cost fuel and put wear on the machine. Yet, if something *was* amiss, losing a drone would be far cheaper than losing a platoon's worth of actual troops. It also took zero time to train a new drone since they were remote-controlled.

[Vallermoore]

Staging Area
Decepticon Military Asteroid/Flesh Realm


The Entire Paranormal Division, as well as the Genocide Battalion, had been called up, Loyal Star in his place in the back ranks, ready to fight if need be against these horrible flesh creatures for the glory of Megatron and the Decepticon Way. "Troops, we now go to invade one of the weirdest and most disgusting realms I have ever come across. The entire thing is made out of meat! Within it, are other biological creatures of dubious sapience levels. That isn't what we're going there for, though. We're going because within all of that overgrowth of biological cells, there are three beings that think it's a good idea to turn proper Decepticons into useless biological twerps and then kill them! Obviously we cannot let this threat to national security stand! We have already begun our assault with drones, and now, it is time for us sapients to invade and rectify the situation in its entirety! We will be burning a path through all that stand between us and the leaders of this place. Once we blast and exhaust-fume our way to the Throne Room, I shall engage these pieces of scum in battle to the death, and put an end to their royal family forever!"

Noses wrinkled here and there in utter disgust at the thought of an entire realm made of meat, no doubt foul to the touch on the foot treads if any of them needed to land for any reason. And they couldn't just turn off the foul sensations either or they would be numbing their own feet and might fall over. Most bots were hoping that they would not need to land. To them, hard metal was like soft green grass was to the feet and hooves of biologicals. They all looked forward to the defeat of these pests. Anyone who could turn Decepticons into biologicals was too much of a security threat to be allowed to live.

"Once these piles of cellular reject parts are deactivated, it is likely that the entire Flesh Realm will implode or spontaneously rot away. If that happens, blast your way through the mess and back to the portal if you can, but if you can't, mind-transfer back to the Save Vault and we will do a proper recovery operation to get the bodies later. The flesh won't be an active threat once it's deactivated, of course, but there are likely literal teratons of it making up the 'ceilings' of this place. It is a whole realm, after all. If you see it catastrophically collapsing down after my duels, be sure to mind the laws of physics and evacuate if there's a chance." Everyone took note in their mind boards-if they had to go back to the Main Save Vault to avoid being buried alive in rotting flesh that even they could not escape from, that was OK, and would not lead to punishment later. The laws of physics were unbreakable at least by mortals.


When the portal was fully activated, and Megatron announced "DECEPTICONS, ATTACK!!!" the bots (only the Paranormals, the Genociders were yet to arrive) flew with Megatron and the High Generals not at the back but very much in front. Biological generals rarely if ever saw the foe, but such was not the case with Decepticon generals, where the risk of losing a body was expected, if unlikely. They encountered large dragonflies, few of which managed to get close enough to bite. In the few cases where they did, and hit wires or Energon, they were shocked or poisoned to death at once. Very quickly the survivors fled, and then Decepticon sized wasps came in from all sides. These were a little more dangerous, in that they could sting and not neccesserly be killed at once. Loyal Star took a sting to a wing, and it felt like it was burning. A second later it was the wasp's turn to burn, roasted with holy fusion fire by the angry Priest. The wasps fought a little longer and harder then the dragonflies had,deactivated a handful of Decepticons with enough stings, and even scratched the armour of no less a bot then High General Thundercracker, but in ten minites the fight was over,and the surviving wasps were fleeing. Only one had got close to Megatron, and it's sting had not even been able to scratch the very finest of Decepticon Steel that Megatron's "skin" was made of.


They flew through the web holes with only a few getting stuck and needing to be pulled free by other soldiers, and over the stomachs, of which only half a dozern still lived, leading to one bot getting pulled down and digested when he got too close. Next came the dragons, which could breath fire, perhaps the closest to SAMS that this realm had. Again, a few overconfident bots fell victim to fire, the rest backed off a bit, and soon found their blasters had longer range then the dragonfire. When half the dragons were killed, the rest fled.


Meanwhile the Genociders entered, Pesticide amongst them, his eyes bright with joy, three ranks behind High General Carjack. The former pony with the razorback boomarang cutie mark had never once felt Carjack's anger, and was perfectly suited to the Genocide Battalion.


The Decepticons faced the last foes before the royal family of this realm-the souls, armed with rifles and cannons-that could turn bots in plane mode into humans and send them plummetting down to death or at least injury, and did to a few. One ball came dangerously close to High General Soundwave, and Megatron ordered "Back out of range, transform, and our size should stop all but the most holy and powerful amongst them from turning us fully to flesh. Some of you might take strange flesh wounds, but if they grow serious, mind transfer to the Military Save Vault whilst you can. I don't want to lose any of you to permanent death if I can help it. Only traitors deserve permanent death, not loyalists. We will rake them with long range blaster fire until the survivors run for their lives." That they did. Here and there bots found fleshy nodules (with their own organs) forming on their legs and feet-which were somehow linked properly with the rest of their bodies. Their sheer size kept their upper eye cameras safe, but there were cases of lower cameras normally used in plane mode being turned into biological eyes and eyelids with red-colored irises, and even whole hands becoming biological. A few bots panicked and went back to the Main Save Vault, but most, including Loyal Star, turned on their Bravery Up, and raked their foes with blaster fire that had longer range then most rifles and cannons until the foe broke and fled.


One bot tried to take on the Lady of Flesh herself, who parried his blasts with a sword, and struck him, turning him into flesh and killing him at the same time. The rest backed off, leaving it to Megatron Himself to deal with this threat. Loyal Star teleported to a spot at the front to see Megatron fight, since there was no known threat in his sector to fight. He knew better then to intervene, and risk the wroth of both deities, but should Megatron somehow lose, he decided to teleport back to Cybertron to where that Save Disc and body were hidden to get Megatron back online as quickly as possible. He was pretty sure that Megatron would be victorious, however. Megatron had taken on the Christian God at the height of His powers and come out on top.

"So, you have come for as all, not content with slaying my husband. I'll turn your Metal to flesh." She raised her slightly curved sword, which as a Divine Weapon could even harm or kill another Divine being. Behind her, her young children stood back to back in fear, swords of Divine metal in their hands.

*****
Earth

Marketeer decided to send five droids to see what threats were there. Losing them was better then the loss of bots. When the roar penertated the game, he paused it and decided to stay where he was, discipine being important.He went back to the game and sent out the droids to diffent parts of the planet.

[Victorious Decepticons]

The Flesh Realm

The many insects that had fled had originally intended to regroup and then come back around for a rear attack, hopefully surprising the invaders and taking many of them out. As they formed up and began to fly, however, they found themselves the targets of a rear attack! A familiar "yee-haw!" cut through the air, and the carnage began. The Genociders had arrived.

Even mere bugs knew enough to be surprised, and then chilled, by the sheer glee in the shouts of those in the bloodthirsty Battalion. Its yellow-and-red leader was just the start of their worries, as they found that all of the others were just as eager to spread the defenders' guts all over the walls and floor of the realm. When some got a few stings in, instead of the usual shouts of pain and errors, they were met with laughter. The stung Genociders then transformed, grabbed the wasps, and forced them underneath their now-robot-mode bodies. Gravity was allowed to do the rest, taking them down and crushing them between the floor and the Genocider hanging onto them. The last thing these wasps saw was the maniacal grin of whoever had gotten ahold of them.

All of the surviving insect defenders, despite their relatively small brains, realized that this group was very much NOT like the others. If the normal Decepticons were bees, they were now facing the equivalent of Africanized killer bees. Soon, they fled up the corridors, now truly terrified of what they were facing. To their dismay, they were followed and ruthlessly destroyed - often by being torn apart by brute force - by laughing, yelling, genocidal maniacs who had been doing "biological world" training for far too long for their own liking. It was like a directed geyser of pent-up destructive energy was now being released - directly on the hides of every biological within range.

The dragons, which had also regrouped with the intention of making a rear attack, watched the carnage with terror. This new group clearly wasn't just interested in cutting a path through to the Throne Room. They seemed intent on killing every biologically-living thing there was, and were far more dedicated to this act than the wider battle. Instead of coming out with their fire roaring, the dragons now shrank as far back into their hiding places that they could. It was clear that if they showed themselves, the mop-up attackers wouldn't stop killing them until there were none left - and the dragons knew that they were not strong or numerous enough to turn the tables and kill all of the Genociders instead.

~~~~~~~

The Flesh Lady could feel the connections to her energy dropping off now, not one-by-one or even in groups, but en masse. As this was happening, Leader Megatron approached with his fusion cannon at the ready. Without any introduction or ado, he fired it at full power the very instant he had a clear shot. He didn't even take the time to smirk at her sword, which despite using Divine metal, was still just a melee weapon with very limited range. Meanwhile, he was 100 meters away as he fired his opening blast. Unless she could do something really unexpected with the blade, or had some other form of attack up her sleeve, she had no hope of even being able to answer his attack before she vaporized, let alone win.

Still, he used his mental energy to erect an anti-bio-transformation shield around himself, just in case. Since it was just as Divinely-powered as the Flesh Lady's attack, he figured that it should effectively counter any attempts to turn his metal into fleshly cells.

One thing Megatron would NOT do is attempt to turn his foes into machines. Mechanization, unlike biologicization, was a definite upgrade. He wasn't about to make it harder on himself to win.

~~~~~~~~~~

On the Dark Side of an Obscure Celestial Body

The Flesh Priest held his meth pipe a few inches away from his mouth and suddenly became pensive. A strange sensation of dangerous wrongness had begun to pervade him, dampening the rush of the drug and causing him to listen for nearby trouble. He even got up and looked around, but saw nothing. Despite this, the feeling didn't disappear even after taking another hit, and he finally extinguished his meth, thinking that maybe he had done too much at once. Paranoia and psychosis were known side-effects of the drug, though he had figured that these were the results of brain damage - and that as a robot, he would be immune to that. Perhaps it's causing code glitches some other way, he thought - never even considering the idea that the bad energy he was feeling was coming from the deity he had connected himself with...

Meanwhile, a special forces group from General Soundwave was silently moving into position far above the rock the Flesh Priest was standing on, following the pings emitted by the flea-sized tracer still stuck on his body. As soon as they were within its gravitational pull, they began to coast downward, using their retro-jets only enough to slow their descent. Full cloaking was on as well. They would remain above Jetfighter, silently circling, until they got word from the soldiers in the Flesh Realm that the source of the Jetfire's power had been deactivated. Then, they would turn on their jamming, and an instant later, blast him into confetti-sized bits of smoking metal remnants. He would likely have just enough time to realize that he had been found by Decepticon Combined Intelligence, and that he had no divine power to use to protect himself, before his body was blown to shreds.

The debris field would be left both as a warning to any others and as a statement that Jetfighter had been declared unfit to return to the Metal Stream. His drugs, however - if any were left after all of the blasting - would be seized as war booty. It would likely be the only saleable booty from this war.

~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

As soon as the droids made contact with the planet's surface, the nature of the strange sheen was revealed. It was a thick, gelatinous substance, and it immediately flowed itself UP the droids' legs and continued on to engulf them entirely. Then, it flowed away from a spot on the planet's surface, exposing fairly large holes. These, Marketeer realized, were vacuole-like openings. The gel then dragged the droids into the holes, and flowed back into a uniform, thick coating that had been there before, closing them up. This happened to each droid, no matter where it had landed. In less than 10 seconds, the scene was over.

To Marketeer's surprise, this was not yet the end of the droids. Most went dark, but two continued to transmit images and sound. These two were now falling through lightly-packed dirt, and after a few hundred feet, they crashed down onto hard, clearly manufactured, underground surfaces. The game's thermometer flashed: 100F/37.7C. It was a much more biocompatible temperature than that of the surface, and easier on machines, as well.

After the fall, one of the droids was now unpilotable. Marketeer could only watch helplessly as a giant, mobile metal claw came down from a track in a long overhead beam, picked the droid up, and hauled it to a pit that contained a giant metal grinder. The claw let go, and the spy machine was instantly destroyed with a horrible tearing noise.

The other droid, however, was still operational, though it was damaged. The game screen switched to it just in time for Marketeer to steer it out of the way of another giant claw. He did so, and then used it to take a look around. Now, he saw several very short, dark gray (almost black) beings with strangely "wet"-looking rubbery skin and bulbous bald heads. They had small, almost-shriveled arms, but sported strong legs with hand-like feet. Unlike the feet of Earthian apes, these had fingers that seemed thin and agile enough to perform detailed tasks if need be. These aliens were too far away to see their features yet, but by the way their limbs were facing, he could tell that they were looking right at the droid.

From this view, Marketeer saw a strange light glowing down a hallway. Since it didn't seem dangerous, he decided to look down there. This would get the droid away from the claw and aliens, as well as provide more information.

Once there, what he saw astounded him. Many plants, which appeared to be not from this world originally, grew under artificial light. There was even an overhead sprinkler system, which announced itself by turning on as its timer told it to. Unfortunately, the water soon found a gap in the droid's damaged surface, and after the game screen emitted a few red-alert warnings, the machine shorted out enough to disable it. Marketeer was treated to a scene of several of the tiny aliens crowding around it, shouting excitedly to each other in a strange language, and the final sight of a mobile crane being driven over to collect the odd foreign equipment for recycling.

[Vallermoore]

The Flesh Realm


The wasps planned to circle and attack the Decepticons in the back but the Genocide Battalion had other ideas. "Yeehaw!" Many were blasted out of the sky; many more get in a sting on their foes only to be crushed or even torn apart in metal hands, the pain not having much effect on the bots who had turned down their pain sensors so that only 20% of the pain got through. (Turning them off, would mean they didn't know how many stings they were getting, and no bot wanted to be stung to death.) Pesticide was in his element slaughtering the oversized wasps-this was the sort of thing he was here for. He saw a wasp about to sting High General Carjack and twisted it's head off, putting a stop to that. The wasps fled, but the Genocide Battalion followed and exterminated every wasp it could catch, cheering, laughing, yelling, and generally having murderous fun. Seeing this, the dragons flew far away, knowing that if they caused trouble they would be next.


*****

The Lady of Flesh took the first fusion cannon blast on the sword, which instead of melting in seconds absorbed the energy. Divine weapons could do this. With a flick of a wrist she cast a spell to turn Megatron human, and the shield glowed yellow for a few seconds but held firm. Megatron got closer in and panned with his fusion cannon and this time it worked and the Lady was cut clear in two and killed outright. It was easy to do the same to her children, ending her power to turn metal to flesh-and at once causing the flesh of the flesh realm to start rotting and going gray-green (although the bone behind it would remain. It was time for now to get out before a planet-size amount of flesh dropped on the Decepticons. General Soundwave radioed to those waiting to attack the Flesh Priest to move in and blast him to scrap.


*****
On the Dark Side of an Obscure Celestial Body/Decepticon Afterlife


The Flesh Priest suddenly felt what Loyal Star had felt when Megatron had once been killed-a weakness, a seeping away of power, but he thought it was because of the meth he had taken. Even if he had known the truth, he would still not be able to escape. The special forces group, twenty-one strong, turned on their jamming, decloacked (so they didn't blast each other to bits by mistake) and blasted Jetfire to small bits the size of human hands. They felt nothing but hate and disgust for this bot who hated his own Metal. Jetfighter found himself in a small room which as a Megatronist Priest he had once had in his Priestly File, with three screens-the Heavenly Realm with it's rivers of Energon, the Neutral Realm, and the place where he knew in a minite or two he would be going, the Realm of Punishment. An Afterlife Adminstrator, his eyes dim, his hands on his hiops and his engine growling with rage, awaited him to tell him his doom. For the first time since he was built, Jetfighter felt true fear.

Earth


Marketeer decided to send bots with orders to try and blast the gelatinous substance and make enough of it evaporate or retreat from the blasting to invade through the holes with the intention of blasting these aliens until they either surrendered or were wiped out and their planet was converted to the Marketeer Way.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Decepticon Afterlife Waiting Area

The glowering Administrator wasn't the type to stall, but he did want Jetfighter to see one thing before his condemnation. He waved his hand, and the screen for the Realm of Punishment switched to an area in the land of the living. There, to Jetfighter's horror, was a scene of one of his Saves on Coltan - not being installed into a new body, but being melted down under the controlled blaster heat of a Domestic Intelligence agent. Once it was liquefied, the agent stirred it carefully to ensure that under NO circumstances could the data ever be restored.

As soon as the scene ended, the screen switched to another very similar one. One by one, Jetfighter saw DomIntel dispose of every last Save and Spare he ever had. There would be no escaping Megatron's retribution.

Finally, the Administrator opened a portal - right below Jetfighter's feet. He tried to fire his jets to soar back up, but to his horror, something had happened to his feet as soon as they'd fallen a bit down into it, and he no longer had jet capabilities. He frantically grabbed the side of the portal, and to his surprise, he was able to hold on for a while.

"Do you remember what you learned in Basic Training?" The Administrator asked, pressing on Jetfighter's head with his foot to keep the condemnee from being able to pull himself up. "'Never categorically deny the enemy what he wants, for he may be an idiot for wanting it. Sometimes it is actually best to give it to him..." With that idea now planted in Jetfighter's mind, the Administrator put through a silent command, and the portal widened too far for Jetfighter to keep hanging on. As he plunged down past its margins, Jetfighter felt what he had always claimed he wanted. He became a full-on human.

~~~~~~~~

The error of this desire was immediately apparent as he plummeted groundward with no jets to slow his descent. He landed on hard rock with a bone-breaking crunch, and pain shot through his now-wrecked shin bones and ankles. "You wanted to be a weak, flightless lump of flesh, so now you ARE!" The Administrator taunted as he closed the portal above, leaving Jetfighter staring at a gray, cold sky through tears of physical pain. Just as the portal fully closed, it began to snow. Instead of running better, as a computer would, Jetfighter's humanized body began to shiver and feel even more miserable.

To his surprise, some medics eventually came with a stretcher, apparently summoned by some unknown good Samaritan (which was actually the realm's AI, which had been ordered to keep this git alive so he couldn't escape punishment so easily). He was taken to a hospital, which he was relieved to find was legit - or, at least, as legit as human repair shops tended to be. That is to say, he had to endure a few rounds of rough handling as nurses hoisted him onto X-ray tables (causing the broken bones to crash into each other and bringing new bouts of excruciating agony), re-X-raying when the original films were misread, being given inadequate amounts of painkillers, being forced to take blood pressure meds after all of this caused his pressure to spike, having the dosage of that be wrong too, and various other forms of general malpractice that a human could actually encounter in a naturally-human medical environment.

Then, when the hospital's doctors realized that he had no way to pay, and no kind of insurance (not even NHS-style), they did a half-assed job of splinting up his legs and booted him out the door to fend for himself. Due to the lack of top-notch care, and the lack of a proper place to rest, his legs would heal badly and bother him for the rest of his life. Said life would end at around age 66 due to the overall rough living conditions of being homeless, lack of proper nutrition, and bad (or sometimes, no) medical "care." Unlike some homeless, he would not find a way to get himself out of it, mainly because the Realm of Punishment was intentionally rigged against him so that nobody would give him any legitimate ways to make money. Attempts to use ILlegitimate ways, like a proper Decepticon, would be met only with arrests and imprisonments in prisons that were almost as bad as the streets - with poor HVAC, incompetent or outright Mengelean doctors, and on top of that, plenty of people who would beat him up every time he got out of the infirmary and back into genpop.

Jetfighter would often think back on what the Administrator had said. Never categorically deny the enemy what he wants, for he may be an idiot for wanting it. Yet, he knew that being a human wasn't always this bad. Someone had deliberately set it up to show the worst-case scenario of human life in a first-world country. He could even guess who: That damned general who used to be a human! He would know all of the little details and have described them to Megatron!

The apostate decided to challenge Megatron. He sent up a prayer betting him that he would love being a human if even the average conditions were met. For decades, it would seem like he'd gotten no response, but once the "bum" incarnation died, he got a shock: He was reincarnated as a baby in a middle-class family.

That's when he learned that while this allowed him to avoid the harshest deprivations, it still sucked. He had to spend years obeying the orders of these randoms, one of which had spit him out 9 months after a night of unprotected sex and wasn't at all thrilled with being a mommy. Then when he couldn't handle it and rebelled at 12 years old, he was thrown into Juvie and forced into counseling. After that, he was stuck working at McDonald's for 4 years, on the register where he had to deal with the idiotic public. Then he went to college to try to get out of that, only to find himself buried in student debt, which caused him to take a bad factory job to pay off. Just when he was thinking that despite all of this, this round of punishment wasn't that bad, he got cancer. That's when he was reminded, every minute, that this was indeed the Realm of Punishment as it filled him with the most horrific pain imaginable while NOT killing him all that quickly. Only after several months did his body finally deactivate again, freeing him from the pain but causing him to be reborn as a human yet another time.

Similar cycles would go on, not for 1,000 years like with most Punishment condemnees, but for at least 10,000 years. Leader Megatron was not a forgiving type as it was, and for someone to have forsaken Megatronism to go work for an active enemy deity, his wrath was at its strongest. Jetfighter would be a human, all right, again and again - in trappings ranging from ultra-rich to worse-than-third-world - until he screamed for release from the cycle at each incarnation and wished to MEGATRON and no other that he was a machine once more - and then, he still would return as a human, for *at least* the full 10,000 years and likely many more. In each case, no matter the trappings he was "born" into, he would find that as he aged, his body would break down worse and worse, become ever-weaker, and finally die (sometimes in horrifically painful ways).

Notably, unlike with normal reincarnation, he would keep all of the important memories from his prior "lives" in the Realm of Punishment. This way, he could remember his prior physical pains, horrific deaths, awful things - both physical and relationship-wise - that other "humans" (actually well-coded AIs) had done to him, and other bad things - and come to be terrorized to the core by the very thought of having to live through each incarnation. There was just one thing that was different between him and a real, land-of-living human: He could not successfully commit suicide. There would be no escape clause in this realm. He could, however, horribly damage himself trying, which he did several times before giving that idea up.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The Flesh Realm

The supernatural speed of the rot that consumed the realm itself was astounding, even to Leader Megatron. He and the other Decepticons blasted back through their portal as fast as they could, and the walls began to collapse even as they did so. All of the robots made it out, with some in the back needing to engage their turbo jets in order to do so (there were too many others in their way to activate FTL, or they would have done that instead). Behind them, they could hear the terrorized roars of the remaining dragons, who were soon crushed into oblivion by the countless tons of dead meat that came down on them.

Once outside the realm, Megatron looked back through the portal and made a disgusted face as the entire opening was soon covered by sheets of rotted realm-wall meat. The portal was quickly closed in order to keep it from protruding though. Megatron then ordered the focus of the portal to be pulled backwards, into whatever was behind the Flesh Realm enclosure, so he could get a wide view of the entire area. After a few hours of tinkering, the Paranormal Division was able to make the needed adjustments, and the portal was re-opened on the new scene.

Now, Megatron and the scientists could easily see that the Flesh Realm had been a biological mass in a sea of plain void. It likely started out egg-shaped, but now was sunken in like a deflated, thick meat balloon. This balloonish structure was now visibly green. Disturbingly, mold appeared to be growing on it, showing that even now, it wasn't completely dead. However, the mold, and likely accompanying bacteria, was completely non-sapient and unable to mount an intentional attack, much less a coordinated one. There were no visible clues as to how this realm, which was obviously a construct despite its fleshiness, had come to be or even if the Flesh Lord and Lady had done the construction.

[Vallermoore]

Decepticon Afterlife


The furious Administrator was disgusted that a Priest of Megatron should defect to an enemy god, and a god of flesh at that. He showed Jetfighter that his Saves and Spares were being systematically destroyed and melted down by Domintel so nobody could ever bring him back from his Hellish afterlife. Then he opened a portal right underneath the unfortunate Jetfighter's feet.
"Do you remember what you learned in Basic Training? 'Never categorically deny the enemy what he wants, for he may be an idiot for wanting it. Sometimes it is actually best to give it to him..."
As Jetfighter fell, he became a real human. He was not going to have any time to enjoy it, though-the impact with the ground made sure of that, breaking both his ankles. He was rescued-letting him die this early would be helping him escape punishment. He was taken to a hospital and...partly...fixed, before being booted out half healed. He was homeless and attempts to use the Decepticon way backfired horribly, with him being arrested by the police, beaten up, and put into a very nasty jail. When he died in an alley aged 66 he would be reborn into another horrid human life.


Most of the time he was born into poverty, injured in some way, or both, but not always. He suffered from all manner of physical problems in various lives-eczema that made him scratch his skin off, wounds, and much more, as well as mental illnesses of varying severities from light Asperger's Syndrome at one end of the scale to severe psychosis at the other end. On one occasion, as a change to his normal poverty stricken lives, he was, for once, born into a rich family as a princess of Dubai, only to have a life in which she was very rigidly controlled and married off to someone who did not love her, regularly beat her, and made her pregnant multiple times hoping for a son (all the babies were daughters.) Jetfighter found being pregnant very unpleasant. He would end up being beaten to death by *her* husband. A middle class life also proved bad, but most of his lives were poor for obvious reasons. On the very few occasions when he was born to a middle class or rich family something always spoiled it. Once he was paralyzed in a car crash, another time he was in a joyless religious cult, and then there was the time when the Decepticons invaded and marched him off to chipped slavery despite him protesting that he was one of them.


As it turned out, he would be spending far more then the normal 1000 years that was the average sentence before being sent to the more unpleasant parts of the Neutral Realm. Leader Megatron was not known for being forgiving, and had a soft spot for no one (although there were a very few he had a less hard spot for) and he had defected to a disgusting Flesh God of all things. He remembered each life, so even as a baby (where mistreatment would just kill him quickly) he was tormented with terror of what was coming next. Suicide just left him badly hurt or crippled. Every time he was reborn he would beg for mercy to Megatron to let him be machine life once again, even if it was just that of a poor bot being chased by Scroungers. Megatron, if he heard him, ignored him.


The Flesh Realm


Even Megatron was surprised that the rot set in so quickly. The Decepticons had to get out of there with in some cases, their turbo-jets. Unlike the luckless dragons, they were not trapped and killed by tons of rotting flesh. When just bone was left behind along with some mould and bacteria, the Decepticons could turn the lifeless realm into whatever they wanted it to be.


High General Soundwave himself went to Loyal Star, who bowed low to the High General.


"That Flesh Priest who ponyfied you was destroyed by Forintel, who blew him to bits as a defector, traitor and national security threat."


"Thank you, Sir." Loyal Star's eyes were bright as he imagined his hated foe suffering in the Realm of Punishment for his treason.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Megatron Mansion

For a while, the group of communist rebels thought that they'd be totally out of luck. Security remained extra-tight as always, and sometimes, Megatron even returned to his mansion to defrag. They were almost ready to give up when the day came that the Genocide Battalion came blasting through space toward the Military Asteroid.

Once that happened, several of Megatron's elite troops took to the sky shortly after. They had been called up to serve in his division, which was apparently about to go and invade some place or other. This necessitated a shift change in the manor guard, and the rebels took advantage of the confusion to gain access to what was likely the most elegant mansion on the planet.

After coming through a back door while posing as service-bots installing a new, larger-than-life holovision set, they found themselves standing on flooring made of a special metal alloy that perfectly imitated marble. The only reason that real marble wasn't used was that when it was cut into tiles, it wouldn't hold up well to the weight of one of Cybertron's most built-up, armored warriors. The group couldn't help but initially be impressed by the trappings, but this feeling soon gave way to a resolve to keep anyone from amassing that kind of wealth again. "All of this should be sold and divided among the people!" One hissed. The others nodded in agreement, not even thinking about the fact that nobody, especially on Cybertron, would ever bother to do Jack shit if they thought they wouldn't get to keep the profits from their efforts. Like Earthian communists, they had a wide-eyed utopian notion that went against the nature of all societies made of actually-sapient beings.

This group, however, would never get the chance to try to shoot Megatron out of the sky and institute their "dictatorship of the proletariat." In a way, it would be a shame, for they would have been in for a shock when the vast majority of Decepticons took umbrage at the very idea that they were "the proletariat," which they would interpret as a euphemism for "peasants." Even so, the blaster fire that the infiltrators soon found themselves on the wrong side of came not from angry raiders insisting that they weren't some kind of peasant scum, but instead, from the commander of the Mansion Security Group.

Just like the Leader whose home he was tasked with protecting, the Commander did not believe in giving warnings to clear enemies. Instead, he opened fire immediately upon locating the "repair team," catching them by surprise and disabling one of them with his initial salvo. Behind him, three other elite soldiers appeared and joined in the firing. They didn't care what these intruders wanted - DomIntel could research that if it so chose - their job was simply to deactivate them and be done with it.

The commies who were still functioning turned around as fast as they could, and realizing the intention of the soldiers, began to fire back. It would be a multi-party duel to the death, right there in the vestibule of the almost-unimaginably high-class Megatron Mansion.

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

While the soldiers were engaged in battle with these infiltrators, their attention was momentarily diverted from the places they usually guarded. Two other bots, members of the Lines of some lower administrators of the city of Decepticon Headquarters, noticed the lack of security and gave each other crooked glances. In a few quick, running steps, they were through one of the now-unguarded entrances.

Once inside, they began to sneak through the mansion looking for some kind of control panel. They knew that there had to be some kind of automated weapons systems, and if they could gain control of them without being detected, they could - they hoped - become much more than just potentially the area's next admins. The lure of ultimate power and immense wealth drew them deeper into the manor as they tried to find a way to use its own security systems to make the Dictatorship their own.

Meanwhile, Leader Megatron watched the war portal close, and then left the Military Asteroid. He might think of some use for the carcass of the Flesh Realm at some point, or perhaps just leave it there with a floating, carved stone ball detailing its destruction as a warning to any who might try the same thing. For now, however, he wanted only a few things: To drink a tall glass of Private Reserve, enjoy a comfortable automatic wash and wax, and a nice, long defrag. He turned in the direction of his mansion on Cybertron, not knowing that he might be flying right into a barrage of its own energy-artillery fire if the second group got its way.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

At first, Marketeer's plan seemed to work. The strange gel pulled far back from all of the places it was blasted, leaving scorched residue where the beams had hit. However, when his squadron tried to jump down through the holes in the ground, the soldiers were surprised to find the soil was now very dense. It was as if the loose dirt had never been there at all.

A quick look didn't reveal any way to make the system open up again. It seemed that they would have to blast or drill their way through, working in the 800F surface air.

~~~~~~~~~~

As Marketeer played, some activity began to go on outside of the barracks building. It seemed that the next training exercise would be starting soon, and the trainers were busy preparing something. Apparently, there wouldn't be much of a need to travel for this next operation. He heard some discussion going on despite his closed window, but no one came to give him immediate orders.

[Vallermoore]

Megatron Mansion


The small but determined band of communist bots decided to pose as service bots installing a large holovision at the Megatron Mansion, and took advantage of a shift change of the guards to get inside. Once in, they were amazed at the luxury that they encountered and the faux marble tiles (real marble tiles were crushed under Decepticon feet.) One bot hissed in Binary to the others "All of this should be sold and divided among the people!" They were not thinking things through logically. If they did somehow shoot Megatron out of the sky and jam him successfully, loyalist bots like Loyal Star would bring him back by using his Save Discs and bodies either in the hope of a reward or just through sheer loyalty. If they somehow stopped that, there was no way that the Decepticons
would ever tolerate the horrors of a Communist dictatorship that would spoil all their businesses. The Decepticon People would rise-to throw them out and turn them into iron scraps. It would then fight to the last few bots or even the last bot, ending the mighty Decepticon Empire, which would have to regrow from the ashes planet by planet. If humans or other aliens were to attack the last few bots before new ones could be built and successfully kill them, the Decepticon Nation would become as extinct as the Autobots.


The subversive Binary was overheard by the keen ears of no less then the Commander of the Guards, and he and his elite guards opened fire on the spot with jammers on. The guards made a new Save every day so if they died they would be brought back by the surviving guards as quickly as possible. These subversives needed to die.


Whilst five of the rebels were in a firefight two more got in and breached the Inner Sanctum. They discovered controls to the top secret I.G.N.O.R.E cannon battery, which might have been able if fired to even banish Megatron. However, to their dismay the codes were so complex that they could not break them to use the battery against Megatron. They discovered the Mansion's uncoded conventional weapons-and a communications centre to megaphones all over Cybertron-which they used to broadcast the news of their communist coup, urging the Decepticon People to rise and form Soviets, as Communism was coming. As it turned out, the Decepticon People, when they heard it, would rise, but not in the way Iron Hammer and his fellow communists thought that they would do.

Earth


Marketeer ordered the holes to be dug open and the gel to be blasted whenever it came near.


At that moment news came over the base from the Megatron Mansion-a bot named Iron Hammer was announcing a communist coup against Megatron.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertronian Zone of Control

As Megatron approached Cybertron, he was surprised to start getting urgent radio messages from the Main Military Base. The comms officer informed him of the takeover message that had gone out over the loudspeakers, and said that he figured that the source had to be Megatron's own mansion. Every other facility equipped to broadcast like that was still firmly under the control of the military, the Bureau of Propaganda, or other authorized users.

Megatron's eyes grew dark as a deep scowl came across his face. "It shall be dealt with!" he said angrily, and his fusion cannon automatically came to full power. He continued on towards his mansion, but now, he activated his cloaking - and his Divine powers. Anyone who tried to overthrow him was not entitled to anything remotely resembling a fair fight. They thought they could overthrow a god-emperor? To do that, they would have to defeat his full power.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Megatron Mansion

As soon as the would-be usurpers' message went out across Cybertron, the Commander of the Guard (and every other guard) knew that there had to be more enemies than those that they were just now mopping up. They quickly increased their efforts against the ones right in front of them, trying to deactivate them so that they could safely go to the communications room and kick the new asses that had just made their presence very obvious. However, the remaining commies in the vestibule weren't about to die easily. They fought very hard, and thanks to the relatively limited space in the anteroom, backup guards were unable to fit inside with the others to help. This made it so that a speedy extrication was not possible for the guards. Instead, they would have to fight until the very bitter end.

Suddenly, everyone heard the loud clank of the mansion's locking systems kicking in. Every door in the place was now locked tight. Next, there was a massive "depowering" sound as unseen engines coasted to a halt. Then, the lights went out.

In the vestibule, the fighting continued, with both sides knowing that even a short pause could bring defeat and death. However, in the communications room, the two infiltrators weren't nearly as occupied. This gave them time to worry about what had caused the disturbance. Even though they had almost automatically switched to night vision, they were still concerned. They hadn't touched anything that could have caused that...

Only a moment later, any questions about what had shut down the mansion's systems were answered. A massively loud thundercrack cut through the air of the estate, and an equally-huge lightning flash was seen through all of the windows.

Megatron had arrived.

In an instant, the communists in the vestibule erupted in geysers of sparks. There was enough force behind the divine attack to throw them into the walls, which were dented by the impact. Then, the doors slammed open, revealing Leader Megatron's eyes, dark red with rage. In his hand were a few glowing soul gems, apparently containing the souls of those he had just exterminated. Two other gems, empty ones, were also there.

Without a word, he stormed through the next door, which opened for him but not for the guards who tried to follow. They could hear his footsteps stomping up the flight of stairs towards the control rooms and then stopping in front of the door to the emergency communications center. Then, they heard it bang open as Megatron lifted it - very forcefully - from the hidden groove that allowed it to be used during a power failure. Usually, the door would slide upwards silently, but since he had cut the power, manual operation was needed. Megatron used this fact to great dramatic effect, sending a resonating clang throughout his mansion - and right through any courage the two remaining commies might have had.

"Do you really think that is all it takes to overthrow a dictatorship?!" Megatron demanded of them with a combination of fury and incredulousness. "Taking over one location without even any plans to be able to defend yourself!?"

As he said this, he noticed that one of the commies was suspiciously close to a bank of buttons marked "aerial defense." Megatron laughed, but joylessly. "I figured you'd try to shoot me out of the air when I came home. That's why I cut all of the power off. The next power to go off will be yours. But first, I'll let you know that your desire to have everything shared among the people will be partially heeded!"

Now, the commies had gotten over their initial shock, and one began to speak. He called Megatron greedy, and said that his amassing of wealth was obscene, and that the loot should be shared among everyone. The other one joined in to claim that everything would be a lot better if nobody was allowed to be rich, but instead, everyone's assets be shared among the people so that everyone had just what they need in order to live!

Megatron was lucky that he wasn't a human, because eye-rolling results in a fraction of a second of "blindness" as the orbs face upwards - and in a hostile situation like this one, that would give an enemy a chance to get a free shot in. Unfortunately for them, he was a robot just like them, so his vision remained squarely on them as he groaned in disgust. "Everyone being broke with no hope of getting out of it is NOT an improvement!" He spat back. "It is demoralizing hopelessness! Only the poorest merely have just what they need, with no extras - and they hate their poverty for that very reason. Have you read your SEDPs in 100 years? Communism is fully debunked there!"

They told him that they had read that, but didn't believe it, figuring it was just his propaganda. The two sides began to argue, but one of the Communists was just hoping that Megatron would get distracted enough by the talk to give the Commie the chance to paste him in the face with his blaster. Megatron sensed this, and said, "I have found that there is no point in debating the likes of you. You want everything to be shared as if society is a bunch of mindless herd animals who only want to stick their heads into a feed bag and make nothing else of themselves. Decepticons are not humans. We will not fall for it!"

Then, after a pause, Megatron added: "Listen to this, And then I will give you a little bit of what you've been asking for." He waved his hand and used his divine power to open a window via telekinesis. The sound of an entire crowd, shouting loudly, instantly blasted through the opening.

"KILL THE COMMIES!"
"MEGATRON'S WRATH BE UPON YOU ALL!"
"MELT 'EM DOWN!"

Soon, the chanters settled on one phrase and began to repeat it. "MELT THE TRAITORS! MELT THE TRAITORS! MELT THE TRAITORS!"

Then, there was a low, ominous rumble, and the shouts changed. "STORM IT! LET'S GET 'EM!" Engines were now revving in preparation of doing just that.

When the Communists focused on Megatron again, he had an enormously smug expression on his face, and his posture was proud. "I told you, real Decepticons are not about to be satisfied with only getting 'according to his need.' That stuff is for animals. The point of being sapient is to rise above it."

"Still," Megatron went on, "you'll be glad to know that once you are torn to shreds by that crowd of proper Decepticons, your souls will be put to use at the Temple of Lost Souls, to power the electrical grid. The remnants of your bodies will also help enrich the people, as they take the scraps to foundries like so many empty cans! In that way, you will be able to 'share' your assets with all of the people, much like you were promoting!"

Before they could spit out a "we didn't mean like that," or any other rebuttal, Megatron used his Divine power to magically throw them both far out of the window in a way that made them crash-land right into the angry crowd that was threatening to storm the mansion to go after them. As he did so, he blocked their jets from working so they couldn't just fly away.

Megatron then leaned out the window and yelled, "THOSE ARE THE LAST OF THEM! GO AHEAD - DESTROY THEM!" Then, he waited, Divine power activated, to capture their souls as they tried to mind-transfer away. He, being a god, didn't need to use a jammer. He would just use sheer willpower yank their souls out of the ether and into the empty gems that he still had waiting.

The sounds from outside were very metallic, but even the dimmest of biologicals could tell that they were also very brutal and gruesome. Megatron watched proudly as his loyalists, and those who were simply loyal to capitalism in general, descended on the thrown-down bots like wolves on a pair of wounded prey animals. A few bright flashes of blaster fire were seen as rending metal sounds filled the night - while some were quite happy to just help rip the commies apart, others had grown impatient and sped things up by using their blasters as torches.

It took about 15 minutes, but eventually, Megatron felt the energy of one soul and then the other. He easily captured both, and his last two gems began to glow. The sounds of destruction persisted for another 5 minutes as members of the crowd took the bodies the rest of the way apart and kept their pieces, either as souvenirs or as scrap to sell.


A while later, Megatron ordered that the bodies of the other dead Commies be thrown to the crowd as well. "Let their Metal be shared amongst the people," he said mockingly as he re-opened the front doors.

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

Earth

Marketeer had paused his game when he'd heard the announcement over the base speakers, thinking that maybe there was a civil war afoot and that he would have to fight in it. However, all had been quiet since then. He was about to put the game back on when he heard the barracks commander going up and down the halls, shouting.

"Turn on your holovisions! Turn on your holovisions!" He was saying.

Marketeer turned his on, and was greeted by the sight of Leader Megatron standing before a huge bank of glowing soul gems. It was an otherworldy sight, and one that until now, he'd only heard rumors about. Across the top of the scene, a chyron identified the location as the Temple of Lost Souls, Decepticon Headquarters.

Megatron's eyes were shining with the afterglow of battle excitement, but he remained somewhat somber as he announced the crimes of those who were already dead, and that since they had been overheard saying that things should be "shared among the people," they would be facing an afterlife punishment other than the usual Realm of Punishment. Instead, they would be installed into the Soul-Powered Electrical Plant, and their very essences would be used to run its turbines (along with those that were already installed in the soul-power bank behind him). In this way, they themselves would be "shared among the people," making this punishment very fitting for them.

Cheers could be heard; apparently, there was a fairly large live audience somewhere off-camera. Marketeer could also hear insults being hurled at Communism in general as well as at those now-dead rebels who had tried to force it onto the Decepticons.

After a few seconds, a video was shown. It was CCHV footage from a nearby manor, whose camera had been turned to face the Megatron Mansion after the crowd crashed through the main gate of the Government District. From this footage, everyone could see that the Communist rebels had indeed been rended into shreds by the angry crowd, and that Megatron had held his soul gems up to capture the last two souls. While this wasn't the normal "live execution" footage, Megatron still wanted everyone to see just how the rebels had gotten into their current, utterly defeated, states.

The scene returned to the live broadcast. Now, Megatron installed each soul gem into empty slots, where they began to glow brightly as the system worked on them to force them to produce energy.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The next day, Megatron changed the procedures for guards at the Mansion so that there was no longer any big "shift change" events. Instead, everyone's schedule was staggered by one hour, so at any given time, there would only be one leaving and one coming. Extra training was also implemented so that this and other events, such as deliveries, would never again create any confusion, distraction, or other opportunities for infiltration. Also, despite the admirable performance of the Commander after the infiltration happened, he was demoted from his supervisory position. A proper supervisor wouldn't have allowed an infiltration at all, and Megatron let him know that his post-infiltration defense was the only reason he wasn't getting melted down instead of just demoted.

~~~~~~~~~~

Marketeer couldn't help but marvel at how little time had passed between the Communists' announcement and Megatron's address. It had been, at most, half an hour. That included flying time to the mansion, and from it to the Temple of Lost Souls. He wondered if Megatron had shown them his full power to get it done that fast, and came to the conclusion that yes, he almost surely did.

Still, he was impressed by the size of the crowd that had torn the interlopers apart, and by their willingness to take action. Perhaps it was true that "there are no civilians on Cybertron" after all...

[Vallermoore]

The Megatron Mansion


The unfortunate communist rebels found themselves trapped when an utterly furious Megatron turned up. This was personal for him. His mansion had been raided, and he was about to deal with it in the Decepticon Way. "Do you really think that is all it takes to overthrow a dictatorship?! "I figured you'd try to shoot me out of the air when I came home. That's why I cut all of the power off. The next power to go off will be yours. But first, I'll let you know that your desire to have everything shared among the people will be partially heeded!" After they tried to convince Megatron that they were right, he replied . "Everyone being broke with no hope of getting out of it is NOT an improvement!" He spat back. "It is demoralizing hopelessness! Only the poorest merely have just what they need, with no extras - and they hate their poverty for that very reason. Have you read your SEDPs in 100 years? Communism is fully debunked there!" He then after a little more talk let them know what the Decepticon People were really thinking about them.

"KILL THE COMMIES!"
"MEGATRON'S WRATH BE UPON YOU ALL!"
"MELT 'EM DOWN!"
"MELT THE TRAITORS! MELT THE TRAITORS! MELT THE TRAITORS!"

Far from pleasing any of the Decepticons, Iron Hammer and his small band of bots had outraged them. The very thought of being treated like peasants caused real anger in the Decepticon Nation. Even if they had successfully taken power from Megatron, they would not have enjoyed it for every long. Outside, a huge and angry crowd not seen since when Megatron declared himself a God-and before that, not seen since the short lived Raid Tax Riot, had formed, determined to if need be deal with the traitors themselves. Their eyes were dark, their engines were growling, and all except the poorest bots were represented. There were raiders, business bots, foundry bots, Scroungers, scroungers with a small s, gang members from the syndicates, even bots who rarely fought or raided like Megatronist Priests and Debuggers. Vintage was somewhere in that crowd, as was the Cybertronian Business Association. Even gang wars had been temporally truced to deal with the bigger threat to the Nation.


Megatron used his power as a god to throw them out and give them to the crowd, then told them THOSE ARE THE LAST OF THEM! GO AHEAD - DESTROY THEM!" The unfortunate bots were quickly and painfully pulled apart into small bits of metal, some of which would be melted down whilst other bits would be used as souvenirs, and the crowd cheered loudly and dispersed as quickly as they had arrived, back to whatever they had been doing at the time. Megatron could finally rest and relax after catching the traitor souls in Soul Gems. His Commander, whilst he kept his life as a loyal soldier, was demoted to the Decepticon equivalent of private at least in the short term, and there were no more shift changes all at the same time that had let these traitors get in. Shift changes would be staggered from now on.


*****

Earth.


Suddenly Marketeer heard his barracks commander going up and down the halls, shouting. "Turn on your holovisions! Turn on your holovisions!" He did so, and there stood Leader Megatron with several glowing soul gems, his red eyes glowing like red hot coals. He announced what the communist bots had done and why, and that their bodies had been given to the people as scrap whilst their souls would be used to power the Soul-Powered Electrical Plant to run turbines for eternity. There were cheers, curses aimed and the rebels, and bots saying just what they thought about the rubbish that was Communism. After the broadcast was over Marketeer went back to his game.


*****
Mining World #758

Far from both Cybertron and Earth, was a planet used mainly for mining that was on the edge of the Decepticon Empire as it then was. It had 100,000 human slaves, 5000 bots to watch them, and a small garrison of a few hundered soldiers. And it came under attack from a ship the size of a Super Star Destroyer, which was owned by the Xamen, a race of sapient scorpian people who had developed tech, then space tech, and then had taken over ten planets, three of them with other sapient life which they killed or enslaved. They decided, without finding out what they were tangeling with, to add this planet to their own Empire.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Megatron Mansion

After his unpleasant "welcome" home, and then having to make a speech afterward, Megatron was glad to finally be able to hop into the wash/wax machine. The warm solvent, with its calming scent of benzene, was a welcome sensation on his outer housing. Or, at least, it was for a few seconds.

Suddenly, the RED ALERT alarms went off all through the mansion, and the "shower" automatically shut down. By now, Megatron was ready to blast anything that got in the way! Would he never get to relax?! There had better be a damn good reason for that alarm, he vowed, or I am going to blast the guy who set it off into oblivion!

Megatron snatched his communicator out of his thigh panel and yelled "WHAT!" through it at the hapless comms soldier on the other end. The soldier could hear Megatron's furious engine in the background, which by now, was nearly grinding with rage.

The soldier spoke clearly and professionally, not letting on how he had to turn his bravery to 100% to not just run away to avoid any potential wrath. "We have gotten an invasion alarm from Mining World #758." He began his report. "They are currently engaged in battle against a giant warship. Their report indicates that they are greatly outmatched and will soon fall. The origin of the ship and reason for the attack are unknown. Several casualties have already occurred. Ten percent of the livestock is also down. Nearby space surveillance buoys show a single "Super Star Destroyer"-type craft is bombarding the planet, and that approximately 25 percent of the defending force is currently deactivated. Most of them are now in the Main Save Vault..."

Megatron cut him off. "Broadcast the order for all troops to come to full ready immediately. The public announcement will come from the Bureau of Propaganda. We will retake that rock, and then find out who in the slag thinks it's some kind of a good idea to fuck with the Decepticon Empire. Then we will destroy whoever it is!"

~~~~~~~~~~~

Earth

Marketeer had just turned his game back on and started to dig through the now-unoperative entrance holes on his target planet when all of the red-alert sirens in his base went off.

"DEFCON 1! DEFCON 1! READY UP AND AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS!" Came the announcement over the PA systems. Along with the shouting, there was a tone of urgency in the voice. "THIS IS NOT A DRILL!" It added after a second, just in case anyone hadn't realized it.

Soon, base commanders stormed into the barracks and ordered everyone to come into the common area. Once the troops did so, they quickly explained that one of the Empire's planets had not only been attacked, but successfully seized by some unknown foreign force.

"All troops, including those in training, have been ordered to come to full ready. As Espionage Battalion trainees who have almost completed your training, you have been ordered to join the rest of the Battalion in active service. Any other training that you are found to need will have to wait until this war is over. For now, report to the Main Military Base on Cybertron and await General Soundwave's orders. Go right now!"

Immediately everyone went outside, and those who needed to fuel up made sure to chug some Energon. Then, the troops, including Marketeer, took off for the Main Base at FTL. They didn't know just what was up, but it was clearly very urgent - and very dangerous, if it was able to seize an entire planet from the Decepticon Empire. Even the most remote ones were well-guarded by the standards of typical rivals.

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

General Soundwave wasn't waiting for some n00bs to show up to start to take action. He sent several elite scouts, some of whom had joined the Military after the fall of the IOPC, over to the planet to see exactly what was going on and what kind of aliens had taken it over. These scouts didn't just have full cloaking - they had hundreds of years of experience at being nosy - and being very sneaky about it.

It was unlikely that even one of these scouts would be detected, but if someone was indeed spotted, he was prepared to delete all of his important data if he got captured - including the data of where Cybertron even was, what nation he was affiliated with, or anything else that could lead an enemy to Cybertron's front door. Of course, if such a spy were still findable by MilIntel, his data would later be restored from a Save via data-merge. To ensure that the origin of the scouts stayed secret for now, they were repainted so that they were unmarked. It was one of the few circumstances in which it was not treason to go around without their Decepticon Seals.

Meanwhile, MilIntel was busy debriefing those who had come back to Cybertron the hard way. This information would be combined with whatever the scouts learned to try to get a good preliminary idea of what they would be barging into. However, MilIntel knew that it could be possible that the attackers didn't even bother to identify themselves before mounting their assault. Then, they would have to make do with descriptions of the ship's weapons capabilities, size, and other such data. This information would still be important, especially for deciding whether or not to try to storm the thing.

[Vallermoore]

Megatron Mansion


Megatron was both Divine and the Perfect Decepticon on top of that, but that didn't mean that he didn't have feelings just like any other Decepticon did, and he was looking forward to a shower, using solvent which to a Decepticon was the equivalent of water. Even Megatron had the normal Decepticon hatred of water, just like biologicals generally had at the idea of swimming in acid. Only High General Carjack liked the stuff. Megatron's eyes took on a warm happy glow, but it was only to last for a short period of time before the mansion's RED ALERT alarm went off and his shower shut down. Megatron's eyes darkened to black with a single dim red line letting him see, and he was so angry he felt like Carjack when he was woken up, and wanted to blast someone or something with his fusion cannon. If this was a false alarm the perp was going to be turned into scrap if Megatron caught him. His engine, that had been purring softly, was now revving like he was on the racetrack at the Grand Prix. He radioed a soldier and yelled "WHAT!" The soldier temporally turned his Bravery Up to 100%, very grateful that he had it, and replied "We have gotten an invasion alarm from Mining World #758.They are currently engaged in battle against a giant warship. Their report indicates that they are greatly outmatched and will soon fall. The origin of the ship and reason for the attack are unknown. Several casualties have already occurred. Ten percent of the livestock is also down. Nearby space surveillance buoys show a single "Super Star Destroyer"-type craft is bombarding the planet, and that approximately 25 percent of the defending force is currently deactivated. Most of them are now in the Main Save Vault..."

"Broadcast the order for all troops to come to full ready immediately. The public announcement will come from the Bureau of Propaganda. We will retake that rock, and then find out who in the slag thinks it's some kind of a good idea to fuck with the Decepticon Empire. Then we will destroy whoever it is!"

~~~~~~~~~~~
Earth

Marketeer hd his game back on and was having the holes dug out by heat-adapted bots when all the base's red alert sirens rang. "DEFCON 1! DEFCON 1! READY UP AND AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!" Saving his game, he went back into the real world, drank an Energon Cube and hurried to the command area, where his Base General announced that one of the Empire's mining planets had been taken over by some foreign force. "All troops, including those in training, have been ordered to come to full ready. As Espionage Battalion trainees who have almost completed your training, you have been ordered to join the rest of the Battalion in active service. Any other training that you are found to need will have to wait until this war is over. For now, report to the Main Military Base on Cybertron and await General Soundwave's orders. Go right now!" All over Cybertron troops were preparing for battle, annoyed that someone should try and take over one of their planets.


Mining World #758


The small garrison there had been taken by surprise when without warning their base had been blasted from the sky, sending many back to the Main Slave Vault at once. When the rest flew out in battle formation they found a screen of fighters and a capital ship at least a mile long, maybe longer. The base commander called on the slave owners to help defend their livestock, and many did so, as they generally had at least one spare body. The problem was, although they were faster then the fighters, which it was soon clear, were flown by biologicals, they were dangerously outnumbered even with the help of many of the slaver bots. And on top of that they had to face the weaponry of the capital ship. By the time the news went back to Cybertron, a quarter of the bots were scrap metal. The garrison, since there was no jamming being used, fought to the last bot, but most of the slaver bots fought a bit, then got out quick, cursing whoever it was who was stealing their livestock from them in angry Binary.


The Archaeon, for such was the title of the ruler of the Xaman, clicked his pincers happily and thrust his tail with it's deadly (to biologicals) sting on it too and fro. He was ten feet long and three feet high, slightly above the average height of one of his people, and his red body gleamed, adorned as it was with the jewels of emperorship. "Take any survivors as our slaves and kill any who resist, and loot the world of anything of value. This is a great day for my Empire." In fact, his Empire didn't have that long to go, as the Decepticon Empire hated being attacked.


Cybertron


Milintel downloaded the garrison from the Main Save Vault and debriefed them, and from the biological body parts seen floating in space after the destruction of various fighters they were dealing with biologicals, sentient scorpions who clearly didn't know about Decepticons. The ship had thousands of fighters with blasters that were as strong as Decepticon Standard Blasters, and two gun turrets with three huge cannons that were like huge fusion cannons capable of disintegrating Decepticon Steel on contact, as well as many weaker but still dangerous blasters. Cloaked scouts, who were legally hiding their Seals and had fake *biological pilots* set off to see if they could get close enough to get useful information about their foe. Only one nearly got caught, and he mind-transferred back, with a bomb on a time switch blowing his body and boards to scrap seconds later so nothing useful could be gained. A few scouts got close and located various hatches that Decepticons might be able to get through using size and density changes after the blasters guarding them had been destroyed. Others went to the planet and saw the scorpion people scuttling around stealing their livestock and metals, carrying blasters in their pincers, blasters designed perfectly to be held in pincers. Clearly they too were slavers, and wielded their deadly tails proudly.

On Cybertron the news had gone out earlier about the defeat of the Flesh Gods, and now it would not be long until the foreign takeover of the mining world was made public. Decepticons were proud of their Empire, and to attack it was seen as an insult to the huge war robots, even more so when soft squashy biologicals did it.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Mining World #758

The Archaeon, unused to either Decepticons or their slaves, thought for a moment that he'd made a great score. There were thousands of humans, which he could see had been working under the command of the defeated robots, and he figured that they'd be easily converted into his people's slaves. What he didn't realize was that these had all been trained in the Slave Raising Centers, and were thoroughly convinced that only Decepticons were worthy of commanding them. In fact, they had been taught that the only reason they existed was to serve the Decepticons - a claim that, since they had been produced in the Cloning Centers expressly for this purpose, was actually true.

Finally, they had been indoctrinated to be completely loyal to their robotic overlords, and just as importantly, to be completely hostile to any other beings that tried to give them orders. This was just the "mindset" part of Decepticon livestock security. Their DNA alterations that made them die if they were taken too far from their worksites didn't yet have a chance to come into play, and likely would never get that chance.

As soon as they realized that these strange beasts were hostile to their masters, they considered the scorpion people to be their own enemies. When said scorpion people started gesturing as if to give them commands to go places, full resistance was activated. Instead of complying, all of the slaves fought except for about ten wounded ones. Even those wounded ones were non-compliant, and simply refused to budge.

The Xaman invaders had no idea what was going on now, and since they didn't know English - the language of the humans - they couldn't just ask. What they did realize was that killing some didn't sow fear as usual, but instead, caused the slaves to start to act as if they were praying. The god in question, they could tell, was someone named "Megatron." His name was being mentioned almost constantly, and those who fought used the name as if it was some kind of a threat. The word "Decepticons" kept being used as well, and with similar tones of voice. Alas, these warnings went ununderstood, and even if the Xamans had been able to translate them, wouldn't have taken them seriously - at least, not at the time.

~~~~~~~~~~

Main Military Base
Emergency Strategy Meeting

Sonic booms resounded across the Main Military Base as all of the High Generals arrived in a hurry and rushed to the Strategy Room. Everyone knew that there would definitely be war - after all, the Decepticon Empire wasn't going to put up with being claim-jumped!

Soon, the Generals were all in their positions at the big conference table, and Leader Megatron had taken his spot standing behind the head chair. He wasn't in a sitting mood. Almost immediately, he had the known-information list scrolling on a screen at the end of the room, and everyone quickly assimilated the data.

"It should be easy enough to run these creeps off of our territory," Megatron said. "Despite that big ship there, even a raider swarm should be able to take it down. Our scouts have located numerous entrances that can be breached, and once we're inside, it should be simple to destroy its systems and any biologicals that are there. The fighter swarm that is surrounding it is only made up of a few hundred craft. One call over the National Alert System will send at least a million of us at them. So, these twerps here don't stand a chance."

Megatron paused dramatically. "The problem is that whoever fielded this raiding force surely has more where that came from. By the looks of the ship, it is an advanced society. It may require some more preparation to take over its main planet than it will to recover ours - perhaps quite a bit."

Now, Megatron looked at Soundwave. "Your mission is to find out where these things came from, what other territories they hold, and what it's going to take to make those territories ours." He turned back to face the entire group. "The rest of you, prepare forces of 10,000 troops each. First, I will send in a Raider Front. We will follow a few hours later to both pick off any survivors and to make a good show of force. Still, we won't show them ALL of our power. If they think they have enough to counter our 10,000-troop battalions, they can get a surprise when we show up with the other billion-plus soldiers."

Megatron's eyes were hot, but not dark. Instead, combined with the sound of his engine, they conveyed a driven and determined feeling. These alien scum were going down.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Soon, the alarm was sounded over Cybertron's loudspeakers, along with those of several other decently-populated Decepticon territories. They alerted the populace that Mining World #758 had been swarmed by claim-jumpers, and gave that planet's location. Next, the announcement gave details, such as the size of the enemy ships, data about the enemy's body type, and some of the known weak points in the capital ship.

Before the announcement was even complete, Decepticons were chugging Energon and doing any needed blaster cleaning or other quick maintenance on their bodies. However, they waited to take off until the final, crucial, piece of data came in: The price the government was paying for bothering with this endeavor. Soon, it was announced. It was set at a figure that would draw about 1,000,000 individual raiders. Notably, it would be paid on the ships or the outer shells of the attackers, not on the planet's resources. Those resources already belonged to the Decepticon Government, so Megatron wasn't going to pay to have them raided! The enemy, on the other hand, needed to be completely eradicated.

As Megatron's "good raiding" closure faded from the speakers, the sound of jets taking off was already deafening. The Raider Front was on the way.

Meanwhile, Megatron did not order the troops to take off just yet. He would give the raiders plenty of opportunity to not only trounce on the enemy, but learn all about what kind of defense that enemy would attempt to mount. Then, as planned, he and the High Generals would fly in with a relatively small force of only about 80,000 troops to mop up - and, hopefully, intimidate this new foe.

[Vallermoore]

Mining World #758


If the slaves on this world had been first-generation slaves from recently taken planets, then they might have done what the Xaman told them, but these slaves had been coded and trained to obey only Decepticon bots and to kick off like Spartacus was leading them and fight until death. Those few who were overpowered and taken off planet died, and the scorpion-people then took some of the ore by force. Killing them made them prey for their deliverance, and the Archaeon gave orders to loot the ore and then go. Before long, however, a million bots in plane mode showed up, much to the shock of the Xaman. The fighters of the Xaman put up a short fight and then were busted up very quickly. The capital ship took down quite a few with it's blasters, but the others transformed, forced open the hatches and used their size and density changers to get in and blast away. Scorpion stings did no more then dent their armor, and whilst blasters did bring them down, they outnumbered their foes a hundred to one. Within hours, the great ship or what remained of it was taken. A few Xaman including the Archaeon escaped with the head of one Decepticon that had been blasted off, that they thought might have life in it. A few more surrendered, and the rest were slain by the angry Raiders. The Decepticon Flag was once more raised over the world and the uninjured slaves got back to work, happy that their biological foes were vanquished. When the Decepticon Military showed up, it just had to deal with a few holdouts. However, taking over this Empire would surely be harder then just sending out a Raider Front.

Xamarchis Empire

Spies of the first level were sent out, not so much at this stage to find top secret military intelligence-those would be the next group of spies to be sent out-as to find out more or less what they were facing here. They found one large planet, the Xamen home planet, Xamarchis, which was about the same size as Vallermoore and had a fleet of about twenty capital ships each a mile long and fighter and mine screens defending it. The weather was hot by biological standards-about 50C, but that was perfect weather for the scorpion-people, who had huge cities, temples of some kind ,a large military, and slavery, with slave markets with humans, sapient ponies, and various aliens. Weapons were common amongst the scorpion people, who didn't, except for the children and babies, have to cover their stings. They cared about their environment even less then the humans of Earth had done. Their Empire consisted of two solar systems, with a handful of planets with life, three gas giants and plenty of moons and asteroids. At this stage, it was not known if there were hidden weapons or changelings or nasty surprises waiting for attackers.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Mining World #758

Megatron and the High Generals were glad to have their territory back, but were a bit dismayed at how many of the slaves had been deactivated. It took a bit longer than normal to train slaves for other planets, such as this one, thanks to their environments being a bit different from Earth's. Here, the gravity was a bit stronger, so it took a year's worth of conditioning before slaves were able to work at full capacity. The stronger gravity also made everything else work a bit differently, such as mining equipment, the speed of falling items, and how big of a rock could fall without causing injury.

"What a pain in the exhaust!" A well-to-do mine owner could be heard complaining, as he picked up deactivated slave bodies with a grumpy look. Other mine owners actually looked sad at their lost stock, but were also glad for any who survived unscathed. They were all impressed by how well the Slave Raising Centers had trained everyone to rebel against would-be rustlers and generally be of no use to any interlopers.

Out in near orbit, Military Engineering personnel arrived with several very large parts. These were assembled, and a floating booth was set up right there in near space. This facility turned out to be a giant biological rendering plant. Any alien carcasses were to be brought here for payout, as well as immediate processing. This way, any that may not have been quite dead certainly would be after going through the grinders and hydraulic pressing systems to be turned into chunks of dried-up fertilizer.

While the raiding spec had called for the shells of the scorpions, most of the raiders brought them to the temporary rendering plant in their entirety. Those who had a lot of them, however, went ahead and butchered them so they didn't have to carry so much weight that high into the sky. The meat was left in piles, but the slave owners and overseers quickly took it. Barbecues began to flare - the slaves would be getting some very exotic chow tonight.

No one had qualms about the fact that these beings had been sapient. They were enemies, and not only that, it was normal to recycle deactivated parts. The fact that biologicals did the recycling by eating the parts and basically assimilating their molecular components was of no real concern. It was known that in most cases, sufficient cooking would render meat safe for consumption - and to make sure, each mine would give a bit to their least-productive slave first to test it.

~~~~~~~~~~~

As the reports from the Decepticon spies, who had followed the Archaeon's escape pod back to its home world, came in, Megatron's mood improved. As far as they knew so far, the place only had one world and just a few capital ships. It seemed like it could actually be swarmed outright, if Megatron chose to send a few hundred million troops at it!

"This seems too good to be true," Megatron said to the High Generals as they stood together in a group at a distance from the rest of the activity on the mining world. "A one-planet government usually doesn't have big ships like that, and if they do, they only have one or two. It also doesn't just rock up somewhere and start blasting to take over. Instead, a non-empire planet is usually quite cautious, and quite unready to invade something without a whole lot of preparation first."

General Soundwave agreed. "I think we should move ahead with an actual infiltration before we commit to a military strategy," he suggested. "Even a cursory placement of a few spies on the ground should reveal things like the size of the enemy's holdings, their relative conditions, and things like that." Soundwave knew that in most nations, this type of information was schoolkid-level knowledge. In fact, kids would have it drummed into their heads, at least things like 'which states are part of the nation' or 'which planets are in the empire.' A look at the media would, if it was not censored for some reason, tell plenty about the economic strength, crime level, political leanings, and other relevant data about each major political area as well.

Megatron concurred. "This level of information won't even require sneaking anyone into a government organization. However, we don't have time for someone to pretend to be a kid and let a school just teach it to him. Biologicals learn far too slowly for that! Have someone go to a library or something and get the data there."

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

Cybertron

Marketeer was glad to be on the Metal Planet instead of tromping around in Earth's mud, but he was already getting bored when he realized that his division would not be part of the big recapture operation. Or, at least, he thought it wouldn't.

He was quite surprised when a commander showed up at his new barracks and handed out sim chips to everyone there. "You all are going to get to use some radically different bodies," the commander explained. "These sims will help you learn how to use them. Once you do, you can expect to be infiltrating government organizations belonging to some of the weirdest biologicals we've come across."

As still-in-training Espionage Battalioneers, Marketeer's group wouldn't be sent into highly-protected areas like generals' quarters or presidential suites. However, they would be deployed into positions where they could do a lot of damage - yet could get away with acting a bit "off" without arousing too much suspicion. Typically, the provided cover in these situations would involve janitorial, food service, and similar positions. These people were - in many societies - often ignored even when they were right in their targets' faces. That classism was easy to turn to a spy's advantage...

[Vallermoore]

Mining World #758


The surviving slaves, it turned out, would get a reward for holding out against their would-be masters, in the form of getting to eat their cooked bodies. As it turned out, they tasted very nice and were cooked well enough to not spread disease. Meanwhile Megatron suspected that his foes might be larger and more dangerous then they seemed. Lower ranking spies were sent out in scorpion-like androids to discover the lower-level information for now.

They would discover that this nation was a- sort of- democracy with two parties-right wing and fascist. It was proud of it's small Empire and the locations and sizes and rough populations of every planet, moon and asteroid belt were charted. The laws were quite strict, but crime still happened quite a lot in the poor areas. There was scorn for other races, but nothing mentioned at least in public about Decepticons, which quite likely meant that they didn't know about them. There were families of the same kind that humans had, but little children and babies had their stings covered for safety. They had their own human or pony slaves, and the scorpion-people had a deep dislike of changelings that had been known to infiltrate them and steal their love. They were xenophobic-for them outer beauty was found in gleaming armor and strong legs and pincers. Their Empire was bigger then one planet and they had a sizeable fleet, but it was nothing like those big Empires that even the Decepticons-for now-steered clear of. With the information they had so far, it would take the Decepticon Military a week to take the rival Empire-or a day or two if they threw almost the entire Decepticon Nation at them. Of course, at this stage there might be nasty hidden weapons that the Decepticons had not found out about yet.

Cybertron

Marketeer virus checked and then went into the sim and found himself in the body of a scorpion person, and had to get used to walking on six legs and using pincers instead of hands. In a sim, this could be done easily and without risking breaking cover or at least appearing drunk or drugged by falling over. He had a tail, with a deadly-looking sting on the end. He then needed to infiltrate the Catering Corps of an army regiment and poison their food with deadly poison that would only take effect three hours later, ensuing that everyone would eat it and get poisoned.

Changeling Planet

On most planets changelings were in hiding, and had to gather love in secret, but on this planet the changeling hives had risen a couple of centuries ago, and killed or cocooned the humans and sapient ponies living there. They had then brought-or stolen, very young foals, humans and aliens from other planets, and taught them from babyhood to serve changelings, and to love changelings, meaning they were plump and glossy and somewhat overweight. A changeling had come up with the idea of stealing an unactivated Decepticon mind, activating it, and gaining from it Decepticon love, and went before the Council of Queens to argue his point. Up against him, and dead set against the idea, was a changeling who had been to Cybertron as a tourist for three days-and lived to tell the tale. First, after bowing in respect, the changeling gave his idea. "Your Majesties, the rarest form of love in the universe is Decepticon love-which is never leaked, as almost never been freely given, and because of the sheer size of these war machines, we cannot infiltrate them and pretend to be one of their new-builts to gain love that way. But if we were able to steal an uninstalled Decepticon mind, and install it into something relatively weak-we could make the new mind think we were it's parents and gain freely given love from it, and sell it at great cost to other changelings as we would control access to it."


The other changeling got up, his anteene vibrating to and fro in anger, to make his point loud and clear.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Cybertron

While Marketeer's first sim gave him an objective, its real goal was to get him used to running a scorpion-droid well enough to blend into a mundane situation. Before long, he was interrupted by a real trainer.

"Congratulations, n00bs," he said to the assembled group that had come down from Earth, "you've got your first deployment."

They were led to an area with several freshly-made scorpion droid bodies, some of which were marked with the insignia of the equivalent of army privates. "This is yours," the trainer said to Marketeer, gesturing towards one of them. "Private Nonta never made it back from our mining world, but ForIntel has managed to hack the enemy's military personnel computer to mark him as simply having been on leave. Since his rank is low, and his command sergeant also bit it trying to jump our claim, nobody really knows that he's dead. You'll be impersonating him."

"His usual job was to work in the mess hall at their main base. That's the perfect placement for you to just go around playing 'busboy' while listening in on everybody's conversations. High-ranking types usually ignore privates anyway, but even those smart enough to shut up when you're standing next to them will be no match for the high-quality audio pickups we've put in this thing. When you overhear anything interesting, you'll use your hidden internal radio to transmit the data back to us over the obscure, encrypted frequency. Nobody in the room will hear a thing...to them, everything will be silent."

Now, the trainer turned to the other near-graduates. He sent one to be a janitor in the party headquarters of the ruling party, and another to 'volunteer' for the party that didn't currently have the presidency. A few others were dotted around in low-level positions in places like senator's offices, military contractors' buildings, and similar locations. These not-yet-experienced spies were given no sabotage orders, but instead, would - for now - just be watching, listening, and secretly transmitting their findings back to Cybertron.

"It is unlikely that your missions will expand to sabotage," the trainer said, "but you never know. You who are impersonating soldiers may find yourselves deployed to important places, such as on the large capital ships this mini-"empire" has. If so, you'll surely be given instructions to interfere with their fighting capabilities. Just don't do any sabotage before getting orders to do it. We don't want to give ourselves away, at least not yet." The trainer concluded.

After the orders were given, it was time to mind-transfer into the strange, new bodies. It felt weird to use such a thing, but Marketeer couldn't help but be impressed at how realistic it was. There were even fingerprint-like lines on his shell-like exoskeleton, which was a combination of silicone and some harder stuff. Behind him, his tail held a very lethal stinger, which was filled with enough factory-produced poison to kill 100 biological-scorpion foes. Well-hidden inside of his large front pincers were the two sized-to-scale mil-spec blasters that even Decepticon spies secretly carried. These were only to be used in dire emergencies, and thanks to the functioning stinger on his other end, it was unlikely that he'd need to use them.

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

On a Planet Full of Changelings

The opposing changeling was quite irked at the idea of trying to steal not-yet-activated Decepticon mind-boards, for a whole slew of reasons.

"Where do you expect to get those!?" He started out. "Coders don't just leave them around. Once they've written the entire set of Code Intended to be Sapient, they take the boards to Debugging for activation right away! Who just leaves offspring 'off' when they're that close to running?! A Decepticon who decided against being a Coder would stop the project long before that!"

Then, he said, "New Decepticons don't have love anyway. They're completely non-sapient until they're about 2 years old, so they have no opinions about anything or anyone. Anything that seems like an opinion at that point is just blind code running. Speaking of blind code, though, one part of that code is the Automatic Self-Defense Routine. The moment it identifies a threat, it kicks off and stays kicking until either the threat is deleted, or it is!"

"That's not to say that the faux-opinions that are put into a new Decepticon's base code won't count. Oh, they'll count, alright. They'll give the thing the instinct to enslave us all as 'inferiors' to the Decepticon Race, take over our planet for the empahr, and otherwise be our enemy! I'm telling you - importing a Decepticon who isn't old enough to be reasoned with, let alone conned into anything, is a VERY BAD IDEA!"

[Vallermoore]

On a Planet Full of Changelings


The Queen turned to the opposing changeling and said "You are totally right. It's not just Decepticons-very young biologicals have no love either, although they don't take two years to gain it. And even if we did steal mind boards without getting found out, there is no way that mind would think we were Coders at our size, even if we did take Decepticon shape to try and fool it. Most likely, it would go to a spare on Cybertron and then tell it's Coder about us. I make you one of my formal Royal Advisors because you talk so much sense." She gently kissed his forehead once, not in a sexual way but like a mother might kiss her son.


"As for you two, your intentions were good, as was you bringing it up here formally instead of just trying to carry it out. So you won't be punished. But next time you come up with an idea for getting Decepticon love, you don't do it without my OK, and if you get my OK, you do it in a way that will not bring squadrons of angry Decepticons down on our planet."

Cybertron


It only took Marketeer a minite or two to get used to having six legs instead of just two, but it was still just as well to run this in a sim the first time. Soon a trainer-a real one, not a sim one, set him on his first real mission-to gain infomation from officers just by being in the same mess hall as them, about weapons and other such things. He was impressed by his body that he was borrowing from Milintel, that looked and moved just like the real thing. They infiltrated in a ship that had been captured intact and was big enough to transport them and had FTL capacity, since flying in by themselves might make them show up on radar and/or damage the bodies they were in.


Soon enough he was in a military base of the scorpian people, which like most armies had a complex ranking system which left the higher officers remote and risked orders getting mangled. After an hour of drill and an hour on the firing range with hand-held blasters it was lunch, and he overheard a colonel telling the senior officers that they knew their foes were robots and that they were setting up a concealed jammer in each base's right hand guard tower. This went back at once to Cybertron and Milintel and from there to General Soundwave. He found his fellow privates friendly enough, although the NCOs were strict discipinarians. He managed to avoid getting in trouble easily enough. Across the planet other infomation was coming in. The scorpian people were asking other planets for aid, but very few other governments were willing to fight the Decepticons as they didn't want their own planets invaded. Also, whilst the Decepticons were not popular, nor were the scorpian people, who had made many raids of their own and angered most of the nearby governments.