An Exploration Mission (Closed; Att'n Vallermoore)

[Victorious Decepticons]

CBA Headquarters


After everyone assembled, they were both amazed and intimidated by SolarTempest's new body. Few were surprised to learn that he intended to expand, though all were shocked when he admitted to upgrading because some of them might want to take over. Most leaders put on an act as if they weren't remotely concerned about something like that, and just "happened to" upgrade beforehand.

Soon, they would put the word out that they were actively looking for more members, and various bots would arrive to try to get accepted. SolarTempest would need some sort of initial screening challenge, even before there were any duels, to weed out any absolute duds who tried to get in. Perhaps he would set up some sort of test for them, whether it would be for raiding or something else.

SolarTempest also began thinking that his gang should do something more than just raiding. True Cybertronian syndicates were involved in multiple businesses, which is what made them syndicates instead of just large raid gangs. He knew that the ICC had its fingers in businesses ranging from problem solving to drug dealing, and also likely had many foreign politicians in its pockets. These politicians not only made sure that the ICC's operatives didn't get busted (or if they did, various "mishaps" would ensure that the prosecutions would fail), but also could be hired to make other people's business go more smoothly. This let the ICC offer "lobbying" services of a distinctly shady sort, usually to natives of the foreign planets they were operating on.

The ICC itself currently had no idea about SolarTempest's upgrade or its expansion plans. Even though their DomIntel contacts had the information, the ICC hadn't asked, and agents didn't just offer up info out of the blue.

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

Oil Fountain

After a day, the forest fire still raged near where Mighty Brilliance had spread its napalm. However, there was now a large area in the center that had been burned to the ground. By flying over the still-burning part, the gang could carefully land in this burned-out area and begin its operations.

The group did just that, and once there, got out its drilling equipment. Soon, the mechanical hum of a Decepticon oil pump filled their immediate area. From the other side of the fire, however, nothing could be heard. The roaring flames and crackling trees drowned it out.

"We'd better pump as fast as we can," Switchback said. "Once the fire is detected, the humans will send firefighting planes to dump foam on it. Not only is it quite unpleasant to get a bath in that, the pilots will see us. Of course, we could just shoot them down, but that'll motivate this place to improve their defenses against us more. It's better to be out of here before they start their anti-fire activities."

Vampire said, "I'm surprised that they'd try to put out the fire. I'd think they'd want to get rid of these nasty trees!"

Switchback explained, "They hate these trees in some ways, but in others, they're very important to the civilization here. These trees catch wild predators even more than they catch unwary Decepticons, and that keeps the cities safe. All the humans have to do is make sure to keep any seedlings that sprout in the populated areas from getting too big. This is done by a combination of spraying poisons and mowing, depending on how close to the big trees these unwanted sprouts happen to be."

"Also," Switchback went on, "They have figured out ways to harvest some of these. Humans wait until the trees are a few feet high - tall enough to use for timber, but not so tall that they have an insurmountable grip. However, in order to get more, they have to keep some of these big trees to produce seeds for their tree farms. So that's another reason they won't want the entire forest to burn."

With that in mind, the gang got to work. All of the pumping gear was attached, both to their new oil well and to their tanks, which were now out and ready to go. It would only take a few hours to pull up enough crude to fill all of their tankers, and another hour or two to break down their drilling equipment and get the tankers ready for liftoff.

Just as they were leaving, they heard the sound of big turboprop planes.

"That's the forest fire brigade," Switchback said. "If we don't leave now, they'll see us!"

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

DeathStrike decided that it would be best to find a place he could rent on a month-to-month basis. That way, if he got regular ICC work again, he wouldn't lose a lot of lease money if he decided to move closer to the town his capo was based in. Plus, in the current town, he saw that the housing was of a lower-middle class quality (or lack of quality), and he didn't want to commit to staying a long time at that level.

The house he had shared before, alas, would have been re-rented long ago. He had left to do his military stint, same as his roommate, and no place that was available for short-term stays would remain vacant that long. He also didn't want to go into the tunnels, finding that arrangement too insecure. Raiding a house crossed his mind, but since he was so new to this area, he didn't know which ones would be good targets. He also didn't know who might come back with 10 other gang members to reclaim a lost property. That made a straightforward rental the best bet.

Once he found a place and got himself set up there, it wouldn't take long for him to get a job. It had been a long time since there'd been enough Problem Solvers operating out of this area's ICC store outlet, and that meant that there was a lot of pent-up demand.

[Vallermoore]

CBA Headquarters

When within a few hours (as it was a non emergency summons, being Decepticons they were generally quite tardy, had it been a true emergency they would have arrived very quickly indeed) the CBA all got together, they marveled at their leader's grand gleaming new body from Ultimate Mods. One backfired in shock when he told them he feared some might want to take over. SolarTempest would need to set up at least some kind of fitness test to weed out the weaklings of Decepticon society. He considered a race with an acrobatics and targeting part done in the equivalent of the Cybertronian "countryside" or if that would cause trouble on some moon somewhere, with those who came last or got caught blasting the competition excluded from membership. As for a mental equivalent he asked his trusted Underboss Lightning Dust to set that up, which made Lightning Dust feel highly valued. They went to middle class areas and unfurled a banner that they were recruiting, and went to restaurants as well. Some places they stayed away from. Places like the Private Refinery were full of rather snooty ultra rich bots who didn't need to raid and normally didn't want to. And Crack and Adams was ICC territory and would provoke a violent reaction at best, and at worst the ICC trying to wipe them out of existence altogether.

Many bots liked what they saw and more then a hundred and fifty bots wanted to join, but although it might be very tempting to command that many, SolarTempest wanted to maintain proper standards, and also not have trouble getting enough loot for all of them-so that many of them would leave and maybe badmouth him in private to their close friends. Only thirty to forty bots would make it to the duel stage.

Luckily for the CBA Connect had not asked for information and paid the necessary bribes, and, being the closest thing on Cybertron to police, Domintel officers tended to be very "law-abiding" when it came to the few laws of Cybertron. Just leaking information without a reward certainly counted as narking, even if it was to the ICC rather then foreign police-and narking just for the heck of it, even more so as a Domintel officer , could easily lead to execution. With a key exception for foreign invasion fleets, which were too big for any one bot or small groups of bots to do anything about, Megatron HATED narks with the fire of a hundred suns, only hating hackers more. For now at least, the CBA could expand undisturbed.

**********
Oil Fountain

Soon enough the bots were pumping oil and they got out in time before the firefighting bots arrived. Both Warrior and Vampire thanked Switchback for his help in making things work well. They got the oil back without being attacked, and soon were sharing out the Cubes and feeling pleased with a raid well done.

*****
When DeathStrike got in touch with a landlord, the bot was in a strong body. Not quite Ultimate Mods level strong-but strong enough to wrestle a Scrounger to the ground, with fusion cannons attached instead of blasters. "I'm ChuckOut, but don't worry, I won't chuck you out for no reason if I rent to you, otherwise sooner or later nobody would want to rent any of my houses. I have three, one bigger then the others. What is the price that you are both able and willing to pay?"

[Victorious Decepticons]

Rural Cybertron

The CBA had avoided DomIntel outright telling the ICC what was going on, but when it put up a big recruitment banner, there was no longer any need for that. Almost immediately, word got around, and some of this word went right to ICC members. Even DeathStrike, far from the CBA's advertising area, heard that there was a new group that might be worth paying attention to. He, however, wouldn't be following up on it since he was looking for work in his own area.

Soon enough, about 150 bots showed up at the field to try to advance to serious consideration. SolarTempest started them off with an aerobatics challenge, which quickly showed that 20 of the applicants were too n00bish to move on. Whether these were youngsters or just people who didn't practice their air skills enough, they clearly would be easy targets for SAMs and would get in the way of any advanced maneuvers. SolarTempest thanked them for trying, but sent these 20 on their way.

Next, all of the applicants engaged in a big paintball brawl. SolarTempest watched carefully, and when they got down to about 70 still-unpainted ones, he called a halt. These 70 would move onto the next phase.

Now, Lightning Dust appeared, towing a small enclosed cart behind him. He opened it up, revealing many cheap tablet computers.

"These tablets each contain a slightly different scenario, which you might encounter on a raid. They also have a couple of business scenarios on them. The raid scenarios are a bit different from what you'd usually encounter. We can all handle a raid where all we need to do is land on some undefended refinery and start pumping out their storage tanks. However, that's not what makes a raid gang great. What makes greatness is the ability to succeed even if the target is decently - or even impenetrably - defended. Obviously, if it's impenetrable, you'll need to find a way to get the oil that doesn't involve raiding in the standard sense."

"As for the business scenarios, we are the Cybertronian Business Association. With this expansion, we will likely be getting into some sort of business. You will each be presented with a business-type goal, whether that's selling cocaine or getting us a monopoly on a legal enterprise on some other planet. In these, whoever makes the most profit without any arrest attempts, serious law enforcement investigations, or - for legal enterprises - bans against their company or operations, will proceed to the next stage."

"There are 70 of you now, and we're accepting 50. That means that no matter how good you do, 20 of you will lose. Try not to be one of the 20."

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

Above the field where they were gathered, a few Decepticons were flying to and fro. One had a paint job that, if seen in robot mode, would look like a tuxedo. This one circled lazily, like an eagle, letting the rising air currents created by the heat of the assembled bots do most of the work of holding him aloft. He watched the group intently, trying to decide whether to simply have his organization keep an eye on it or go ahead and send in his Market Share Protection Force.

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

It was clear that ChuckOut had a lot of experience with bad tenants, and that said tenants were expected to forcefully resist eviction. His body was built up well enough to defeat a Scrounger, and DeathStrike wondered how many of those he had chucked out in his time.

DeathStrike wasn't interested in the kind of dump that a Scrounger would be willing to rent, so he offered a full 2,000 Cubes per month. ChuckOut looked shocked that anyone who'd be dealing with him would have that kind of money, and he surprised DeathStrike by stalling for time to "get another house ready."

A few hours later, DeathStrike got a call to come to a specific address. When he got there, he saw a few fresh-looking blast marks in the pavement outside, along with a random piece of someone's scorched wing flap.

"This one should be suitable for someone of your means," he said, opening the door. The engine lock appeared to be brand-new, like it was installed just before DeathStrike had shown up. However, the inside still smelled of another person's exhaust, and appeared to have been hastily cleaned. Still, the overall quality was good, and what would be expected for this price in this area. Elsewhere, 2,000 Cubes a month might get only a small apartment, but in this town, it easily covered a solidly middle-class detached home.

DeathStrike took in the scene, and wondered if ChuckOut had just chucked someone out of their own house, raider-style, in order to create a previously-nonexistent vacancy in a "2,000-Cube/month house."

[Vallermoore]

Rural Cybertron

The number of bots who turned up may have been huge, but SolarTempest knew he had to maintain standards and couldn't just let everyone in no matter how impressive it might look. The first test was one of acrobatics, which weeded out those bots who were perhaps not fully adult yet or just plain bad fliers. Then there was a huge paintball battle to select 70 bots for the mental testing, and it was Lightning Dust's time to shine. The raids involved things such as hidden guns that only rose and started firing when the bot landed, other Decepticons who happened to own the oilfield and started blasting, booby traps and other such things to make it more of a challenge. The business scenarios varied. Some were plainly illegal, like selling illegal drugs, or selling non-Decepticon weapons and fireworks in countries where these were banned, or fake cutie marks for sapient ponies. But other things were on the face of it perfectly legal in the worlds where they were being sold, and the trick here was to undermine or outright destroy the competition in the area without being busted for it. Not all the bots could succeed at these tests. Lightning Dust had done things well.

Soon enough the bots who had done well had been selected and , after a short time to allow bots to prepare for it, dueling could start. As it turned out, none of the new bots would reach SolarTempest although one did win enough duels to reach in effect, number six. The bot below Lightning Dust decided to try and in effect become Underboss through proving his strength, but the former Vallermoorian military computer made said bot lose his best body instead with only 20% damage to his own body. Other then losing the body, the bot was not punished as at a time like this he in effect had a de facto right to try and level up. Lightning Dust was too loyal to SolarTempest to take the chance to challenge him, which was one of the reasons why he was the Underboss. After any light body damage had been repaired, it was time to find a target that would provide profit to the whole syndicate, and SolarTempest checked a Raid List for a decent target planet or moon. After the raid, they could then think of more semi-legal or even legal ways of bringing in Energon.

Above them, Connect himself watched and thought and decided to land and see SolarTempest with a polite but firm warning not to try and seize ICC assets or territory, as well as an offer of a job for which the CBA would be paid well. How he was received would determine ICC policy towards the expanding CBA. If things went bad, a couple of thousand ICC Problem Solvers could easily be set on them, but if things went well they would be accepted, tolerated and maybe even helped on occasion. There was no need to go to war just for the sake of it, which was bad for business and a distraction from bringing in Energon.

He landed, transformed and knocked on the CBA HQ door, asking politely to see SolarTempest and introducing himself as Connect, the Boss of the Interplanetary Commerce Commission.

**********

Clearly ChuckOut had more bad tenants then most landlord bots and had upgraded accordingly. DeathStrike, tough though he was, was glad he didn't have to fight a bot that seemed designed for taking on Scroungers, themselves bots that were designed for taking on other Decepticons. ChuckOut was surprised that this bot was that wealthy and stalled for time, then transformed and flew off. Soon enough he had a place ready, and DeathStrike handed over 6000 Cubes for three months. If the bot who owned this house came back in a spare body to get his house back, he would be another Problem to be Solved. DeathStrike wouldn't however just assume anyone knocking on the door was to be blasted on sight, as he didn't want to do something like blast an ICC capo that was coming to see him for example, but he was ready for such a thing. His mind boards turned to the thought of the tail he hoped to buy someday from Ultimate Mods, a gorgeous deadly thing that would help him solve many a future Problem. As a biological with such a tail, he had been fond of it and even slightly vain, keeping it clean and gleaming, something common amongst his kind before their death or enslavement, and it was the one thing he missed as a Decepticon. He looked about the house and found it good and had a short defrag.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Before SolarTempest and Lightning Dust could decide on a place to raid, there was a knock at the door. SolarTempest checked a security camera, and was shocked to see what appeared to be Connect himself standing on the other side. Everyone with an interest in running or being part of a Syndicate recognized the paint job of the leader of the largest one on the planet.

SolarTempest seemed peaceful as he opened the door, but the sound of his battle-ready engine gave away the fact that he was ready for anything. He secretly had his blasters ready, too, with the energy level at the point just below where a glow would have appeared deep in the barrels.

After introducing himself, Connect gave his warning and then said he wanted to talk business. SolarTempest responded to the warning without anger, but was more skeptical about doing a job for the ICC. He didn't build up his own syndicate just to be a subcontractor for some other gang, not even this one!!

Despite his immediate urge to show the mob boss the door, he kept that to himself and asked for the details of the proposition. After all, the money might be good enough to make it worth their while - and worth the risk of some of the new members defecting to the ICC...

~~~~~~~~~~~

ICC Store

The angry bot, in what appeared to be a fairly generic body of average strength, stormed into the store with dark red eyes and a very roughly-running engine.

"I've got a problem, and I need it solved! ASAP!" He shouted down the counter at the clerk, who was currently standing at the other end. The clerk came over quickly, and soon said that the minimum price was a million Cubes. To his surprise, this average-looking guy said it wouldn't be an issue. In reality, it would amount to his life savings so far, but to him, it was worth it.

"And what is the nature of your problem?" The clerk asked, reminding him that the final price would depend on this. "Harder jobs need more Cubes."

The furious would-be customer began to describe his problem. He had been sitting at home, minding his own business, when some big brute blasted his door in with a double fusion cannon. He'd immediately come out the back door, jumped up with jet assist, went over his own roof, and intended to land ready for battle.

"The pile of reject parts blasted me before I could even aim!" He complained. "I got into this body, and came back intending to try a different tactic. But when I got there, the guy had already changed the lock, and worse, he was letting some bastard into MY HOUSE as if he was renting it out! Needless to say, I want these guys out of my property! Permanently!"

This brought no big reaction from the clerk. House recovery was a fairly common goal of individuals who hired Problem Solvers, though usually, the houses in question were more expensive than the ones in this area. Pride, however, caused more than one person to empty his vault to recover what was his, regardless of the actual financial value.

"Address?" The clerk asked, and when it was given, he punched it into the computer without much thought. Suddenly, however, his eyes looked wider.

The clerk explained, "I'm sorry, but we will not be able to take both of these jobs. The guy who defeated you can be taken on, but we have a conflict of interest when it comes to the 'tenant' in this case."

Now the customer looked ready to blow a gasket. "The jackass whose in my house is one of YOUR GUYS?! WTF is this!! I've never had any beef with you~"

"Well," the clerk said, "it is unlikely that he had anything to do with the takeover. He simply wanted to rent a house, and the landlord gave him the address. It was empty when he came to look at it, so he accepted it. At least, that's what our Non-Classified Internal Surveillance File is telling me. One thing is for sure: The one who actually took your house is not one of our associates."

The customer paced around a bit, showing high amounts of angry tension in his face.

"Just kill that raider then. What's his name, anyway, since you've got a file?"

The clerk nodded and punched a few keys. "ChuckOut."

The customer left. About an hour later, he returned with a vault key.

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

DeathStrike's communicator sounded, and when he answered, he was informed he had a job. "You'll get 600,000 Cubes," the store clerk informed him. It was actually a low percentage, but in exchange, DeathStrike would get jobs fed to him instead of having to go seek them on his own. He also wouldn't have to worry about being lured into ambushes at vault complexes when he tried to get his money - something that was always a risk for fully-independent Problem Solvers and similar professionals.

"For this job, the directive is simple: Kill your landlord. And, if you'd like another 10,000 Cubes as a bonus, move after you do it. Remember to get all of the Spares and Saves, assuming you take the job, that is."

[Vallermoore]

SolarTempest wanted to tell Connect where to go, or even outright blast him, but he knew he had to act with extreme caution. With the force of his syndicate behind him, he could certainly make Connect lose a body-or maybe even his life until he was reinstalled by his Underboss or one of his capos. Unfortunately, the Interplanetary Commerce Commission was known to be at least 10,000 strong, not counting any unknown undercover members or allied syndicates. If they stopped what they were doing and came down hard, they could exterminate the Cybertronian Business Association's less then 100 members outright extremely quickly. Still, that would take time and Energon and choggle up everything else, and the fact that Connect-no Decepticon scammer would dare to pretend to be Connect out of fear of ICC retaliation-had come alone without even a bodyguard meant he didn't want to just start a fight. He was ready for battle, but he kept his urge to blast under control and the glow out of his blasters and allowed Connect to come inside.

Connect gave a polite bow to SolarTempest, and took from a panel a map made of durable foil-paper. To a human or sapient pony it would have been huge but to a Decepticon robot in a full size body it was normal map size even when fully opened. "This is a map of the Central Territories of the ICC, where we get 90% of our Energon from. If you don't raid or destroy those areas, perma-kill ICC members, or grow to more then 3500 bots, we will leave you and whatever you are up to alone, and I'll order my bots not to fight your Syndicate unless attacked or disrespected. None of our Problem Solvers will go after you unless attacked or you deliberately bad mouth them in public. Of course, other, non ICC Problem Solvers that we don't control might, but they are not the best of their kind. If you attack our core areas, outright kill our members, or get really large in numbers to the point that you could become a new IOPC, the whole ICC will come after you along with any close allies. I was also thinking that one of these months you could help us deal with some renegade IOPC bots-if you dealt with them you could take all their stuff as payment, but that would be in the future. Farewell. " He left, transformed and flew off. No doubt many of the CBA were thinking of blasting him, but he hadn't demanded all that much of them really, and they knew what would happen if they started a war with the Cybertronian Mafia. It would be a long time before they got anywhere near 3500 bots joining them, and there was plenty of places that were not important ICC territories, the universe being a very big place.

*******
DeathStrike's communicator sounded. It seemed a job would be coming his way. He had decided when he first earned this job that only an outright treasonous job would be turned down. If called upon to slay Megatron or a High General, there was no way he would try and do such a thing. Apart from that, he would try and take on every last contract-even if it cost a lot of Energon or ultimately resulted in him getting Solved instead of the Problem. He wanted to get a good reputation for reliability and deadliness and prove himself constantly to the ICC that no mistake had been made in letting him in.

When he got his orders, he knew that he could not just track down ChuckOut and engage him in combat, or he would lose a body and maybe his life. He would pay the needed bribe in the proper way to a Domintel agent to get information on his target. If his target had an offspring that was not as strong, he could , for example, kill the offspring, impersonate the offspring, poison ChuckOut with a poisoned Cube of Silicon Dioxide, turn his jammer on and kill him. Or he could buy a bomb-a very big one-and blow ChuckOut into bits. Or he might be able to hire a cargo-bot to kill ChuckOut, but there was danger in that. Cargo bots were notoriously bad tempered and dangerous, and had to be treated with care. He decided that three thousand Cubes should be a big enough bribe, delivered it and waited for the result.

[Victorious Decepticons]

SolarTempest didn't say much out loud, but after Connect left, he and Lightning Dust exchanged clear-eyed, conniving glances. Connect's comment about "taking care of" rogue ICC members had let both of them know that there was such a thing as ICC rogues...and that if they could cajole some of those onto their side, they could provide valuable information into the workings of the massive syndicate. They also now knew that Connect saw a force of over 3,500 as a threat. Without a word, both of the CBA's top commanders had decided that what they needed to do was improve their strength so that they would be able to win when the day came to add Member #3,501.

For now, though, they had just expanded to 100 bots. It would be a long time before they were anywhere near the size needed to stand a chance against the ICC. Therefore, no actual planning was done for defeating that competition - yet.

They now looked at the map Connect had left, and soon superimposed an image of it over their general map. "They've got all of the best spots!" One of the onlooking members complained. He began to point out how much oil was believed to be within some of the ICC's operating planets.

"Don't worry about it too much," SolarTempest said. "It's a big universe. If we do our scouting right, we should be able to find an area that's quite rich enough for us - not only for a quick raid, but for ongoing drilling. And these planets here, they're marked 'inhabited.' Surely we'll be able to get up to some other sorts of 'business' there, if they haven't already been made aware of how Decepticons do such things..."

After some discussion, the group decided that the best move for now would be to make a massive raid. With so many members, they would be able to temporarily hold territory, and this both expanded and altered their options. There would be no point in seizing a refinery for a long time since the inhabitants would simply stop delivering oil to that location. However, if they took over an oil field in a remote area of some other planet, they'd be able to set up a supply line of cargo-bots between it and Cybertron that would let them drill and sell millions of barrels' worth of crude before the natives would be able to get enough military to the location to drive them away.

They pored over all of the known oil-containing worlds, but to their dismay, everything that was known about had been hit at least once. All of the planets that were known to have oil fields AND weak defense, alas, were claimed by other groups. The ICC held productive territory on most of them, and as for the rest, all but one of them were claimed by raid gangs at least as large as the CBA.

"This one is noted to be 'in flux,'" Lightning Dust said, cross-referencing one planet against his raid list. "That means that no gang has managed to hold it for long. Instead, there are frequent battles between gangs, with none of them having enough of an advantage to maintain control. With our 100 members, we might be able to change that."

SolarTempest thought for a while. He didn't want to miss an opportunity, but he also knew that fighting a serious battle could kill the profit - and possibly, a few CBA members along with it. However, he didn't know whether he'd face serious opposition or just a few guys. Another thought crossed his mind, which was that it'd be better to find an oil-rich planet that had not yet been explored by anyone.

Soon, SolarTempest gave his orders. "We will send scouts to potentially-lucrative planets. Two of you will check out this 'in flux' planet and bring back information so we can decide whether or not we should try to take its field. Five others will go to these planets here, and report back on whether they seem to have oil, and if so, how much defense is present. Go now! Then we can decide on what to raid."

Two of the experienced members took up the project of scouting the already-known and highly-disputed planet. Five of the new members went out to scout the unexplored worlds that SolarTempest had pointed out. Each of these went in a different direction so that the most possible data could be obtained. Going as Lone Scouts was dangerous, but it was the best way to cover a lot of territory in a reasonable amount of time. It also paid more.

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

DeathStrike didn't get much information for 3,000 Cubes, but at least he wasn't immediately sent away. He learned that ChuckOut had no functioning Line members due to his offspring having been permanently deactivated in a duel with jammers running after having been caught trying to break into a vault complex. A few years later, ChuckOut's own Coder had also been deactivated; in this case it was due to a bad encounter with a nuclear-tipped SAM. Nukes, upon detonation, release an EMP pulse. This pulse had not only ensured that ChuckOut's Coder was deactivated as soon as the bomb blast breached his armor, but also jammed his mind-transfer attempt.

One interesting thing DeathStrike noticed on the report was that ChuckOut had a lot of enemies. In fact, he was noted as having 30 who were quite hateful of him. A smile crossed DeathStrike's face as he saw the final notation in the report: About 75% of these enemies were Scroungers who he had evicted at some point. That meant that there were 23 very strong people who wanted to kick ChuckOut's ass. Like most deadbeats, the evicted Scroungers hated the creditor instead of taking responsibility for their own nonpayment, and many dreamed of selling him to a foundry.

~~~~~~~~~

Alas, the report didn't say exactly who these people were or where to find them. To learn that from his DomIntel contact, DeathStrike would have to fork out another 10,000 Cubes. Even more notably, 3,000 Cubes had not been enough to obtain the locations of ChuckOut's Spares and Saves, which was even more important information. That, he had been told, would cost 25,000 Cubes. This meant that for both pieces of info, it'd be 35,000 more Cubes in total.

DomIntel agents knew which information was worth more money, and made it a point to give teaser hints about its existence but not actually divulge it until they got the higher payment. In cases where the one buying was a Problem Solver, they could almost always get paid for Spare and Save information, and being the agency they were, they knew full well that DeathStrike was interested in ChuckOut for problem-solving reasons. They would not be interested in selling the key information for cheap.

[Vallermoore]

SolarTempest looked at his Underboss, and the clear glow in their eyes said that one day, they would take on the ICC and hopefully vanquish it, so that the Cybertronian Business Association could take over as the new Cybertronian Mafia and number one syndicate. Now however was not the time to plan that, but the day they got member 3501, they would be ready for whatever the ICC could throw at them. For now, they planned a raid to keep everyone happy whilst they planned new things. There were many planets out there that were not ruled by the ICC, but all of the ones that were anywhere near had been targeted by Decepticons at least once. Some had been literally drained dry, others were owned by syndicates the size of the CBA or bigger, and others had many gangs fighting each other.

Various lone scouts were sent out to no less then five planets to check them out. One planet had been drained dry long ago and had nothing of interest.

One planet had an ocean of oil down below, but the problem here was the heat, the surface being nearly 500 degrees Centigrade as the planet had a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere and was very close to it's star. If they could somehow get the oil out without losing bodies due to key parts melting, they could potentially bring back a great deal of it, enough for all of them to be rich and for SolarTempest and Lightning Dust to be very rich indeed, rich enough if they wanted to buy either the finest bodies-even a Guaranteed Winner Package if that was what was wanted-the finest places to live except those in the Government District, or all sorts of smaller things. They would need to come up with defenses against the heat for them and their equipment though.

One planet seemingly had a lot of oil, but was inhabited by very high tech sapient ponies, with orbital platforms bearing weapons that were easily capable of destroying Decepticon bodies-and they were unlikely to be friendly towards Decepticons. Raiding it could work, but draining a lot of the oil was likely to be difficult.

Then there was a human owned planet that seemed to be roughly at the same level as Earth before it's takeover, that seemed promising.

The last one was lifeless and orbited a pulsar. Again, there seemed to be plenty of oil to get, but the problem was avoiding having radiation at a level that wiped the contents of the mind and motion boards. Cancer was not a problem for robots, but there was a dead body of a Decepticon on the surface, killed by the pulsar, most likely outright.

******
It turned out that impersonating a Coder or an offspring would not be an option for ChuckOut's planned demise-but he had foes, most of them Scroungers. DeathStrike decided to pay the extra Cubes needed for all the rest of the needed information. Even if he lost money carrying out the contract, it would mark him out as reliable. Apart from one day earning enough Energon to buy that tail from Ultimate Mods, one capable of destroying a Decepticon with a hit in the right place, he wanted to one day be seen as so good at Solving Problems, that Connect would be calling him personally when he had rather hard Problems to solve. He wanted to continually prove that he had what it took to be a Problem Solver, as long as his boards and fuel lines still worked. If he became a capo one day, all the better, but that wasn't his number one priority.

Once he had to info, he decided to risk meeting with the Scroungers, preferably on a one on one basis. Even if he did successfully persuade them to join with him to destroy ChuckOut, there was a danger that they might if enough of them were left see him as prey. In biological terms, it would be like teaming up with a pod of alligators or perhaps a hive of unpredictable Changelings. As long as he was Strong, and didn't anger the Scroungers, they were likely to join with him to take down their hated foe, but if he seemed weak, he could easily lose a body or his life. He deposited a Save with the right members of the ICC , had a shower and waxed himself to look properly Strong, and located one of the Scroungers, a purple and gold bot who had a few obviously very recently acquired dents. "I am DeathStrike, I have had problems with a bot called ChuckOut, and I'm looking for allies to perma-kill him and send him to the afterlife."

The Scrounger looked him up and down with neutral eyes, and then replied to him.

[Victorious Decepticons]

After all of the reports came back, SolarTempest and Lightning Dust examined them with great interest. They immediately decided to strike the pony planet off of their list, as well as the one with fields that were disputed by Decepticons. There was no need to risk being blasted by those who might stand a chance when there were other options. One of the easiest and most well-known ways to increase the profit of a raid was to limit the amount of armor upgrades, blaster upgrades, and of course, damage taken in the process of obtaining the loot.

Soon, SolarTempest's interest became focused on the lifeless planet near the pulsar. Someone had clearly been there and hadn't made it back, as evidenced by the fallen Decepticon body shown in one of the scout's pictures. That alone would deter many other Decepticons from even trying to hit it - and, the radiation level would provide a layer of protection for those that managed to find a way to handle it.

"We could probably upgrade our shielding well enough to operate on this world, and do it without breaking the vault," he said, pointing to the report now being played back on the holovision. "Who here has the engineering experience we need to devise and price out the needed modifications?"

Two of the new members indicated that they had engineering/physics AEDPs. One of them, SolarTempest remembered, had scored highly on Lightning Dust's intelligence test. This one also said he had almost the full series of AEDPs, which meant that the challenge should be pretty easy for him. He decided to hear both of them out, though, just in case.

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

The Scrounger looked at DeathStrike, and immediately calculated his scrap value at about 4,000 Cubes and that it would take 4 bots to bring him to the foundry. However, he also noticed the ICC Seals on DeathStrike's wings - big notices that messing with him could result in a very large amount of vengeful allies coming after him. DeathStrike had left them showing precisely to help deter any Scroungers who might otherwise think that he would make a good piece of loot. He would hide them later, when he actually started to make moves against ChuckOut.

"ChuckOut, that no-good pile of junk!" The Scrounger said upon hearing the name. "He just waits for a person to have unfortunate results, and then changes the locks and keeps all of their things that were inside the place!! Even worse, sometimes he doesn't even own the places he rents. Then you can get beat up by a whole gang of bots when the real owner shows up to get his house back. One of these days, he's gonna get a..."

The Scrounger stopped and looked more closely at DeathStrike before finishing his sentence. "One of these days he's gonna get a Problem Solver after him..." The Scrounger's eyes now lit up more clearly, and a grin began to creep across his face as he realized that this was probably exactly what he was looking at.

"Me and the gang are in if you pay us 100,000 Cubes so that we make more than we would by Scrounging that day. Me and another guy in my group have direct problems with that guy. The others will just want the money. And we'll all love to see him go to Steelworks, just because it's so enjoyable to see someone like him get reverted to the molten state." He referenced a fairly large foundry in the area. He knew that ChuckOut would fetch at least 7,000 Cubes at Steelworks thanks to his heavy body made of high-quality materials.

"You have to be careful with that piece of pirated code [ChuckOut], though. His entire house is full of booby traps, and he claims to have 100 Saves and 50 Spares."

DeathStrike laughed. "He's saying that?! My contact assures me that the reality is that he has 10 Saves and only 4 Spares. All of which must be destroyed before he realizes that someone has gotten serious about taking him out."

Now, the Scrounger was sure he was talking to a professional Problem Solver. It was highly unusual in his own line of work to bother to research such things, since it didn't really matter to a Scrounger if his usual prey managed to come back to life or not. In that business, it was all about getting whatever metal they could get their hands on, while making sure that the target was unlikely to come back with some giant gang and turn the tables.

"Oooh, you have connections! Then we can REALLY delete that guy!!? Heheheh...I'll tell you what. You're gonna need people who have more stealth if you want to get all of the Spares and Saves. Hire us to help with the final takedown. But for the preliminaries, you need The Mist. They're sneak thieves. They probably haven't been in a battle for 10 years, but that's because they're slick enough to get away before a battle has a chance to start."

"As for us, if you want to take my offer, either tell me now or you can meet us somewhere later. I suggest we meet somewhere outside of this area. Too many will want to intercept that vault key that you'll have if we get overheard around here. As for our headquarters...you'd have to get TO it first. Best to choose an area with fewer gangs that are in our line of business."

"Oh, our group is called the Manglers. And I'm Mangle."

Of course, going to any address specified by a Scrounger would be a great way to end up swimming in a smelting pit. DeathStrike would have to specify a location himself, preferably in an area at least slightly less rough than this one.

[Vallermoore]

The Scrounger noted the ICC symbols, which warned that messing with an ICC member without a very good reason to do so was a very bad idea. The ICC genrally took a negative view of those who killed their members, and much more so if it was a permakill. Such a bot, Scrounger or not, was likely to end up resting in pieces before said pieces were put in a foundry. "ChuckOut, that no-good pile of junk! He just waits for a person to have unfortunate results, and then changes the locks and keeps all of their things that were inside the place!! Even worse, sometimes he doesn't even own the places he rents. Then you can get beat up by a whole gang of bots when the real owner shows up to get his house back. One of these days, he's gonna get a...One of these days he's gonna get a Problem Solver after him..." The Scrounger's eyes lit up warmly when he realized that he was looking at a genuine ICC Problem Solver. The ICC was known to have the best Problem Solvers, and, at least when deception was not needed to overcome their foes, they in effect wore certain tabs that were a sort of uniform, so clients who wanted to hire them knew they were looking at the best of their kind. "Me and the gang are in if you pay us 100,000 Cubes so that we make more than we would by Scrounging that day. Me and another guy in my group have direct problems with that guy. The others will just want the money. And we'll all love to see him go to Steelworks, just because it's so enjoyable to see someone like him get reverted to the molten state. "You have to be careful with that piece of pirated code [ChuckOut], though. His entire house is full of booby traps, and he claims to have 100 Saves and 50 Spares."

DeathStrike replied with a chuckle "He's saying that?! My contact assures me that the reality is that he has 10 Saves and only 4 Spares. All of which must be destroyed before he realizes that someone has gotten serious about taking him out."

Now the Scrounger knew the Problem Solver standing before him was real. "Oooh, you have connections! Then we can REALLY delete that guy!!? Heheheh...I'll tell you what. You're gonna need people who have more stealth if you want to get all of the Spares and Saves. Hire us to help with the final takedown. But for the preliminaries, you need The Mist. They're sneak thieves. They probably haven't been in a battle for 10 years, but that's because they're slick enough to get away before a battle has a chance to start. s for us, if you want to take my offer, either tell me now or you can meet us somewhere later. I suggest we meet somewhere outside of this area. Too many will want to intercept that vault key that you'll have if we get overheard around here. As for our headquarters...you'd have to get TO it first. Best to choose an area with fewer gangs that are in our line of business.Oh, our group is called the Manglers. And I'm Mangle."

"If I give you 10 Cubes here and now from my panels, could you tell me where to hire these Mist thieves? Going through Domintel is rather expensive."

"OK then." After the Cubes had been given over, and the needed information given DeathStrike said. "Give me a way to call you and when all is ready, I'll do that. When we meet I'll give you the needed vault location and as soon as you know I'm not trying to con you, we can go and really kick ChuckOut's ass and you can have the body. He may be powerful and built almost like a High General in strength, but together we can mangle him." Carrying out this contract might turn out so expensive that DeathStrike was nearly broke by the end of it-but it would help his reputation as a Problem Solver hugely. This in turn would mean contracts that paid more, and the better he did his "work" the more notice the capos of the ICC would take of him. So the reputation enhancement was worth the Cubes drain.

Mangle gave him his radio number.

He thanked Mangle and went to hire the Mist to make those Saves vanish and those Spares either vanish too or be too broken to use.

*****
The CBA decided not to get involved in fights if they could help it. The pulsar planet seemed the most interesting. One of the bots, Sci-Fi, suggested lead armour suits. "We don't have to block out all the radiation, as our robot bodies don't get cancer-but we need to block out enough so we won't get our wiring fried by the sheer power of the pulsar which is so strong it can bust through our Faraday Cage as if it were not there. The same with our drill equipment."

The other bot suggested armor with water inside it that would also keep the radiation out, but that sounded dangerous. If they got in a fight on the way there or back, the water could easily get into any wound-and water to a bot was like acid to a biological.

The CBA looked forward to a nice rich Energon haul. Lightning Dust asked to see SolarTempest in private and as he was his Underboss, SolarTempest agreed. Surely whatever it was, was important, and Lightning Dust wanted to get an honest opinion without SolarTempest having to take a public audience into account. When they were alone, he asked, "Boss, how would you feel if I ever was to someday buy a Guaranteed Winner Package from Ultimate Mods. Would you think I was going to try and take over your syndicate or could you trust me not to?"

[Victorious Decepticons]

Mangler was happy to be able to work with a real ICC Problem Solver. Even though his gang could easily work together to deactivate one of ChuckOut's bodies, they had no way to find the Spares and Saves to keep him from ever coming back. They had thought of asking DomIntel, too, but didn't know if they could find a helpful contact. The ICC, on the other hand, had several agents that it worked with and this made it easy for their members to get the information they needed.

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

Even though DeathStrike was a little concerned about how much money he was spending, he didn't need to be. With a contract fee of 600,000 Cubes, he could easily do all of the hiring he needed and still come out at least 300,000 Cubes ahead, and likely more. Over time, he surely would get out of the "poor bot" mindset of closely watching every Cubelet like that.

It didn't take long for him to contact The Mist, who set up a meeting place outside of a game store. At DeathStrike's request, the store was in an upscale town a good 50 miles away - far enough, and in a different enough socioeconomic strata - to make it very unlikely that anyone who overheard them would know who ChuckOut was and go tell him about any plans.

At the meeting, it didn't take long to reach an agreement. In exchange for an honorarium of 50,000 Cubes, plus any bodies found, the thieves would make off with all of the Spares and Saves on the list. The Saves would then be destroyed by blaster fire, and the Spares dismantled. Parts from the dismantling would then be sold to chop shops and never seen again. "Of course, we'll destroy the boards outright, along with the personality chips. You won't have to worry about your target managing to use them," the leader assured DeathStrike.

A deposit was made, and it didn't take long for the thief gang to do its work. A few days later, DeathStrike was invited to see the collected bodies and destroyed saves to confirm that the job was done. By the time he got to their location, which was in a mechanic's hangar, most of the body parts had already been disassembled and were stacked in piles. Some faceplates and chest panels were still recognizable, but one of the thieves was busy painting a set of these into a different color and making key alterations to the facial expression algo at this very moment. When he was done, it looked like he had gotten the faceplate from someone else entirely.

Once everything was confirmed, the rest of the agreed-upon money was paid, and DeathStrike was ready to move on to the next phase. He radioed Mangle and let him know that it was time to meet. "We'll have to move quickly," DeathStrike said, "or the target will get another body before we finish the job."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CBA Headquarters

The lead armor idea sounded good for blocking radiation, but there was one possible problem: the weight it would add to their bodies and equipment. Lead was a very heavy metal, and they would have to either upgrade their engines and support systems to carry it, or lower their overall weight by jettisoning some other things. Upgrading to improve carrying capacity was expensive due to the amount and type of systems involved.

A bit of research showed that lead actually wasn't the best material for shielding from cosmic radiation. Instead, amazingly, polyethelene was said to work better. Hydrogen in general was also well-regarded, and though some planets on the other side of the Interdimensional Warp Point were just starting to develop materials based on this idea, there was no doubt that the right Cybertronian chemical or fabrication companies would already have a well-working version.

"We need to try one of the lighter substances," SolarTempest said. "Otherwise, we'll have to do a huge remanufacturing project on our bodies to upgrade our weight capacity before we even get going!"

Though he was sure that a more-advanced material would take care of the weight problem, he didn't want to be too cocky. He decided to have a drone made with the lighter shielding and send that over as a test before the syndicate itself went to the planet of interest. To make sure that competing bots wouldn't be able to reverse-engineer it and use the tech to claim the planet, he would make it so it'd self-destruct if captured.

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

When Lightning Dust talked about getting a Guaranteed Winner package, SolarTempest was not pleased. There was a difference between trusting someone and being a fool! Plus, every Decepticon knew to never give 100% trust to another being.

"I must oppose that. Even Leader Megatron doesn't openly allow his High Generals to get stronger than he is," SolarTempest said. "Of course, we will all someday upgrade to far better bodies than the ones we have now, but as the leader, I must always have the strongest one. Attempting to upgrade to be stronger than me can only be seen as preparation for a duel against me. The only way I would think otherwise is if I already was using a stronger version of the Guaranteed Winner of my own."

[Vallermoore]

SolarTempest's eyes, which had been at an average level of brightness for a Decepticon, dramatically darkened and his purring engine ran roughly like there was grit in it. He might have been a pain in the neck later on, but MasterBlaster had at least built SolarTempest properly, with a proper Decepticon base code. And in that base code was a warning not to trust anybody, for obvious reasons. The beating fuel pump of Decepticon authority-from the raid gangs that made up the building blocks of Decepticon society, all the way up to the Divine Leader Megatron at the top, was the ability to use violence with success. There was no way SolarTempest could ever allow his Underboss, even if they took over as the largest ever syndicate on Cybertron some day, to ever get a better body them him in case he took over. Of course, that didn't mean Lightning Dust had to be in some weak, rusty body that was almost as weak as a biological, of course not. He was valued, for useful advice, loyalty, going about things the right way, and the fact his body was nearly unhackable, as alicorns had found earlier to their cost. Even if the whole CBA was somehow to be hacked, Lightning Dust would defeat the hacking and set them free.

"I must oppose that. Even Leader Megatron doesn't openly allow his High Generals to get stronger than he is. Of course, we will all someday upgrade to far better bodies than the ones we have now, but as the leader, I must always have the strongest one. Attempting to upgrade to be stronger than me can only be seen as preparation for a duel against me. The only way I would think otherwise is if I already was using a stronger version of the Guaranteed Winner of my own."

Lightning Dust gave a deeper bow then normal, an apology bow. "I understand. I won't upgrade that high then, but I allways want to be just one level below you if possible-so that noone can hack me and put me in a little metal box again with no limbs or voice. Whilst I had Debugging mostly heal me from that experience, I deliberately didn't fully heal myself-so that I would be fully motivated to never end up in such a position again. Thank Megatron your childhood wasn't limbless and voiceless like mine. If Forintel had not freed me, I would still be in that box now."

SolarTempest's eyes went back to their normal shade of red. Clearly, he could imagine what Lightning Dust had been through, which was anything but nice, and Lightning Dust, assuming he was not being conniving, was happy to stay a level below him whilst very much not wanting a weak body.

*****
After more planning the CBA sent out a probe with shielding and what it needed to slip past the raiders hanging around Cybertron at all hours, and it got safely to the planet, survived a direct hit from the pulsar radiation, and landed on the planet, doing various tests for oil. When it sent back a large deposit of it, enough to enrich the whole CBA, there was cheering, bright eyes all around, and happily thrumming engines. Perhaps uniquely, Cybertron's economy ran on it's food, which was a bit like a biological economy running on watermelons, except Energon didn't rot.

*****
With the Saves and Spares gone, DeathStrike called Mangler and they met at a relitively safe (safe by Cybertronian standards) area. Before, Mangler had made it clear to his gang that for now at least, Deathstrike was "Friends, not food. We need him to help chuck ChuckOut into a smelting pit, and he's also a Problem Solver for the ICC. Which means if we kill DeathStrike, the ICC will turn us into tin cans. That means you, TightClaws!" There were five bots in the Mangler gang, all of them well built up bots who if they had been biologicals would have been rippling with muscles, and whose bodies were designed for taking down other Decepticons. All they and DeathStrike needed to do was find ChuckOut's running instance, and turn it into "foundary food." As it turned out Mangler knew a place where ChuckOut often hung out. They were able to get quite close in and then battle commenced, with ChuckOut and his strong body on one side-and six powerful bots on the other. Mangler was hoping to use his Mangle ability to turn his foe to twisted metal if he could get up close.

[Victorious Decepticons]

(OOC: Fixed links in my prior post)

IC:

The CBA was ecstatic when the drone made it back, and they quickly retrieved its oil sample to test it for quality. They also made sure to carefully examine the machine's innards to make sure that there was no damage. After all, if its chips were only barely working, they would need to come up with something else.

Soon, it was determined that the poly shielding had indeed been effective. The oil was also of good quality. It would definitely be worth it for all of the CBA to upgrade their shielding and go drill! While the drone did bring back a large sample, the gang itself would have to go in order for them to actually be enriched. After all, a drone couldn't carry millions of barrels' worth of oil AND get through the many raiders around Cybertron. In fact, it had to hide that it even had a sample in order to make it through without the oil being stolen from it.

While it had been a long time since some other planets used food for money, it had been done before. On pre-Decepticon Earth, dried fish, living livestock, and even salt had been currency at some point. However, for the humans, it had been more convenient to trade a stand-in than the actual goods. This was partially because it was hard to move a herd of sheep somewhere as a payment, and partially because there were other foodstuffs. The latter point made it so that no one type of food or condiment was in huge demand.

The bigger factor, however, was humans' inability to easily counterfeit stand-in money. That, alas, was not something that Decepticons had any trouble with. Early attempts had been made to use things like foil-paper money and coins, but they had failed within a year of introduction - even before the Cybertronian Great War. Soon, even the Autobots had to switch to using actual Energon as currency again, because the Decepticons quickly flooded their economy with fake fiat money before open hostilities broke out. It also became politically touchy for the Autobots since it turned out that those on their side were also rather good at "currency art" - and didn't have nearly as many qualms about creating it as Optimus Prime liked to claim they did.

Switching back to using Energon as money stopped many problems in their tracks, as people once again could be sure that they were getting something of actual value and not the production of some two-year-old who had been handed a foil-paper note to copy from, a stack of blank foil-paper and some etching and coloring tools to "play with." Still, some very old Decepticons fondly remember spending hours drawing up copies of fiat money during the one year that it was actually worth something. They will gladly tell youngsters who'll listen all about how they could get any games or toys they wanted if they just gave the nice guy at the counter some of their "art."

In fact, some Decepticons who later became professional counterfeiters got the itch from this activity (and the loot it brought in). An observant person can even see some Decepticon fiat money today, if he looks at the right framed item on the wall behind Replicator's counter. Of course, this one is a counterfeit. The only known instance of the real thing is in a vault belonging to the Decepticon National Archive.

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

ChuckOut was shocked to see DeathStrike with the obviously-hostile Scroungers who now surrounded him. "What's wrong? Isn't the house okay? Did the last tenant leave a booby-trap?" He said, not letting on at all that the "last tenant" was actually the owner.

DeathStrike grinned. "Actually, the 'last tenant' is just fine," he said. "In fact, he gave me a great job." His voice dropped in a slightly menacing way.

"A job? You needed one?? Well, what was it? What does that have to do with these people you've come with?" ChuckOut said nervously, as he flashed big grins to try to defuse the obvious hostility.

DeathStrike smiled again, as he slightly raised his blaster. "The job is to delete the guy who stole his house, and then move!" Without giving ChuckOut any time to think about that more, he opened fire, which signaled to the Scroungers that it was GO time. They all began blasting at once, and ChuckOut returned fire with all of his weaponry.

In an instant, the entire street was lit up with blaster fire going in both directions, and for a while, ChuckOut's strong armor held out against the onslaught. However, as he was paying attention to all of the energy blasts coming at him, he failed to notice Mangle sneaking away and then coming back up from the side.

Suddenly, the Scroungers and DeathStrike stopped firing even though ChuckOut was blasting away at them. ChuckOut was just wondering what the hell when he found himself grasped by two strong arms - from someone who was now twice his size.

Usually, Transformers used their size-and-density changers to go into alt modes that were smaller than their default body sizes. Mangler, however, had set his up to work in the opposite way. His regular-seeming body WAS his small size. Now he was at his actual normal size: twice as big.

ChuckOut tried to escape the powerful grasp, but he didn't stand a chance. Mangler lifted him up, grasped his neck with one hand, and grabbed his waist with the other. Then, he began to twist. The sound of rending metal filled the air and echoed off of the nearby buildings as mangler continued twisting until ChuckOut was a mangled wreck. Once the main parts of ChuckOut's body were wrecked, Mangler went to work on the legs, twisting them into wreckage as well.

Just when ChuckOut, still conscious thanks to his battery backup, thought it was all over, Mangler transformed. The helpless target wondered what the alt mode even was...it seemed to be a big machine on a stand with two powerful rollers.

"Most people think of mangling as just turning something into twisted junk. But another kind of 'mangle' is actually a laundry machine used to press big pieces of fabric flat," Mangler said, as if he was just tossing off some trivia. He paused a moment so that ChuckOut would have time to think of the implications of that fact.

Then, two rudimentary arms came from the side of his alt-mode, picked up ChuckOut's wrecked body, and tossed it in through the intake side. High heat was emitted, and a few minutes later, a nice piece of sheet metal came out from between the huge rollers.

ChuckOut's metal folded over itself as the sheet was produced, landing on the ground in front of Mangler's mangle mode like a linen fresh from the laundry. Once it was done, Mangler transformed back into robot mode, shrank back to the size of everyone else, and took a showman's bow.

Mangle was quite pleased with himself now. He had mangled ChuckOut in both of the common senses of the word, first by turning him into twisted-up junk and then by pressing him into sheet metal. Of course, this sheet was still actually a mixed-materials product, so it wouldn't fetch "refined steel" prices at the foundry. However, it would still be quite a sight as he and his gang carried the now-cooled chunk of metal in with its still-visible wing paint pattern pressed into the rest of it, the design letting everyone know that it had originally been a Decepticon.

Of course, at some point during the final mangling, ChuckOut's functionality had completely ceased. His spirit would be quite dismayed as he tried to send himself to a spare, only to find that he no longer had any.

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

Later, DeathStrike would go to the vault and deposit his latest pay - 600,000 Cubes. He had a profit of over 400,000 Cubes after paying The Mist and the Manglers. Not long after that, he packed his few things and walked out of the house, stopping at the ICC store to pick up the 10,000-Cube bonus for willfully moving right away.

As DeathStrike was on his way out of the house, the very happy house-owner walked up with a locksmith, ready to re-key the locks to HIS house back to HIS engine pattern. To him, the million Cubes he had spent at the ICC store were well worth it. Now, everyone in the area would know not to mess with his property unless they wanted to meet a Problem Solver too.

[Vallermoore]

ChuckOut may have had an extremely strong body, but when he came under fire not just from an ICC Problem Solver but a gang of heavily armed Scroungers, he started rapidly taking damage. His foes took some damage back of course-one was badly injured and DeathStrike took a hole in his armor that he knew he would have to fix as soon as possible. However, the battle came to an abrupt end when Mangle transformed into a large mangle and literally mangled his foe, killing him and pressing him into a sheet of metal. For a moment, the Scroungers and DeathStrike were united in their joy from their victory, and cheered, but some of the Scroungers almost at once started giving greedy looks in DeathStrike's direction. "Thank you, but we need to split off now before my gang sees you not as a friend but as food," Mangle warned. When DeathStrike bowed and left, they looked at their badly injured member, who had lost his legs, and Mangle told him "I think you should go to your spare now, whilst you still can." The member did so, and the other gang members would sell his damaged body to a foundry, when a non-Scrounger gang might well have helped to repair their own member's body. It was the common Scrounger custom that a badly damaged Scrounger's body would become the prey of his gang, although normally the affected Scrounger could just mind-transfer to a spare and come back to the gang with no problems as it was only his body they wanted to feed to a furnace and not him.

After first paying for it and then getting the battle damage repaired DeathStrike checked in his mind boards to see how close he was to affording that tail from Ultimate Mods, that would both make him feel whole and make him much deadlier. He also decided to ask the ICC if he could live at one of their houses for a bit after the last experience. He didn't mind paying some Energon as long as where he was staying was for want of a better word "legit".

*******
The entire CBA set off through the Cybertronian atmosphere and none of the random gangs of raiders wanted to mess around with such a syndicate. They then split up to confuse anyone who might follow and went into FTL to random places and from there to their destination, the oil lake protected from drilling by a deadly pulsar that had taken a scout from a gang out permanently. With the shielding they were easily able to drill and it took three days to get all the oil out, something that would enrich them all and make the new members think that they had indeed made the right choice to join the CBA. They took it to a Raid Tax point to get it refined for them into Energon Cubes that SolarTempest would then share out amongst the gang members after deducting his share first.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Unfortunately for DeathStrike, it turned out that the ICC wasn't in the landlord business, at least not on Cybertron. "There isn't any profit in running a legitimate apartment building here," someone at the store explained. "If you pull anything really profitable, someone will bomb the place. Then you have ALL of the tenants looking to blast the rest of your enterprises. Of course, we DO run apartments and hotels on biological planets, where the people are weirdly afraid of sleeping outdoors or in culverts. Their fear makes it so we can bleed them dry with rent even though we hardly ever fix the places. Gotta be a special kind of hardass to kick them out even if they're ready to complete auto-regen, but we have all kinds here in the ICC."

"Anyway, good luck trying to find a good spot to stay. I can only suggest that you look in a fancier town than this one. Somewhere that a landlord is likely to actually own a 2,000-Cube/month place. That said - your other method worked out really well for you. Maybe you should bait some more suckers into making themselves into your targets!"

DeathStrike considered both options. If he went to a better town, he could have a legitimate place to stay that wouldn't result in anyone coming to kick him out. On the other hand, if he didn't, it was possible that he could indeed end up being paid to problem-solve another house thief.

Though the thought of more money was enticing, he also wanted to be able to rest easy when it was time to relax. He flew towards a richer town that he had seen, hoping to find a legit house to rent.

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

It didn't take long for the CBA to fill the many tankers it had brought along, and this alone gave them a huge haul that made everyone quite a lot richer. Some even thought that they had gotten it all.

However, since their target was a planet that hadn't successfully been drilled and pumped out before, there was MUCH more oil there than the group could hope to take back to Cybertron in one run. In fact, they realized that in order to get all of the oil out of even the one field they were at, it would take months of constant drilling with an always-running supply line of cargo-bots taking the loot back to Cybertron.

The big question now was whether they wanted to temporarily make this area of the planet into their territory and try to drain it dry, or take what their first run had gotten them and then look for other targets.

If they kept it and set up a supply line, there would surely be competition that would notice and try to horn in. However, SolarTempest knew that they would have a massive advantage if they took this course. Most other Decepticons wouldn't realize that they needed extreme shielding, or would underestimate the need. This made it so that at least some of the competition would end up overloaded by the pulsar's energy and deactivate before they could even become problems.

Of course, someone would eventually figure out the basics of resisting the pulsar and try to claim-jump, but then, they would have to fight the entire CBA to get even a drop of oil. All of these things together meant that it was almost surely more strategic to try to hold the territory until it was fully drained than it would be to treat it as a quick raid-and-go operation.

Soon enough, SolarTempest had made the decision. They would set up long-term oil-extraction operations on the pulsar-blasted planet and try to make each of the CBA's members into billionaires - with SolarTempest getting the biggest share, of course.

[Vallermoore]

It turned out that there was far more oil on this planet then they thought, since it had never been plundered by Decepticons before or by anyone else for that matter. SolarTempest told them "We really hit the jackpot with this place. If we can get all-or even the vast majority-of the oil out and back to Cybertron and our vaults, even the lowest ranked new members of this Association will be billionaires and members of Cybertron's elite-and I will be a multi billionaire as the Leader of this Association. For now, don't spend your shares until we have either drained the place dry, or some larger syndicate has taken what remains-and keep your voice chips off about it until we have drained as much as we can. I know there are no deliberate snitches amongst you-we are all proper Decepticons here, but if someone gets loose lipped and I find out, I'll kill him even though he is a member!" For a second, SolarTempest's blasters glowed in the barrels to emphasize the threat. "Obviously you don't have to starve-but no buying expensive stuff until we are all rich. Then you can buy whatever you want, with a single exception-a body stronger then mine. If I upgrade myself I will let you know and then you can upgrade to one level below me. Other then that-games, spare bodies, mansions in the Energon District, upgrades, Ultimate Mods upgrades if that's what you want-even Coding a new bot if you want an offspring-you can get that."

Soon enough they had drill rigs and hired cargo bots. Every two days, they themselves escorted the full cargo bots back to Cybertron. After a few weeks, a scout from another syndicate followed them-only to be fried by the pulsar. He would be brought back from a Save Disc but minus the information. Much later, the secret was discovered but by a gang too small to do anything. When a syndicate big enough to challenge the CBA did find out and shielded itself, it's members found that in the highly radioactive pulsar environment, even wounds could deactivate a bot, and they backed off rather then risk all it's members dying out there. Finally, it was time to share out all the loot. Only one CBA bot decided to build an offspring. Several of them brought fine mansions in the Energon District. Others brought fine new bodies along with several lesser spare bodies too. Five bots decided to go to Ultimate Mods for major upgrades, Lightning Dust being one of them. He also made his body even more unhackable then it already was, determined never to go into a small box again. Ultimate had a big grin on his face that day. SolarTempest now had to decide what to do with his own share now that he was a multi-billionaire and one of the richest bots on Cybertron.

*****
DeathStrike thanked the bot at the store and decided to fly off to Grand City, a far richer piece of Cybertron where he had a chance of a legit place to stay for a while, until he could get that tail he was hoping for and then either get enough Energon to buy a place legitimately or take one over by killing it's occupant. Although he enjoyed combat, he wanted somewhere secure to live.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Ultimate Mods

Ultimate could smell the oil wafting off of the cheerfully-grinning gang members as they came in, and he immediately knew that he would be getting a lot of orders. It was a scent he had come to know. It came from doing so much drilling and pumping that oil spray residue had gotten into every joint and even permeated into the paint, followed by being baked in by re-entry burns over and over again. To some, the smell was a bit obnoxious, but to Ultimate, it was the scent of raw money.

Sure enough, it wasn't long before the leader of the syndicate arrived. SolarTempest didn't waste any time looking around. He wanted to see the Guaranteed Winner options, and nothing less. Right behind him came Lightning Dust, who originally planned to get a full-body package just one trim level below, but who wasn't really ready to pay the nearly 1 billion Cubes that this level would cost.

SolarTempest heard about all of the options, and then chose a 1,000,000,000-Cube version. This one had two visible fusion cannons, two hidden fusion cannons, several smaller hidden blasters, almost enough armor to stand under a detonating nuke and laugh, advanced internal cooling so he couldn't be overheated even if an enemy kept a fusion cannon blasting at his head for several minutes, a Faraday cage that was extra-tough and that could block more frequencies than usual, a triple-backup personality chip system just in case, and of course, the engine and support structures that could not only handle all of the weight this involved, but also still move faster than a standard body. The Guaranteed Winner also had a massive towing capacity, allowing the user to haul a full glider-tanker of oil as long as the tanker wasn't too awkward to control.

This body was 10 feet taller than the standard as well as being bulkier, which would allow SolarTempest to tower over the majority of the population while still being of a size that would fit through a standard doorway.

Ultimate offered several flashy and somewhat gaudy bling options, as well as a 5% discount if SolarTempest would wear decals that said "GUARANTEED WINNER - THE FINEST FROM ULTIMATE MODS," but SolarTempest turned all of these offers down. Instead, the only bling he got was gold trim and a classy lighting system that would, upon mental command, produce a thin strip of light along his wing stripes. It was quite understated compared to Ultimate's own body lighting, but this made it look more posh.

Lightning Dust had wanted to have a body just one step below SolarTempest's, but now, he really had to think about whether he wanted to go through with that. He had just over a billion Cubes from this raid - and SolarTempest had just committed to shelling out a billion Cubes for his own upgrade. That meant that Lightning Dust would have relatively little left if he went through with his original plan. Yet, "relatively little" would probably be 100,000,000 Cubes! He could well afford to go ahead and drop the other 900,000,000 on a lesser trim level of the Guaranteed Winner if that's what he wanted to do...

The other syndicate members were more reluctant to spend that much money on new bodies. Instead, they went for lesser models running in the 10s of millions. A few decided to spend their upgrade money on mental abilities instead, and only got some high-end weapons from Ultimate.

They would get their mind-hardware upgrades at the best shop that specialized in those: Singularity.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Singularity, a company whose name referenced the "technological singularity" that was talked about by many of the lesser species Decepticons had come across, lived up to its name. It had the most powerful processors and memory technologies that were in the declassified space, and not only that, it knew how to pack plenty of them into the area of a normal motherboard array. Just like Ultimate Mods, its products were not cheap in the slightest.

Unlike products from Ultimate, those purchased from Singularity were rarely put into use right in the store. Because malware could be hidden inside hardware as "firmware," the usual practice was to have all purchases tested by Debugging and then installed by the experts there. Singularity wasn't a distrusted company, per se, but the rule of Cybertron was that "it only takes one" corrupt employee (or even a moment of moral weakness by the owner) to make a slave of you. Therefore, almost no one would take chances.

While at Debugging, most of those who got mind-hardware upgrades also invested in an array of custom patches. CBA members went for everything from improved aerobatics processing scripts to ones meant to better see through cons.

The next stop for those who wanted to be more intelligent was the part of Decepticon Headquarters that was home to many of the nation's finest educational institutes. A few bought full series of Advanced Educational Data Packs in Physics, making sure to go ahead and sit for certification after installation just in case they needed to prove that they had installed the real things. Others went for AEDPs that taught how to couch bad business terms in advanced language that would hide the terms' true nature from the marks. One made sure to get AEDPs in Law, which actually covered the laws on notable foreign planets, so they could work what were actually connives but in ways that would make the bulletproof to both criminal charges and civil suits. "Someday we will be doing business," this one said, "and I for one am not going to be put out of that business easily."

SolarTempest also thought it would be a good idea to get some AEDPs, though his choices were different from the others. He started with a full series of AEDPs in personnel management, which would make it easier for him to command his expanded syndicate; and then added a full series for Mid-Scale Militia Operations that provided knowledge of expert-level tactics, strategy, logistics, and the like for missions involving between 100-500 operatives. For all AEDPs, he too made sure to get the certification of installation. Such certifications were actually only of direct use to those who sought employment, but for everyone else, they still improved credibility and provided bragging rights.

Finally, he stopped by the Interplanetary Business Institute and got their latest big guide on which industries were big on other planets. This guide also said which planets had which industries, and this made it much easier to plan operations.

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

DeathStrike flew to Grand City, and as he figured when he'd heard the name of the place, it was actually just a little burg. However, to his relief, it was a burg with a decent amount of money, and featured somewhat larger houses with more land around them. More importantly, they all looked decently well-kept from the air, and were missing the somewhat rusty roofs of his town of operations.

He landed in a suitable spot and found a local newschip stand, where he saw a stack of chips under a full-color glossy poster of houses. This poster advertised the chips as "Guide to the Beautiful Homes of Grand City," and it was obvious that the guide was a real-estate publication instead of one for home decor or just local gossip. He bought one, and was a bit dismayed that the thing cost him 5 Cubes instead of the 1 Cube or even 50 Cubelets normally charged for what was actually an ad database. However, he forked over the money, ran his antivirus, and opened it up.

Immediately, his mind's eye was filled with scenes of 1,000,000-Cube manors complete with pictures of big estates with fancy statuary. He laughed a little, and paged further back into the database. Finally, the costs of the homes advertised dropped to the normal amount, but all of the homes were still for sale. He noticed that there was another section, so he tried that one. There, he finally found the "for lease/rent" section, which followed the same format of starting off with the most exorbitant offerings and then the reasonable ones.

After looking at many listings, he found a 2,000-Cube/month one that didn't demand a long lease. Unlike the offerings in the last town, this one didn't have the contact number of a landlord. Instead, it was being handled by a real estate agent who worked with many property owners. This agent would vet new tenancy applicants, handle the negotiations, and be the contact for payment. This arrangement added some costs to the deal, but land owners liked it since it added a layer of protection against possibly-bad tenants.

DeathStrike approved, mainly because he knew that if the agent was any good, he would have made sure that the property was really owned by the guy claiming to own it. He decided to fly to this office in person and see if it looked legit, rather than calling first and perhaps getting another bad surprise.

[Edit: Corrected Ultimate's product to "Guaranteed Winner"]

[Vallermoore]

Ultimate Mods/Singularity

SolarTempest brought himself one of the finest bodies there was, one only slightly weaker then the body that LongCon had once brought. It would be the sort of body that turned heads in a good way when SolarTempest left the shop. It would also go down in his file at Domestic Intelligence, but this would only cause trouble if he was thought to be a threat to Leader Megatron. Unlike most dictatorships that tried to micromanage everything that their subjects did and often made themselves heartily detested in the process, the Decepticon Government didn't care what it's citizens got up to as long as they didn't try to overthrow it or weaken the Nation as a whole with substandard offspring or mealy mouthed political ideas. Lightning Dust brought extra armor for his head and chest and his joints, and a pair of fusion cannons, along with some light bling, but he would spend a lot of his haul at Singularity. There he explained "I was Coded by mistake by biologicals on Vallermoore, may Megatron curse that filthy place. And they didn't know I existed, and I was stuck there for years on end until Forintel rescued me. I deliberately did not get all of my fear and pain from that Debugged, so I would never end up like that again. I'm willing to spend 450,000,000 Energon Cubes on making myself unhackable by pretty much anybody, so that no known virus or even a direct hack can hack me."

Privately, the salesbots thought he should go to Debugging, as the danger of such a powerful bot being hacked was relatively low-but they certainly were not going to let their voice chips say this and lose so many Cubes, nor were they going to try and con him. Quite apart from the conned bot taking a very violent revenge, it would also destroy the reputation of Singularity for true excellence and might make their customer stream dry up. So they set about making in effect a suit of mental plate armour of the very finest quality, so that it would be near impossible to hack Lightning Dust. Already, Lightning Dust before donning it had beaten off an alicorn's mental attack that had in effect stopped his friend SteelHard from doing anything but hold onto his own mind, and defeated a slave virus attack from Rust to Wealth, now he would have magical defences of the level of a High General.

As for the other bots, they brought various weapons, armour and mods from Ultimate and/or various good things from Singularity. Three preferred to buy their own mansions, and one decided to Code a new bot. Before doing so, he asked Debugging how to raise the new bot-and stop him from blasting him or worse when he grew up, mentioning that he used to be a biological.

*****
DeathStrike flew to the office and landed in front of it, noting that it certainly looked legit. Inside was a strong looking bot in purple armour with tasteful silver bling on his arms. DeathStrike bowed and said "I'm a Problem Solver for the Interplantary Commerce Commission, looking for somewhere to rent that is legit. My last landlord was not legit and became a problem that I had to solve, and I was hoping I would have more luck here. This place certainly looks legit-but this is Cybertron and we are all Decepticons so I need to be sure first."

[Victorious Decepticons]

Ultimate Mods/Singularity


Ultimate reminded Lightning Dust that with any serious armor upgrade, there also had to be an engine and support system upgrade in order to handle the extra weight. "Otherwise, you'll blow your head gasket or snap a strut," he said truthfully, "or suffer a wide range of other equally-bad outcomes." Because of this, some of Lighting Dust's upgrades were not visible from the outside, though the thrum of his new engine was clearly noticeable to all who remembered the sound of the old one.

~~~~~~~~

Over at Singularity, the engineers in the back were dismayed when they found that someone wanted to pay hundreds of millions of Cubes to be unhackable. They knew that in reality, there was no such thing as unhackable - a person could be made to be VERY hack-resistant, even to the point that only 1 in a billion people could crack the security, but there'd always be a chance of running into that one guy and ending up on the losing end.

"We are not Ultimate Mods," they told Lightning Dust. "We have no 'guaranteed' unhackable package. However, we can make it so that it would require an absolute genius to break the security."

Lightning Dust wasn't happy to learn that a truly 100% unhackable protection schema didn't really exist, but he decided to go ahead with his order anyway since they said they could make it so hard that only 1/1bn people would stand any chance. With a population of about 25 billion on Cybertron, that meant that only 25 people would have any hope.

It took quite a while for Singularity's engineers to come to the conclusion that "anti-hacking armor" of a magical variety would be the best bet. This could cause data connections to break or magically insert errors into malware that would stop it from working. On top of that, they would sell Lightning Dust a copy of their in-house antivirus as well as their hardware firewall, which would be physically installed in him to automatically scan all incoming data and block malicious connection attempts. Even the Military's enslavement chips wouldn't be able to bypass it - though of course, if he was actually in the military, they'd make him use a standard body without that level of security.

However, their company didn't make armor of any kind, much less magical. Instead, they would have to contract out the construction of this part of the anti-hacking security. After some discussion, they decided to work with the Bureau of Paranormal Research to get regular armor enchanted with anti-hacking magic.

Fortunately, this wasn't as hard to do as they expected. The Bureau was quite willing to do what it thought of as a fairly simple job. It had plenty of extra rebel scum souls on hand from the Decepticons' last invasion, and put a full 10 of them to use to charge the enchantment. "It is only fitting that they now serve the Decepticons for the next thousand years," one of the scientists said as he handed over the enchanted equipment. "Even if your client gets killed somehow, the enchantment will remain and the equipment can be used by someone else."

This equipment wasn't externally visible. Instead, it took the form of a box, and Lightning Dust's boards would reside within it. A few magically-protected openings provided space for wiring to go from inside to and from the rest of Lightning Dust's body. There were three boxes in the set: One for the mind-boards, one for the motion-boards, and one for the personality chip that was hidden somewhere else within Lightning Dust.

Installation of all of the parts proved to be fairly easy and straightforward, with the longest part of the process being waiting for Lightning Dust to run a different anti-virus on the new anti-virus to make sure it was what it was claimed to be. Now, it would be just shy of impossible to hack the Underboss. In fact, a notable number of the few who might be able to pull it off were High Generals, and of course, Megatron himself.

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

Debugging

"The main thing to remember is that Decepticons don't have much of a transition period between childhood and adulthood," the Debugger told the former biological. "There is no 'adolescence' during which you can still give orders and take an attitude of being unquestionable, and only have the younger one give you a screaming fit as opposition. That practice is actually rankling to biologicals, too, but on an organic world, there are usually laws to prevent the actual natural response. Here, there are no such laws. If you fail to recognize the full sapience of your offspring and respect it, you will be 'corrected' by his blaster fire - likely permanently."

"This can be very hard for formerly-biological Coders to deal with, especially when the offspring is likely about to do something extremely dangerous prior to having any real experience with it. But you must stand back and let him learn by experience, or his first battle experience will be against you. THEN he'll go do it anyway. Therefore, your duty is to prepare him to win battles as much as you can while he is not yet completely sapient. This will give him the highest chance of surviving his first raids."

"That said, there is one thing you can do for a young adult, and that's to keep a Spare for him. Resist the temptation to try to use it as leverage to get obedience when the time comes that he mind-transfers to it. Just help with his 'insurance' needs by having that Spare ready, and over time, he MAY come to respect your advice. Or he may not! That part depends on how his personality has developed - and on whether he has memories of you actually being right in the past. If you're consistently wrong about things, a well-coded offspring will ignore your advice even if he thinks your motives are in the right place. That's just the intelligent thing to do. So, if you want to be listened to at all after your offspring is sapient, try to be right about things so he knows your opinions won't lead him wrong!"

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

Grand City

The real estate person wasn't offended by the client's desire to verify the company's legitimacy, but had to think for a while about how it could be done. After all, there were no licensing bureaus on Cybertron, and it was also known that any testimonials that a company put out were often written by the owner.

"All I can suggest is that you ask around," the receptionist finally said. "We've done a lot of business, so there are quite a lot of people who have heard of us and even dealt with us. You can check the people who have homes listed with us, but if you're worried about plants, asking a lot of people on the street will surely yield some who have had dealings with our office."

[Vallermoore]

Ultimate Mods/Singularity

Lightning Dust thanked Ultimate for the good advice. Bots that got crippled when buying stuff from a shop might not buy from there again, thinking it was what they brought that did it. He was so happy with what he brought from Singularity that he gave them a deep bow of pure gratitude, the Decepticon equivalent of a hug, as well as thanking them, his eyes shining like big torches with his happiness.. He felt like he had been to Debugging. Of course, Megatron could hack him, being a God, and High General Soundwave and a handful of Domintel bots could do it. But they would only do it if he was considered a threat to them. There might be a few other bots who could do it, but unless some bot paid them a lot of Energon, they were unlikely to want to risk going after the Underboss of the Cybertronian Business Association and having the CBA going after them for it if they were found out. SolarTempest would ask the syndicate's scout to fly out a couple of times to see if any nice new targets could be located. Apart from that, the CBA could in effect have several days holiday. There was no danger of even the member with the lowest share starving to death now. Several of them played some games, whilst others chatted to each other or went sightseeing. They wondered if their scout would find any place as good as the last one that he found, which would make all of them be in the 1% of the richest bots category and SolarTempest in the very richest category. They knew their scout didn't mind being sent out as such was a scout's life, and scouts got a bigger share then average bots. When he came back, SolarTempest asked him what he had found and how raidable it was.

******
Debugging was pleased that a would be Coder asked for advice. All too often former biological Coders and offspring ended up fighting, at times to the death. Bots who were built were far less likely to end up fighting such battles with their offspring, although it still happened at times. The would be Coder went shopping for the needed parts and the AEDPs needed for proper Coding. He would have to leave the gang until his offspring got his first conscription stint, but he would be allowed to come back afterwards, since he had SolarTempest's OK to code an offspring if that was what he wanted to do now that he was a wealthy bot. "Don't treat your offspring like my Coder treated me unless you want to have to blast him," SolarTempest warned.

*****
Soon enough DeathStrike was convinced they were legit and would hire a house for six months and give a vault location with the needed Energon in it. Surely in that time he would be able to enrich himself with new contracts and he might be able to get that tail from Ultimate Mods.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Around CBA Headquarters

No one could miss it when the newly-upgraded CBA members came strutting back to their base. Even those who didn't go to Ultimate Mods were very obviously using better bodies than before, and their baked-in showroom shines were easy to spot even from down the road. Those who flew in had the impressive whooshing of brand-new jets, followed by transformation noises that everyone could recognize meant that their bodies were not yet broken-in. It was the sight and sound of wealth, and a lot of it.

As the CBA sat inside the base talking about where to raid next, neighbors and bystanders alike talked about something else: How to relieve the syndicate of its money.

Plans for scams abounded, some thought up by individuals and some plotted by gangs. The intelligence level varied, but one thing was for sure: Every CBA member was likely to be approached in the near future for some kind of "investment opportunity," "business partnership," or even to buy "exclusive raid lists." The sight of someone with a lot of money was an irresistible draw to these types, and when there was an entire 100-bot group of possible suckers, that attraction was as powerful as a black hole.

Within the first hour, the doorbell rang.

A check of the security camera showed a nondescript bot, sporting royal blue paint and a light gray stripe on each wing. He held an aluminum briefcase that seemed decently sturdy despite its less-than-steel construction.

"Oh boy, here come the connivers," one of the CBA members said with a weary tone. It seemed that he had experienced periods of wealth, and people trying to con that wealth out of him, before. "Shall I bother to open it and let him give you his spiel?" He asked SolarTempest.

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

Space

As the con-bots began to make their way to the CBA Manor back on Cybertron, the scout was already on his way to check out some more planets, moons, and other likely targets. Knowing that the CBA was much stronger than it had been prior to the last raid, he took closer looks at places that most gangs wouldn't bother to approach. Most gangs didn't already have heavy armor and weaponry, and to upgrade just to make a single raid wouldn't make sense for them. However, the CBA had already upgraded, so the investment had already been made. Now they would be able to cash in by their expanded abilities to successfully raid fairly well-defended targets.

One such target soon came into view, and the scout made sure to make his closest approach from the side where the loot was. Quite a few Decepticons knew of this place, and more than one gang had lost one or two members trying to hit it. The scout activated visual, audio, and temperature cloaking before coasting in below the planet's cloud layer.

As soon as he broke through the clouds, the grand prize was visible. A huge oil storage center sprawled out below, and for many miles, there was nothing but oil tank after oil tank spread out like the grasses in the plains. He let himself coast down another 10,000 feet, and that's where the rest of the scene became obvious. In between each tank, there was a small SAM battery with 3 missiles. With thousands of tanks in this field, that was many thousand SAMs ready to greet any Decepticon foolish enough to get within range.

The scout knew that under ordinary circumstances, these batteries wouldn't have been problems. However, that would have been because an invasionary force would just blast the batteries before getting into missile-firing range. Here in an oil storage field, however, that would cause all of the loot to at least be spilled, and more likely, to light it on fire.

As he considered this, he circled around above the target. His face was hidden by his plane mode, but he was already grinning. He knew that these batteries used electronic controllers, and that a good old-fashioned EMP blast would fry them with ease. There was technically Faraday shielding present around these systems, but it wasn't nearly strong enough to repel something that Cybertronian technology could throw at it. Best of all, though, was the fact that the CBA still owned the advanced shielding it had used to withstand the pulsar. Thanks to that, the syndicate wouldn't have to worry about overloading their own Faraday cages.

This would still be a daring raid, for there were more defenses than this. Not too far away, there was an airbase with 1,000 fighter planes and ace pilots ready to go. These planes were unlike most - they used computerized systems to allow far better aerobatics than most biologicals could pull off on their own. While they weren't quite at the Decepticon flying ace level in skill, the fact that there were so many of them would likely make up for it. This, the scout figured, would be where the CBA's new armor upgrades would come in. It wouldn't matter if they got hit if they could withstand the impacts and explosions. "The pilots will probably get confused when their bombs don't work, and even with their computer help, this will lead them to make mistakes that lets US hit THEM with less trouble," he figured. "And if all else fails, we can wait until they run out of ammo and *then* blast 'em."

Of course, the CBA would still need to dodge as many of the fighters' air-to-air missiles as possible. They had great armor, but it wasn't outright invincible. It was still best to avoid being hit at all, if possible - just not likely to be catastrophic if a missile or three did manage to connect with the better-built CBA members.

Finally, there was a rumor of there being an orbital platform that could, if all else failed, blast them from a near-space position. That sort of attack would also take out the oil storage field, so it was highly unlikely that the controlling nation would actually do it. However, the scout knew that some biologicals were not the most rational of beings.

The idea of hitting the planet when the platform was on the other side came to his mind, but then he remembered that space stations like this tended to orbit their planets 10-15 times per day or more. This would bring it back into range far before a raid could be completed. He decided that he would have to scout around more and find out if it even existed, or was just empty propaganda.

If it turned out to be real, it would be best for a small detachment from the CBA to try to take it offline. Using a small detachment would hide the true strength of the CBA, and thereby ensure that the ground-based defenders wouldn't expect a whole swarm of raiders to come in later.

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

DeathStrike's house search was successful, and he found himself in a nice middle-class house in a decent neighborhood. In fact, some of his neighbors would have been leery of him if they knew his profession. They weren't morally averse to those who solved problems - in fact, some had hired Problem Solvers themselves in the past - but they would have been concerned that he would draw drama or firefights to their quiet street.

DeathStrike sensed that this would be the case in a place like this, so he only showed his ICC seals and not the ones that advertised his particular specialty. He also had no intentions of letting his enemies find the house, though he knew that there was always a possibility of that happening at some point.

Inside the house, he found the usual accoutrements of this class of rental accommodations. There was a single couch, a table with four chairs, and a mid-sized holovision set. Down the hall, he found a basic workshop with a shower and a newly-cleaned used-oil tank, the bedroom, and inside the bedroom, a small Energon vault. He knew that the landlord would surely have a master key to that vault, so he would be careful not to keep too much of it in there.

[Vallermoore]

Around CBA Headquarters

After checking first that he and the other members didn't know the bot, SolarTempest said "I'll deal with this bot personally." He opened the door and asked "Are you here to try and join us, or do you have something else in mind?" When the con-bot started his spiel, SolarTempest (without using his jammer) opened fire on the bot with the full power of all his new weapons at once, intending to destroy the con-bot's body as a warning to others not to bother the CBA. Unless the conbot either had really serious Ultimate Mods level armor of his own or was Megatron in disguise, both of which were extremely unlikely, the bot would be destroyed and his charred body left for whoever wanted to take it to a foundry to get some Energon for it. In the short term, SolarTempest hoped , it would put off many conbots and show them that the CBA was not to be messed with. He'd then remind his fellow bots that any investors and the like were almost certainly scammers of this sort and that they should expect scam attempts, theft attempts and maybe even raid attempts and deal with them with their blasters.

*****
Space

Circling around the planet the scout soon came across the space station and it's single large blaster, keeping his cloaking on. If the CBA successfully raided this target, they could get many millions of barrels worth of oil and would become even richer then they already were, able to buy the very best bodies, the largest mansions, and every single game they were interested in. Those bots who got to hear about the raid would be very impressed. The scout went into FTL and back to the Metal Planet, flying in with no trouble. Those bots who thought of causing trouble decided not to. He was soon telling SolarTempest and the other bots about what he had found. "If we can pull this off, we'll be so much richer then we are now."

SolarTempest said "Let's hit that place. Three bots can take out that space station, and twelve more can put on their cloaking, fly low and blast as many of those 1000 planes on the ground as possible. Whilst we can't stop every last one of them taking off, we should be able to destroy or badly damage at least half of them on the ground. The rest of us will jam those missiles and then drain that oilfield for as long as we can hold it, and then we'll pay the Raid Tax and share out the Cubes and have a holiday for a month or so just to enjoy ourselves and buy stuff. If we pull off three or four raids a year of this magnitude and they all work well, we can expand again and get another forty members or so. It'll be a long time though before we are big enough that we need to worry about the ICC and by that time we'll be ready."

The bots were thinking of what they were going to buy. Some wanted new mansions for themselves with the latest gadgets, and chipped Coltani slaves to serve them. Using biological slaves would be pointless even if they could breath as it would be like using beetles to clean the floor, and using chipped Decepticons was dangerous in case other Decepticons found out and formed a lynch mob. Lightning Dust wanted a certain Vallermoorian general murdered in a way that didn't make it obvious that a Decepticon did it, as Vallermoore was on the Do Not Raid list. Laser Pen wanted an extra strong body. SolarTempest wanted a body from Ultimate Mods that was as strong as a High General or as strong as Ultimate himself-one specially made. Another bot just wanted games-an entire store's worth of them. Yet another bot, who was a tin soldier collector when human, wanted an army of Decepticon-made tin soldiers for himself. Another one wanted to buy his own mine and profit from it.

[Victorious Decepticons]

CBA Headquarters

The con-bot, or what was left of him, was blown back into the street as a blackened hunk of charred scrap with a few holes in it. A few bystanders were shocked at the response to what they had thought was just some fairly harmless con-gaming. Some assumed that there was surely a bigger beef involved, while others figured that whoever was in charge of the big manor was a real hothead. All decided to go ahead and go on their way, and quickly at that, since they had nothing to do with the guy anyway.

Not long after, what appeared to be a scrounger with a junk cart came up and immediately went over to the body with a purposeful step. That body would be going to a foundry, but that wasn't really what the scrounger was doing there. He wanted to see the damage that had been inflicted so that he could guess whether or not he could build a body that'd withstand it better. Alas, he immediately realized that he'd need a body worth about 100,000,000 Cubes to stand a chance - and that was far more money than he had. He threw the charred remains into his cart and kept going, glad that he could at least get 1,000 Cubes from what little was left of the body. It was, after all, still quite a bit of cash just for casing a place even though he'd decided not to try to hit it.

Down the street, some of the neighbors had seen the results as well. These neighbors weren't raiders either, but instead, quite good con-bots. They saw that it wasn't a good idea to just walk up to CBA Headquarters, but that didn't deter their overall goal.

"We'll have to approach their members when they're apart from each other," the boss of the con gang said. "At least some of them will surely be suckers. We just have to make sure we don't do it when that blast-happy guy is around. We'll still go for the strongest ones other than him. People who put their money into huge amounts of physical power usually don't put two cubelets into mind upgrades, and will fall for all sorts of stuff."

The others in that house agreed, and made many disparaging comments about "hydraulics heads" who had plenty of strength and little CPU power or common sense.

"For now," the boss continued, "let's try to listen in on them and try to find out what some of them intend to spend their money on. Then, we can convince a few that WE should be the people they deal with to get it. Of course, once they pay, we'll fly off to our other base with the cash and they'll never hear from us again...at least, not while we're in bodies they'd recognize!"

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

Soon enough, the CBA members had started talking about what they'd buy, not with their current money, but with Energon they expected to get from a future raid. Most of what they said was behind closed doors, but a few comments were made outside as some of them stood around talking.

One of the neighboring gang members made a point of strolling down the street when he saw this, so that he could listen in on the wish list. He was disappointed about most of the ideas, which didn't leave much room for conning. However, he overheard one say he wanted a whole lot of games, which would be easy to infest with hack programs; and another say he wanted a slave. The con-bot knew that NO slaves were allowed on Cybertron, but apparently this other guy didn't realize it. He figured that perhaps he could pretend to be a slave, infiltrate that guy's mansion, and then clean it out in the "other" sense of the word when the time was right. He knew that DomIntel would realize he wasn't a real Coltani, so they wouldn't barge in to enforce the no-slaves decree and wreck his game.

The reason slaves weren't allowed on Cybertron itself was simple: Where there were slaves, slave revolts often followed. Megatron didn't want anyone with an obvious and serious reason to revolt to be too close to the home world. It was far better for the defeated ones and peasants to toil far away. Putting down a slave revolt, if this was ever necessary, would be easier if the insurgents could just be bombed into a crater without wrecking any important Decepticon property.

As the neighbor was walking back home, he overheard something that made his eyes light up. In fact, he was lucky to be facing away from them, because if he wasn't, his clear bright eyes would have made it obvious that he was about to get up to plenty.

One of the CBA members wanted to buy a mine.

Land scams were as old as land and sapience themselves, and another one started to be planned at the moment the scammer heard this desire. All he'd have to do is convince that guy that he owned a mine and was willing to sell it! He picked up his pace and almost jogged back to his gang's base so they could work out the details.

It didn't take long for them to think up a variety of tricks and connives, but there was one big problem: The CBA hadn't made its next raid yet. The scam group down the road bided its time, waiting for the day their up-and-coming syndicate neighbors were flush with Energon once again.

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

The Next Target

Soon enough, the CBA was back in the air, their new bodies shining in the sunlight as their wax jobs, still factory-fresh, reflected the light. Everyone around couldn't help but be impressed by the sound of the new jets, all running perfectly as the syndicate took off into the sky.

Their next stop was the Cargo Zone. They knew that they'd need to run a supply line from their target back to Cybertron, and a contingent of 20 war veteran cargo-bots was hired to provide the service. These came with some escorts of their own, which would be needed since the CBA was going to be doing the hard work of actually invading this other planet. The cargo-bots' escorts would help to ensure that there were no surprises as they set up positions between the target and Cybertron, and therefore, that the supply line would not be likely to get broken.

After that, everyone took off to the target planet. The cargo-bots followed a pattern that spread them out all along the route for now, and the ones closest to the target stayed far back so they'd be out of the way of the serious fighting. They wouldn't start landing until the oil storage field had been completely secured by the CBA, and once the defenders got their serious military into action, the cargo-bots would all leave for Cybertron. This would both save themselves and any loot that they had on them.

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

After a decently-long trip, the CBA dropped out of FTL near their destination. They did not, however, get close enough for their target to realize they were there. Then, the few who had been chosen as advance fighters put on all of the types of cloaking they had, and proceeded towards the orbital weapon platform.

It was easy to avoid the platform's major weapon, which was a very obvious energy cannon. However, they soon found that the thing was bristling with a variety of minor weaponry including small energy blasters and fairly big railguns. These things would have been problematic since there were only three Decepticons - if the platform's security systems had triggered. Alas, all these systems had detected was a minor electromagnetic anomaly, and the platform's captain put it down to some sort of a computer glitch. It would be the mistake that would end the captain's career, along with his life.

Suddenly, the entire platform was lit up with Decepticon blaster fire, and before long, one of the attackers had managed to hit its nuclear fuel cells. The entire thing went up with a silent bang, creating a blaze of light that, for a moment, looked like a second sun to those on the surface of the planet below.

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

On the planet below, alarms started ringing at the military command headquarters of the country that had built the platform. Someone had recognized that "second sun" look from prior worst-case-scenario training exercises, and it didn't take long for another person to get to a telescope and confirm their fears. Someone had destroyed the Laser Eye. They rushed to get the station's final report.

The report was short, and the accompanying image showed blaster fire coming from three different places. "Enemy cloaked. Presumed Decepticons. Three attackers." Then the transmission had ended, clearly before whoever sent the report had a chance to finish it.

"Three Decepticons? Do you think that's really all..." One general was saying to another, when another alarm's shrill shrieking drowned him out. This alarm was coming from the Janzam Field Airbase.

Immediately, the military command center knew that they weren't just facing three Decepticons. That airbase was the one that protected the National Emergency Oil Storage Field, which contained a cool billion barrels worth of their finest crude as well as two billion barrels' worth of fuel that had been refined to gasoline grade.

The airbase was reporting 50 Decepticons attacking, and was currently trying to scramble as aerial blaster fire destroyed planes and picked off pilots trying to run to other aircraft. Since the Decepticons had visual cloaking on, it wasn't possible to tell exactly how many there were, and panic caused the airbase to guess high when estimating. Of course, this wildly-high guess just made the airmen panic more, which made matters even worse for them.

Soon, the reports changed to say that they heard enemies landing all around them. Sure enough, the 12 had come to the ground so that they wouldn't end up flying past the airbase and losing their chance to blast more. Stopping in plane mode was impossible due to the fact that trying it would cause stalling and crashing, but landing on foot allowed for an immediate halt of forward motion - and the ability to truly hold a position.

Some of the planes did, as expected, start to take off. However, they now found that their enemies were shooting up at them, only with energy blaster fire instead of relatively-slow SAMs. It was like a duck hunt, only with machines on both sides of the equation.

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

As this fighting went on, the rest of the CBA made its move on the oil field. There were no reports to the military from here, though. As soon as the Decepticons fired their EMP blasters, all of the phones and radios were fried along with the SAM batteries. Biologicals began to run around like panicked ants as Decepticons came clanging down loudly from the sky. The CBA began to whoop and holler loudly, intentionally adding to the fear and chaos now ripping through the potential opposition.

Unlike the other locations, this area was staffed mostly by civilians. Troops were there only to protect those civilians, and mainly to make them "feel" safe rather than to actually make them BE safe. This area hadn't faced a serious attack since the SAM batteries had been put in, with the biggest threat having been four Decepticon raiders a year ago. Those four had been easy to run off by blowing some small holes into them with the SAMs.

Nobody ever expected almost 100 Decepticons to come at the same time, or for them to take out those SAM batteries. So far, the field personnel didn't know that the airbase was also now in the process of being rendered useless, or that the flash they'd seen in the sky had been their country's orbital platform.

Despite this lack of knowledge, they knew as the many Decepticons decloaked that there was no chance of being able to defend against the giant aliens. The biologicals here would have no choice but to either surrender or die fighting.

[Vallermoore]

As it turned out, nearby there was an entire gang of five con-bots, Grand Con Anyone, who, whilst there were a few bots that even they didn't dare to con, were not afraid to target syndicates. And they wanted revenge for the lost body. With what they managed to overhear, some bots were sadly out of reach-those who wanted really strong bodies from places like Ultimate Mods for example. But other things seemed promising. It would be easy to pull off a land scam and sell a bot a mine that in fact belonged to a company that could outgun the CBA. Or to sell a "slave" that was only pretending to be chipped and who could then steal everything not nailed down in the bot's mansion. A bot who had so little RAM that in all his time on Cybertron had never once checked his Treason file frankly deserved to be conned. Whilst robots could be captured and enslaved on Cybertron, they had to be moved offworld as soon as safely possible to do so. Slaves on Cybertron could cause slave revolts on Cybertron if their chips ever failed, which could be a real PITA to deal with without smashing up the Metal Planet in the process. The bot who wanted games could be enslaved, or made to give up the locations of all his Energon and then forget he had done so, for example. They decided it was not worth trying to con SolarTempest directly as he was such a trigger-happy hothead that it was too dangerous to do so. When the CBA came back, they would be unaware of the threat they now faced to their hard-raided Energon haul.

******

When the space station went up with a silent but very bright bang, the planet's military was alerted at once, but before the planes could take off, most were blown up on the ground or before they could fly very far. About 100 did manage to get away and the 12 bots took off after them and managed to shoot most of them down before they reached where they were trying to get to. Meanwhile, with the SAMs out of action, and anyone who fired guns at the CBA stomped on, the resistance soon stopped. They did have to fight off 25 or so planes though, and one lost a body to missile fire and flew back as data packets to a spare on Cybertron. They spent a full ten days draining the oil, hiring cargo bots to fly it back, before the appearance of an entire space fleet made them flee back to the safety from foreign attack of Cybertron. Before they flew back, SolarTempest asked Lightning Dust "How do I ask Ultimate for a body as strong as General Carjack's without being the target of Domintel spies forevermore? Or is such a thing not possible? I want a body Megatron would be proud to inhabit-not a Megatron body but one that Megatron wouldn't mind being in if he had to-one that is that strong."

When they got back, some bots brought mansions in the Energon District, or mods from Ultimate, and one got an army of thousands of tin soldiers that were the size of humans. They were not in any way alive. The con bots meanwhile made their final plans to con those CBA bots that were conable.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Space
Approaching the Decepticon Zone of Control

It had been a long time since an enemy fleet had tried to chase Decepticon raiders home, but as the outlying soldier lookouts glanced in a particular direction, they saw exactly that. What appeared to be about 100 gang members, a few militarized cargo-bots, and the associated cargo-bot escorts were dropping out of FTL at what was barely a safe distance. They continued toward Cybertron's atmosphere at relativistic speeds, which was very dangerous due to the risk of not being able to stop in time to avoid collisions with those who were always flying in the area.

The soldiers had been trained to recognize this behavior as a gang trying to avoid "repo men," or enemy craft trying to get their nation's oil back. Immediately, the alarm went up, and by the time the lookouts looked again, they saw it: A rather large enemy fleet, which was occasionally firing at the Decepticons and trying to catch up to the cargo-bots in particular. The cargo-bot escorts were returning fire, but were clearly outgunned.

For a while, the enemies thought that they could win, and that they even could chase their quarry down onto Cybertron itself. Before long, though, what appeared to be a vast and shining metal vortex sprang forth from the ground, appearing as a large funnel shape up at the top of the atmospheric border. At first, the enemies marveled at the sight, as well as at how their targets continued on as if it was no threat to them.

Suddenly, the enemy troops and captains felt a horrifying drop in the pits of their stomachs. They weren't seeing some weird natural phenomenon at all. The "vortex" was made up of several hundred thousand ascending Decepticon soldiers.

In an instant, those at the top of the funnel spread out, fully revealing themselves to be troops. One more instant later, and the enemy fleet was under so much blaster fire that all its captains could see was the color and brightness of the energy blasts. They barely had time to try to use the radio, which was now totally jammed with the cheering and hooting of the soldiers that were attacking them, when their ships were blown apart and the battle was over.

The few who survived were now floating in space, doomed to die of suffocation, freezing, or the effects of depressurization. As their lives faded, the last thing they saw was a contingent of robots with swirling paint who were holding up gems of some sort. Any who were later activated would find themselves powering some kind of enchantment or other, or worse, would simply have their energy drained at the Temple of Lost Souls.

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

Now safely on the other side of the Decepticon Military, the Cybertronian Business Association began to cheer over their radios. Their celebrations mixed with the yelling of the Military, which helped to make the Decepticons' unique style of radio jamming even more effective. While the CBA enjoyed the effect, they also knew that they wouldn't really be able to communicate until they had landed and could talk face-to-face. They quickly went to the biggest bulk Raid Dropoff Point along with the cargo-bots to sell the last shipment there would be from this raid.

As might be expected, many of the High Generals and Megatron weren't pleased with having to fight off an actual enemy fleet rather than just a couple of chase ships. However, one of the government's paramount duties was to protect the free practice of the Decepticon Way, and as long as the raiders being protected hadn't intentionally provoked an all-out war, that meant stopping enemy craft at the virtual "gates" of Decepticon territory - even if there were a lot of them.

One High General was quite pleased with the turn of events. That was General Skywarp, whose division had been given the task of wiping out the "swarm of gnats" that had tried to get too close. He and his troops were glad to see some action outside of the Military Raid, and when the effort was over, their engines revved with happy excitement over their victory.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Soon, it was obvious that the CBA had been successful once again. There was a giant party at their headquarters that lasted all night, complete with some fireworks and loud music. All of the neighbors could easily see the glowing glasses of Energon Supreme against the night that the members held up as they cheered and watched the fireworks show.

Grand Con Anyone, whose very name was a stolen version of Grand Theft Anything's, watched from outside of its base and made plans for the next day. "I figure we can nab at least a quarter of that loot, and best of all, their suckers will hand it right to us," their leader gloated in advance.

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

The Look of Success

This was a small, exclusive shop known mostly to actors on Cybertron. Its specialty was changing the appearance of bodies. Unlike Ultimate Mods, its goal wasn't to make people's bodies actually be better than they were. Instead, it was known for cheap outer housings that fit over their customer's regular ones. These were used to disguise actors so that they could play parts without making a huge investment in entirely new forms. These products were basically the Cybertronian version of makeup art.

Soon enough, two bots came strolling in with their eyes blatantly gleaming with connives in mind. The salesbot stifled a groan - often, non-actors like these had wild ideas about what their products could do, and got grumpy when they found out that The Look of Success was literally only about creating the LOOK of it (or any other LOOK that a client wanted). However, his mood soon changed when he heard what these bots were after...

A few hours later, a larger and meaner looking bot came out, followed by a green-eyed "Coltani Slave" who followed along obediently. The "slave's" wing lights had been fitted with the orange bulbs that signified droid status. His blank expression completed the scene.

These two made their way to the street that the CBA Headquarters were on, landed quite far away, and then walked up in a very obvious way. As expected, they soon attracted the attention of the bot who had wanted to buy a slave. For just 1,000,000 Cubes, the slave-owner would say, that slave could belong to the one who wanted it. "I'm away too much to justify paying for the Energon to keep this one running," would be his supposed reason for selling.

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

Meanwhile, a new real estate ad appeared in the listings for the Energon District. It showed a very large, perfectly-kept mansion, and gave a price of just 10,000,000 Cubes for it. This mansion actually did exist. The problem was, its owner had no intention of selling it! Alas, the owner had no idea that it was even up for sale, because he was off on some other planet working connives and had been gone for a couple of months now.

The GCA bot who had placed the ad had managed to crack the mansion's security, so he would be able to pretend to be a real estate agent and "show" it as if it was totally legit. Neighbors would not be a problem here; the real owner was a bit of a jackass, so they thought it'd be funny when he returned and found someone else living in his manor.

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

At the same time, another GCA bot was on Earth with several rented, actual robotic slaves. He had them quickly dig out what appeared to be a mine, and then sent them back to their owners. This "mine" was actually unproductive, so the next step was to plant some big chunks of iron ore in legit-looking places in the mine walls. That wasn't the only connive. It was also part of the vast area that was owned not by any private person, but technically by the Decepticon Government. It wasn't that the government was unwilling to sell. Instead, the problem was simply that nobody wanted to buy land that was "only good for wildlife."

Once the fake mine was set up, the GCA bot went back to Cybertron to track down the one they had overheard say that he wanted such a property. After he found him, he would need to come up with a way to bring up the subject of having a mine for sale, and that he'd need only 100,000,000 Cubes to hand it over...

~~~~~~~~~~~

Most of the CBA bots who wanted off-the shelf things had no trouble finding them. The one who wanted games found a brand-new game store, and gleefully bought a copy of everything in it. Other than the desk clerk seeming a bit too happy to be doing employment, nothing seemed amiss. Of course, the store actually belonged to GCA...

The one who wanted an army of tin soldiers quickly ran into a problem: Nobody on Cybertron sold collector's grade items of that type. Adults here all wanted to be real soldiers, themselves, not play with replicas of them! He finally ended up in a toy store meant for younger-than-sapient children, and had to put in a special order to get tin soldiers with the quality level he wanted. It took a few days for them to be produced and brought to the store, but once that was done, he was all set. Of course, these soldiers weren't done in the shape of puny humans. They were mini-Decepticons, and the itty-bitty human replicas that came with them were sized to fit into the tin Decepticons' hands. Some were also notably squashed, so they could be displayed under the feet of the victorious tin army.