THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 2412 DECEPTICON FORCE BLUE HEADQUARTERS ARAVEX WASTELAND, CYBERTRON DECEPTICON WAR GAMES: DAY 2 Megatron stood and examined the strategic situation, as far as his scouts could report it, on the planning table in the middle of his headquarters camp, then nodded with satisfaction. "Everything is in place," he mused aloud. "It's time to shake things up a bit." Then he ordered, "Feedback. Send to Game Control: proceed to phase three." "Roger," Feedback replied. Then, after a short pause, he went on, "Game Control acknowledges. Red Team acknowledges. Phase 3 is underway." "Excellent." Megatron turned to Onslaught. "Prepare your battle plans for an assault on the Red encampment. I want a preliminary tactical analysis within the hour." Onslaught nodded. "As you command, Megatron," he said, and turned to his work. Satisfied, Megatron left the command post, passed the sentry at the camp gate, and made his way to the far edge of Blue territory, where there was a mostly-intact building of sufficient height to allow him a strategic overview of most of the battle zone from the roof. Standing boldly at the edge of the roof, as if daring any Red sniper who might be out there to try him, Megatron scanned from one side of the horizon to the other, taking in the whole ruined sweep of Aravex. Then, as if addressing the district itself, he said, "You may as well show yourself, human." There was a brief pause; then a young human emerged from behind a bit of rubble at the back of the roof, her face smudged with a combination of camouflage paint and dirt from spending two days living rough in a barren wasteland. "How long have you known?" she asked. Megatron turned his head to regard her. He had rarely seen a human being this close-up, at least one who wasn't fleeing from his mechanical wrath. This one was female, dressed in a dark blue coverall with mid-calf brown boots, elbow and knee pads, and a heavy pistol of some kind holstered at her left hip. Her hair was a rusty red, and mostly tucked under a soft cap that matched her uniform. Even confronted directly by the autocrat of all the Decepticons, she didn't seem to be afraid; just... interested. This was a new sensation for Megatron. He'd never known a human to find him interesting. Terrifying, yes. That had rather been the idea during the time he'd spent trapped on their homeworld. But not interesting. "My sensors detected you some time ago," he told her. "Your exothermic little spark shows up very distinctly against the background of this cold, dead sector." The woman shrugged philosophically, took a cloth from one of the pouches on her belt, and started cleaning the camo paint off her face. "So much for that idea," she remarked. Under the camouflage makeup, her face had a pleasing symmetry about it - not too different from a Transformer woman's, come to that. Zooming his optics, he took a closer look, noting the International Police Organization star on her cap and the name tape above the breast pocket of her jumpsuit, and matched them against what he'd learned of the human organizations of this era during his historical researches before the games. "Morgan," he mused. "Not -Kei- Morgan... ?" She blinked, startled by the sudden mention of her mother, then realized Megatron's mistake and laughed. "No, but you're close," she said. "My name's Priss. Kei is my mother. At least... " She hesitated, looking a little downcast. "... I hope she still is," she added quietly. Megatron looked perplexed. "I don't understand." Hoping she wasn't about to have to explain sexual reproduction to a giant robot, Priss elaborated, "Mother. Female parent... ?" "Yes, I know what a mother is," Megatron replied, just a trifle testily. "Why do you say you hope she still is? Surely one's mother is -always- one's mother." "Oh. Well, I... " Priss shook her head. "Forget it. You don't have time for this. I didn't intend to get underfoot." Megatron thought for a moment, then sat down on the edge of the roof, his feet hanging over the edge, and said casually, "I've known humans to get underfoot in my time. Not literally, you understand. Contrary to popular belief, few Decepticons ever went in for that particular sport; too messy and inefficient." He seemed to realize that he'd wandered a bit and recalled himself to the present: "As it happens, I have the best part of an hour to kill just at the moment. If I've said something to trouble you, the least you can do is give me a chance to remedy the situation." Priss stared at his back for a moment - had the Decepticon Supreme Commander just apologized to her? - then crossed the roof, climbed up onto some rubble near the edge, and sat facing his profile. "It's OK," she said, "you couldn't be expected to know. My mom's missing. She has been for three years now. Disappeared on a mission to the Rim. Most people think she's dead. I'm not so sure, but... " She blew out a sigh. "I was going to spend this summer chasing some leads. Instead, I got sent here for mecha training. And then Shockwave happened, and then -you- happened." Megatron frowned. "How often our actions have consequences we never could have foreseen," he mused. "Is that why you've been following me?" "No," Priss replied. "I've been following you because... " She paused as it occurred to her that she had no articulable idea why she'd been following him. She just -had-, because it seemed like something she had to do. Ever since she first saw him, marching battered but defiant at the head of his reclaimed army to the gates of Vilnacron and almost -playfully- challenging Optimus Prime, she'd been fascinated with the idea of this ancient and dreaded warrior, returning across unimaginable distances to his homeworld - not to conquer, apparently, but to reclaim a legacy she only dimly understood. Watching the ancient holorecords of his greatest battles, Priss thought she had seen something... something -noble- in his earliest appearances, when he fought for Cybertron and not himself. Her father had taught her early on that everyone who had fallen deserved a chance to rise again, if he wanted it and was willing to fight for it. But that wasn't it either, and it was certainly nothing she could put into words right now. So she fumbled for a few moments, trying to come up with a way of even understanding what she felt, never mind expressing it. Then, all at once and without her conscious consideration, the words spilled out: "I don't even fucking know! I can't figure it out myself, unless it's just that you have that bastard utter confidence that makes me feel that what I'm trying to do -isn't- -impossible!-" Then she turned her back to him, drawing her knees up and resting her chin on them, and looked out over the ruins to the south with tears tracking her cheeks. She felt suddenly very small and ridiculous. Megatron sat silently for a moment, wondering: A) What just happened? and B) Why do I care? He was about to essay some attempt at conciliation - never his strong suit - when he caught movement in the distance out of the corner of his optic and turned back to the east. Off upon the far horizon, a group of aircraft - no more than specks at normal magnification - had just crossed the boundary of the wasteland and were approaching rapidly. Next to him, Priss turned, her misery erased by wariness. "Fusion turbines," she said, and Megatron was impressed; his own audio receptors had just picked up the sound, and he would have bet on their being more sensitive than a human's ears. She got to her feet, taking her collapsible binoculars from her belt, and took a closer look. "Uh- oh." Megatron rose, zooming his optics on the approaching aircraft. They were near enough now that he could see they were Transformers - some of them, anyway - but not ones he would have expected to see here. He recognized some of them as they approached: the sleek purple/grey fightercraft known as Cyclonus, another fighter of the same model in grey, the blue-and-white hovercraft forms of Scourge and his Sweep minions. There were other fighters of a type superficially similar to Cyclonus, with forward-swept wings, but quite different in detail; he'd never seen those before. But what really caught his attention was the one in the lead. Flying in the formation's van was a large, purple-hulled ship, comparable to some types of later-model Decepticon shuttlecraft in its overall design. It had a long, sleek nose, over-the-hull angular wings, and large cylindrical engines under the middle wing joints. There were also long, ovoid orange cannons jutting forward from the ship's wing roots. It was that last feature that rang the loudest bell, that and the overall color scheme. As he watched, the lead craft and the grey Cyclonus type peeled away from the rest of the formation and approached his position. "You had better find cover, human," Megatron advised, his optics fixed on the approaching craft. "I have a name, remember?" Priss grumbled as she drew her sidearm (wondering what possible good it could do her) and climbed down from her rubble perch. Megatron ignored her and jumped down from the building's roof, cratering the street as he hit the ground. A moment later the two approaching vehicles swooped down from the sky and alighted at the other end of the block, transforming to robot mode as they did. Megatron paid Cyclonus's grey twin, who merely folded his arms and stood glowering anyway, little mind. All his attention was focused on the other as he transformed to land. His large engines swung out and back, becoming powerful, cylindrical legs. The entire wing assembly swiveled clear around, bracketing the large Transformer's barrel chest from behind, and blocky arms deployed from his sides. The two ovoid cannons were now shoulder-mounted, and they framed a crowned face that was shockingly familiar, for all that Megatron had only seen it in archival footage. The rest of his design was different, but there were enough similarities to mark a striking resemblance to one long thought dead... and the face was the same. Megatron narrowed his optics. "Galvatron." /* Joe Satriani "Hands In the Air" _Is There Love In Space?_ (2004) */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Imagination, Unlimited present UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT TRANSFORMERS: CYBERTRON RELOADED Issue #6: "Adapt and Survive" Benjamin D. Hutchins Philip Jeremy Moyer with Geoff Depew The Transformers created by Hasbro/Takara (c) 2012 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited Priss abseiled down the last of the ruined tower's stairwells, retracted her wrist grapple, and took up a tactical position just inside the street entrance, her shoulders pressed against the wall, looking out around the edge of the empty doorway. She tried to call for backup, but got only static, and she didn't have the wargame team's freqs. Sylvie could have conjured them out of the aether somehow with her Curtana, but such matters were outside Priss's sphere of expertise - and normally interest as well. Unable to think of any -other- plan, she remained where she was, out of sight (though what Megatron had said earlier about her heat signature - that was presumably what he'd been talking about - stuck in her mind), watching. She'd wanted to see Megatron in action personally, after all. Now it looked like she might get her chance. "Hail, Megatron," Galvatron said, his voice the same as it had been in the earliest of the history files Megatron had scanned - deep and resonant, measured, steady. What he said next, though, startled the Decepticon leader even more than his mere appearance on the scene: "I bring you greetings from our dread lord Unicron the All- Devouring." Megatron stared at him. "... what," he murmured, his voice barely audible. "He was most surprised to learn from your transmission to the Autobots that you still function," Galvatron went on matter-of-factly. "-What,-" Megatron repeated, slightly louder, his fists clenching. "In tribute to your resilience," Galvatron continued, "He offers you this one last chance to redeem yourself for your insolence when last you were in the Presence." Megatron's optics blazed. "WHAT," he repeated a third time, louder still. "Doom comes to Cybertron," Galvatron told him. "My mission is to notify the children of Primus that our dread lord approaches - and to demonstrate the futility of resistance by making an example of the Prime who presumed to oppose him four centuries ago. I am commanded to offer you this one chance: Join me in this divine errand and you will survive the apocalypse to come." Galvatron folded his arms across his barrel chest and smiled complacently at his template. "What say you, Megatron?" For a second or two, Megatron stood so still he might as well have been a mere statue, his face utterly impassive. Then, calmly, he replied, "I say... " With a speed and decisiveness that took even Galvatron aback, the Decepticon commander raised his right arm and blasted Galvatron's grey-clad companion straight through the chest with a full-power shot from his fusion cannon. The blast shattered its target's plastron, sending his already-collapsing wreckage flying back into the structure behind him - which, being an ancient fuel storage tank filled with the fumes of its long-exhausted contents, exploded in a towering fireball upon the fiery wreck's impact. "... no," Megatron concluded. The explosion threw Galvatron face-first to the ground; struggling upright, he looked back over his shoulder in shock and cried, "Armada!" Then he turned a look of pure fury on Megatron and scrambled upright, snarling, "Fool! Unicron's favor is wasted on you! Very well! I shall make -you- the first example!" "It's you who'll be an example, Galvatron," Megatron replied. "An object lesson for your master in what happens to those who threaten Cybertron!" With that, Megatron leaped, tackling Galvatron to the ground. "Nyaah!" Galvatron cried, kicking Megatron off him. "Miserable scrap! I'll teach you to lay a hand on Galvatron the Almighty!" The two cannons on his shoulders swung downward, aiming at Megatron, and opened fire. Staggered bolts of particle beam fire raved out. Megatron dodged, throwing himself flat to the ground, and narrowly avoided Galvatron's fusillade. This was a good thing, as the blast slagged the entire ground floor of the building behind him, causing it to collapse in a heap. Undaunted, Megatron rolled onto his back and sprang to his feet in one fluid motion. With a mighty bellow, he returned fire, blasting a hole clean through one of Galvatron's wings. "Galvatron!" he roared. "One shall stand, one shall fall!" At 30,000 feet above the same general area, General Patricia "Terror" Currier and Starscream had just noticed that all communications outside the Aravex sector had failed when their day, already strange, got much stranger. Off to the southeast, just on the horizon, a sudden flash so bright it momentarily washed out the starlight above lit up the broken landscape of the Wasteland, and in its wake, a column of flame- shot smoke boiled up out of the shattered streets of Aravex. " - what in the hell was that?" Terror wondered. "I'm not sure," Starscream said. Then, without changing his tone of voice at all, he added, "Perhaps we could ask -them.-" Terror looked and saw a group of perhaps a dozen aircraft heading their way. Her threat computer identified half of them immediately - Decepticons Cyclonus and Scourge, four of Scourge's identical Sweeps - but the other six, all identical, were of an unknown type. "Somehow, I find myself doubting that Cyclonus and Scourge are interested in being part of Megatron's new order," Starscream mused - a suspicion that was given weight a moment later, when the approaching formation opened fire. "You may take Cyclonus, General, and welcome to him," Starscream told her with a virtual wink. "Scourge is -mine.-" "What about the -rest- of them?" Terror asked wryly as Starscream broke formation and, afterburners blazing, swept out in a wide arc to engage the oncoming group on the left. "They'll just have to fend for themselves!" Starscream replied. "That's not really what I meant," Terror grumbled, but she was talking to a blank screen. Then she smirked slightly - what the hell, he had a point - and winged over to engage Cyclonus. /* The Rolling Stones "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" _Out of Our Heads_ (1965) */ "Fool!" Scourge snarled as the battered maroon-and-black jet dove on him, blazing away with wing and fuselage cannons. He rolled away from the volley, put on more speed, and returned fire. The interloper evaded his blasts, maneuvering with an almost insolent ease, and Scourge got his first inkling that this might not be as trivially easy as he had assumed. As a creation of Unicron, Scourge was accustomed to being far more powerful than "ordinary" Transformers, especially antiques like this one appeared to be; but this ancient Sky Soldier seemed to be just as fast as he was, and possibly even -more- maneuverable. "You know, Scourge, there's something I've always wondered," Starscream remarked conversationally as he avoided another volley of cannon fire. "Just what is your vehicle mode supposed to -be,- anyway? I didn't think you Unicron-spawned had alternate modes inspired by Earthly things, but the only thing I can think of when I look at you is a bar of soap." "Insolent scrap!" Scourge replied. "I cannot, in good conscience, dispute either point," Starscream conceded mockingly. He reversed course with a suddenness that should have been enough to tear his wings off, doubling back and streaking between Scourge and one of the Sweeps so fast that the minion nearly tagged his master instead of the target with his wild burst of fire. "Bah!" Scourge growled. "Sweeps - away! I will deal with this one myself. Go and see how Lord Galvatron fares." "Oh -ho,-" Starscream observed. "'Lord Galvatron', is it? I suppose if I were Unicron, I'd attend to the wisdom in always mounting a scratch flunky too. And what brings -him- to this quiet sector?" Scourge ignored him, settling into the grim silence in which he typically pursued his prey. It was just as well; Starscream had forgotten, in the centuries since he'd last encountered Unicron's huntsman, how his voice grated on the audio receptors, and he wanted to concentrate. -Needed- to concentrate, because for all that Starscream mocked him, Scourge was very, very good at his job. Good enough that it took all of Starscream's skill, as limited by the ragtag shell he inhabited, to lead him a merry chase across Aravex. He wasn't doing this just to be irritating; rather, he hoped that by getting Scourge fully engaged, as it were - by playing on his capacity for all-excluding focus - he could lure the hunter out of the exclusion zone his side had apparently set over the Aravex sector. Get him out where the Autobots' planetary monitoring systems could see him. He'd just received confirmation that he'd accomplished his self- imposed mission, in the form of renewed comm contact with Iacon and the sound of the crowd back at Commcen's shock as they recognized Scourge, when his much-abused body finally reached its limit and betrayed him to the hunter's guns. Scourge's cannon fire laced both wings and his portside engine, filling his empty cockpit with the pointlessly reproduced sound of alarms... but they'd come far enough. Starscream urged all the power he could get out of his faltering flight systems, belting his protesting airframe through a split-S that put him on an opposing course to Scourge's again. He pulled up, struggling for every last bit of climb he could get; with one engine out and his aerodynamic surfaces in tatters, he wasn't going to remain airborne much longer - but Scourge was diving in for the kill like the obsessive pinhead he was, putting himself right where Starscream wanted him. The next exchange of fire offlined his portside engine entirely, shredded both wings, and reduced his empennage to a pair of smoking stumps, but it also holed Scourge's fuselage in several places and wrecked one of his antigravity pods. Both of them had nowhere to go now but down. AUTOBOT COMMCEN IACON Alexis Thi Dang watched in silent horror as Starscream's flaming silhouette plunged into the canyons of Altihex and disappeared from view, followed a moment later by the crippled, but less obviously wrecked, form of Scourge. Around her, the Technobots, Red Alert, Soundwave and Blaster all scrambled to mobilize various forces to meet the newly revealed threat, but Alexis ignored all their activity, her attention wholly focused on the monitor that showed, dimly in the distance, the thin column of smoke still rising from the crash site. "Hey," Sylvie Daniels said, startling her out of her reverie. "You OK?" "Uh... " Alexis wrangled herself back to the here and now, blinking away incipient tears. "Yes. I'm fine, Agent Daniels. Thank you." Sylvie looked thoughtful - as if she didn't buy it and was about to say so - but then all she said was, "I'm not even gonna ask where you know Starscream from. I know from experience that kind of thing is always a long story," she added with a wry tilt of her head toward Soundwave's back. "Mm," said Alexis, who didn't really want to discuss it. "I'm... sorry, but... " "Yeah," Sylvie replied, nodding. "'S cool." She clapped the slightly older woman on the shoulder and added, "I'm busy too. But you know, later on, if you wanna, I'll be around." Then she went back down to the lower level, cabling up to Rumble's console with the new barrier collar she'd left the room to retrieve, and Alexis wondered for a moment what had just happened before returning her attention to the monitor. ARAVEX At 19, Priscilla Tali Morgan had seen things most people never saw. She was a rated Getter Machine pilot and a graduate of the Worlds Welfare Work Association Academy, a weapons expert, the daughter of two of the galaxy's most famous righters of wrongs. She grew up in a house full of martial artists, seekers after truth, and action heroes. One of her elder brothers was a Norse god and the other was, or soon would be, a Jedi Knight, while her own twin brother Guy was held by some to be some kind of warrior of prophecy in another dimension. It all got a bit confusing. The point was, she really -had- seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion (if by "the shoulder of Orion" you meant Betelgeuse), really -had- watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser gate. She'd grown accustomed to seeing epic things happen with slightly alarming regularity as a kid; had even, in some ways, started to think she might be getting a little bit jaded. And then, something like what she was now witnessing would come along and remind her that she really didn't know jack. /* Metallica "Master of Puppets" _Master of Puppets_ (1986) */ Whereas there had been no question of the outcome of Megatron's battle with Shockwave, and his combat with Optimus Prime had been a (relatively) good-natured measure of strength between the two commmanders, his duel with Galvatron - and there was no better word for it - was a fight that had had no equal for sheer bitterness. Even his final clash with his adoptive "father", Scorponok, for the leadership of the Decepticons had not been as brutal as this. No quarter was asked here, and none given. The two powerful Transformers grappled, punched, fired, dodged, jumped, and occasionally flew around the shattered tower forecourt that made up their dueling-ground. Distantly, Megatron's audio sensors registered the sounds of battle elsewhere, but he paid no attention to them, nor did he spare a thought for the young human who crouched behind a particularly large block of rubble, her laughably puny sidearm in hand, and watched the battle with rapt attention. There was only the fight, only this snarling, smirking parody of himself, only the overriding need that one or the other of them must be extinguished before the survivor could hold his head up again. Megatron remembered, with more than a twinge of embarrassment, whining to Optimus Prime for mercy in their duel at Autobot City, then using one of Prime's own warriors as a shield and taking his cowardly shot with a scavenged blaster pistol. That was why his spark had given such a lift when he saw Prime emerge, more powerful than ever, from the gates of Iacon two weeks prior. If he had slain his old foe forever with such a pathetic display, he might never be able to look himself in the optic in an inspection reflector again. Not for the first time, he wondered what had ever brought him to such a pass. Even at the height of his own cruelty, in the fire-and-sword days of the First War, Megatron would have shot any officer of his who behaved in such a disgraceful fashion, never mind stooping to such lows himself. It came to him as he considered this, with the small corner of his processor that wasn't occupied with the battle itself, that the creature he now fought had been based on an imprint of him taken by Unicron -on that very day,- the lowest, most pathetic day of Megatron's very long life. The thought rankled, raising a faint taste of scorched coolant at the back of his intake manifold. The very idea that the All- Consuming should have been able to look into his inner being that way, then map what he found onto this... chimaera... was almost too much for Megatron's pride to bear. As was the fact that he seemed to be taking the worst of the battle with his duplicate now. Oh, Galvatron was battered, surely, but Megatron could feel a dozen wounds or more scattered around his own chassis - a shoulder joint partly sprung, armor plates buckled by blows from the imposter's undeniably mighty fists, a handful of sparking rents and tears in his superstructure. Shockwave had scored a couple of hits, but the main wound had looked worse than it was; every time Galvatron hit his mark, on the other hand, it did more harm than showed. Megatron had to acknowledge that his opponent today might actually be more powerful than he was. But power wasn't everything. Templated from his own it might be, but the bulk of Galvatron's combat knowledge was -programming,- not experience, and the difference told as Megatron seized him in a Crystalocution hold he'd learned in ancient days, shattering one of the cannon barrels on his shoulders, and flung him across the street into the facade of a ruined building. The structure, already weakened by the fuel tank explosion Megatron had caused at the beginning of the battle, collapsed altogether, burying his foe in jagged wreckage. High above, the Sweeps closed on the combat zone, intending to dive in and support their master's master - they cared nothing for the ancient dueling code, even if they had known Megatron had invoked it; but as they approached, they were suddenly intercepted. "Thundercracker to all Decepticons! I am invoking emergency code daleth niner zero two tav! Suspend the game - Megatron is under aerial attack by outside forces! All air units, converge on my locator. This is not a simulation!" The urgency in the Red team commander's voice, and the special code he had invoked, convinced Onslaught - the ranking member of Blue in Megatron's absence - that he was serious; and since hesitation had never been among the Combaticon leader's faults, he dispatched Blue's Sky Soldiers instantly to repulse the attack. So it was that the Sweeps found themselves set upon by at least a dozen Decepticon jets. "Woooooo hoo!" Sideslip cried as he corkscrewed away from a Sweep's cannon fire and raked another with his lasers. "It's about time we saw some real action!" "This might be a little too -much- action," Slipstream remarked. "These guys were supposedly created by Unicron." "Ha! Are you seriously saying you think they're more than we can handle?" Sideslip asked. "No," Slipstream replied patiently. "Just that we might have to, you know, -think.-" "Ow! OK, yeah, you have a point," Sideslip conceded as his starboard wing picked up a few holes. "I set 'em up, you knock 'em down?" "Just leave a few for the rest of us, youngsters," said Baffle sardonically. "Thundercracker, this is Jetfire," the Autobot Air Guardian called on the agreed-upon overwatch frequency. "The Aerialbots and I can be there in - " "Negative!" Thundercracker cut him off, his tone crisp but impersonal. "Some of my bots haven't had time to reconfigure their IFF yet. Primus -knows- what could happen if we all start throwing guided weapons around. Keep clear!" Jetfire's reply was equally professional: "Understood." "Skywarp to Thundercracker - I've spotted Cyclonus! He's fighting... uhh, someone. One of us, I think, but I don't recognize him." "Well, whoever it is, he's in over his head if he's taking on Cyclonus one-on-one," Thundercracker replied. "Are they within teleport range?" "Affirmative!" "Teleport and engage!" Skywarp hesitated for the barest instant - it was long since he'd been used to this sort of decisive action from his colleague - then smiled to himself at the pleasant surge of nostalgia that tone in Thundercracker's voice brought back and replied, "On my way!" Galvatron's prison of wreckage didn't hold him long. He reared up out of the rubble, scattering fragments in all directions, and hurled himself at Megatron in a jet-assisted leap, sweeping one massive fist in a blow that was meant to take the Decepticon commander's head off. Megatron threw himself back, avoiding that fate, but Galvatron's fist struck his fusion cannon instead, shearing it off and leaving a sparking rent in his right forearm where its hardpoint had been. Megatron roared in pain and fury, knocked off-balance by the impact, and fell to hands and knee, shaking his head as he tried to shrug off the shock. Smirking, Galvatron approached with slow, even steps, retracting his right fist and deploying a glittering blade with a glowing purple energon edge in its place. Reaching down, he placed its point under Megatron's chin and levered his head up until the Decepticon leader's still-unfocused optics met his own, then deftly reversed it so that its edge lay against the back of Megatron's neck, sizzling gently against the sloped armor. "It's over, Megatron," he intoned. Megatron thought of Autobot City again, and this time, despite his situation, he smiled just a little at the memory. His splayed hands scraped together on the battered steel ground and clasped together into a double fist the size of a wrecking ball. For an instant, he seemed to go entirely still, his consciousness falling into the center of his spark, as his Crystalocution master had taught him in the ancient times. Then he rasped, "-Never!-" and brought his fists up in a titanic coupled blow that shattered Galvatron's blade and sent the Herald of Unicron flying. Of the last 160 hours or so, Priss estimated that she'd spent at least 20 watching footage of Megatron in action, from his "last" battle in 2005 all the way back to his days in Quintesson-occupied Vilnacron, when as a young army officer he had been punished for insolence with a turn in the Vilnacron Arena. (As though being forced to fight was punishment to a warrior as thoroughgoing as Megatron had been, even in those days!) She recognized instantly that he had quoted Optimus Prime's own response when Megatron himself had made that same remark to him at Autobot City... and wondered whether, like Prime, he would follow it by collapsing, his spark guttering like a candle flame. ALTIHEX Scourge was on foot. He wasn't quite as pathologically opposed to this condition as, say, Jetstorm, but he couldn't be said to appreciate it either; so it was with hate in his spark that he stalked the old Sky Soldier who'd brought him to this pass, blasters in hand. The fool was leaving a trail a Sharkticon could follow, much less the Huntsman of Unicron; that last exchange must have severed an energon line, and the glowing smears on the ground were easier to follow than a well-marked highway. In fact, judging by the trail, the same injury that was making the foe so easy to track might well do the rest of Scourge's job for him; but Scourge had to be sure. He didn't know who his elderly enemy -was,- but he wanted the head for his trophy wall anyway. No one had so much as laid a beam on Scourge in decades. He turned a corner, following the trail with the dogged persistence that Unicron had encoded in his very CNA, until he reached its end... only to find that it terminated against the blank wall of a blind alley, a metallic box gulch amid Altihex's canyons of steel. "Wha - ?" Scourge wondered, then turned to see his foe smirking at him from the entrance to the alley. The ancient was still leaking, energon trickling down from his shattered shoulder to drip from the fingers of his slack left hand; the wreckage of the fusion turbine built into that arm was still smoking; yet he looked -gleeful- somehow. As well he might, Scourge supposed, since he'd successfully fooled one of the galaxy's greatest trackers - but why had he thrown away the time that gambit had bought him and confronted Scourge directly? "Well," the Sky Soldier remarked, still smirking. "We meet again." Scourge surveyed his strangely pleased enemy; then his own mouth quirked in a cruel half-smile as he again noted the Sky Soldier's injuries and selected a weapon that would take the most painful possible advantage of them. "I must congratulate you, stranger," he said formally. "You've led me a harder chase than any prey these last hundred years and more." The ancient's smirk became even, if it's possible, smirkier. "You don't know who I am, do you," he said, and it wasn't really a question. "No," Scourge replied, "and what is more, I don't care. Farewell, stranger. You will be remembered, albeit namelessly, with honor." And then, snarling triumphantly, he shot the ancient with a phosphorus charge, setting his fractured superstructure irrevocably ablaze. With his fuel lines still leaking, it would only be a matter of a few moments before the flames reached them, then raced back along then to detonate his remaining energon stores. There was no possibility of escape or survival. The ancient seemed to know that, but he also didn't appear to care. He didn't fall, didn't scream, didn't even look particularly bothered. Indeed, as the rigid patch on the right side of his face fell away and revealed the scarred and half-melted plating beneath, he grinned even more broadly - and then, his face switching to a furious scowl, he spread his hands apart, his elbows still against his sides, and opened his upper-chest munitions bays to reveal that, in addition to his remaining energon, he still had -live armaments- aboard. Stamping his foot once, the scarred, blazing Sky Soldier burst into motion, charging straight for Scourge on foot and leaving a comet- trail of blazing energon and molten armor in his wake. Panic seized Scourge's spark as he looked left, then right, realizing that with his antigravity systems partially destroyed, there was no way he could scale these walls. Just as he reached that conclusion and turned to make a last- ditch attempt at shooting his attacker down before he came too near, the oncoming warrior peeled his lips back from gritted, blackening teeth and shrieked in a voice that the Huntsman knew only too well, "PATHETIC FOOL - THERE'S NO ESCAPE!" Then Starscream, his armor glowing cherry-red as the fire reached his fuel stocks, crashed into Scourge and seized him in a grip made unbreakable by his sheer fury. For a half-second they stood optic- to-optic, Scourge's own armor starting to melt from the blazing heat - - and then Starscream exploded with such violence that there wasn't enough left of him, Scourge, or the structures immediately around them to - if you will pardon the expression - sweep up. AUTOBASE COMMCEN IACON "Whoa!" Rumble cried as the mushroom cloud rose from the empty streets of Outer Altihex on the monitor. "Well, that'll be Starscream showing Scourge what for, I expect," said Sylvie casually, glancing back over her shoulder to give Alexis what she hoped was a reasurring grin. <> Soundwave reported - but, Sylvie was pleased to notice, he had enough tact to do so over the wire, not out loud. Damn, she thought, but there was too much work to do right now for her to dwell further on the matter. ARAVEX /* The Crystal Method "Born Too Slow" _Legion of Boom_ (2003) */ Ordinarily, General Currier would have felt annoyed that most of her dance partners had bugged out for another dogfight several miles away, but this time she had to admit that her hands were quite full enough with Cyclonus, and she didn't really miss the blue jets. After a few minutes of full-on combat, in which she'd been much too busy to keep track of her erstwhile wingman, Terror had reached a couple of conclusions. One of them was that the Cosmo Eagle performed even better in a straight-up dogfight than the engineers at Stonewell Bellcom had hoped when they resurrected the old F-15's airframe as the next leap in the RetroTech program. She was an even sweeter ship than the Crusader Double Zeta, which was just about the hottest fixed-config fighter in the WDF's current inventory. Sweet enough that Terror, by long custom a Veritech snob, felt fully at home in this cockpit, taking the Cosmo Eagle head-to-head against anybody in the universe. The other was that Cyclonus was one hell of an anybody to go up against. She'd fought Decepticons before - Eight-Ball Squadron had been on point for the relief of Autobot City and again during the Cybertron invasion of 2026 - but had never had the pleasure of opposing Cyclonus before. He hadn't bothered with anybody but squadron leaders in '26, and she still remembered the fury on Gryphon's face as one of his Valkyrie's wings had come off just after he'd nursed it home to the Prometheus after one such clash. Well, this one's for the boss, then, she thought with a grim smile, tagging one of the Decepticon's vertical tails with a burst from her portside cannon. One thing she rather appreciated about fighting Cyclonus was that he didn't do a lot of talking. Most Decepticons of her experience seemed to think it was obligatory to taunt the organics while they fought, but Cyclonus didn't even get on the com to react when she shot him. She liked that in an adversary. On the other hand, instead of getting on the com to bitch about it, he just pulled some impossible-ass maneuver or another and flatlined her starboard shields, which wasn't very sociable either. Cursing, she rolled out to port, dumping energy across to rebalance her shields; another hit like that and she could say goodbye to the aft projector on that side. Whatever those weapons of his were, they hit damned hard. With another one of startling, impossible-looking maneuvers, Cyclonus corrected for her evasion and zeroed in for another pass. With a flash of light and a harsh electric sound, another F-15 appeared out of nowhere off her port quarter, nearly colliding with her before it pulled up and raked Cyclonus with cannon fire. The sudden intervention forced him to sheer off, heading out in a wide arc to the west to recover, which bought Terror and her suddenly acquired wingmate a little time. Another Sky Soldier's face - presumably that of the purple- trimmed black specimen who had just so precipitously arrived - appeared on her center VDU and announced cheerfully, "Well done, brother! Help is at hand - oh!" He blinked, realizing he wasn't addressing a fellow Sky Soldier, and then said awkwardly, "Uh... hello. Wasn't expecting - hang on. Skywarp to Thundercracker!" The screen diagonaled off to give space to a second Decepticon jet's robot face. "Go ahead." "It's a human!" Skywarp said, as if on the edge of panic. "What do I do?!" Thundercracker raised an optic arch. "Is he fighting Cyclonus?" "Uh... it's a she. I think? And yeah." The other Decepticon sighed almost imperceptibly and replied, "Then -help- her. Thundercracker -out.-" Thundercracker disappeared, returning Skywarp's virtual image to full-screen, as his real self pulled into formation with Terror's Cosmo Eagle and the two turned to meet the returning Cyclonus. "OK, this'll work," Skywarp said, as if psyching himself up. "Just tell me where you want me to hit him from, we can keep him off- balance." "Be more careful when you teleport," Terror told him. "You nearly crashed into me the first time." "Oh, that was just 'cause I was 'porting to near the edge of my range. Up close my aim's a lot better." "That's reassuring," said Terror dryly. Skywarp grinned. "Hey, you can trust this face." "OK, here he comes," Terror said, all business. "I'm going to see if I can get him to break right with a cannon pass. When I give the word, you hit him high." "Ten roger!" Skywarp replied. "That's what you human fighter jocks say, ain't it?" Terror caught herself making almost exactly the same tiny sigh as Thundercracker, smiled, and got back to work. "Close enough," she said. "Go!" Priss crouched behind her block of rubble, not even daring to breathe, as Galvatron and Megatron both tried to recover from the blows they'd just taken. At first she'd also attempted to keep one eye on the duel in front of her and one on the air battle raging above, but it was moving too fast and over too large an area for her to get any decent sense of it from down here, so she tried to put it out of her head and just hoped they wouldn't get strafed. "Come on, Megatron," she muttered, wondering if he could hear her. "Get up. Get up... " Megatron remained where he was for a moment longer, his optics dim; then they brightened as his emergency systems came online and he struggled to his feet. After a glance for his stunned and fallen foe, he turned to recover his fusion cannon. Galvatron rose to his feet, his faceplate twisted with fury. One of the horns of his "crown" was missing, the whole "helmet" structure surrounding his face bent and knocked askew by Megatron's blow. Redeploying his hand and breaking into a run, the Herald of Unicron leaped upon Megatron and seized him from behind, roaring, "I'LL TEAR OUT YOUR OPTICS FOR THAT!" Megatron abandoned his attempt to recover his weapon and lashed out with a backward elbow instead, breaking Galvatron's grip, then pivoted and put all he had into a punch that could have felled a Combiner. It staggered Galvatron; he stumbled back, catching a heel on a chunk of wreckage and nearly falling - then lunged forward, stabilizing himself, and lowered his remaining shoulder cannon into position. Already committed to his follow-up lunge, Megatron had no choice but to take the blast and hope his armor would hold - but Galvatron wasn't aiming for his chest. The particle cannon bolt caught him full in the face, sending him flying backward to crash down on his back and skid, sparking and smoking, a full hundred yards. He got to his feet quickly enough, but stood unsteadily, his hand clapped to his face, smoke pouring from beneath, and gave an anguished roar. "COWARD!" he bellowed, his free hand outspread before him as if searching for something in the dark. "Is -this- Unicron's way?" "Unicron cares nothing for the petty posturings of Primus's children," Galvatron replied, calmly taking aim. "In the end, you're all doomed anyway. You should thank me for attending to you personally. Now hold still. You've been a worthy adversary... so I'll try to make this as quick as I can, if you don't squirm too much." Without really thinking about the possible consequences, Priss bolted up from her hiding place, scrambled up the jagged side of the block she'd been using as cover, and opened fire, pumping round after round from her DC-17s at Galvatron's face. For all that it was no ordinary blaster pistol, having been modified by one of the galaxy's foremost experts in increasing the power of small arms, it was still no better than a laser pointer against the Herald of Unicron's armor, but, she figured, she might get lucky and put one of -his- eyes out. Galvatron seemed first taken aback, then amused. He turned slightly so that his weapon trained toward her rather than Megatron. "You flesh creatures are -so- bold," he said admiringly. "Stupid," he added, "but bold. My dread lord may condescend to consume your homeworld as well, when he has done with Cybertron. I'm told there are some quite delicious energy reserves there. Of course, you won't be there to see that, but you may wish to reflect upon the thought as you take it with you to eterni - OOOF." That last was occasioned by Megatron, who had followed the sound of his foe's voice, plowing into him with a full-on shoulder charge, sending him skidding back toward the spot where their duel had first begun. At close range, the Decepticon leader's blindness wasn't that much of a disadvantage; his hands could still grasp, his fists still strike. He bore down relentlessly, smashing away at anything he could reach, hoping to put Galvatron's other cannon out of commission - "ENOUGH!" Galvatron roared, catching first one, then the other of Megatron's arms and trapping them with his own. For a moment they stood face-to-face, Galvatron's warped into a fiercely triumphant sneer, Megatron's a melted ruin from the bridge of his nose upward, the lower half set in a furious, determined snarl. Galvatron braced himself to shove the Decepticon away, far enough back to bring his weapon to bear and end this farce once and for all, and said, "Proceed on your way to oblivion." "I told you before," Megatron rasped. "Never." So saying, he headbutted Galvatron in the face with the brow ridge of his casque-helmet, sending the Herald of Unicron reeling, then swung himself into a spinning kick that leveled Galvatron outright and collapsed the ruins of still another massive building atop him. Terror and Skywarp took a couple of tries before they really hit their stride, but presently she found that Skywarp, though not a terribly original thinker, took direction well, and he might not have creativity, but he did have intuition. Before long they were giving Cyclonus fits, Terror using all her Cosmo Eagle's superior speed and accleration to keep ahead of his firepower while Skywarp popped in and out, making slashing passes and keeping the purple-armored warrior always slightly off-balance. If we could get a couple more 'Cons to join this party we might get someplace, Terror thought, and then, What the hell happened to Starscream? At that moment, something seemed to get Cyclonus's attention; he aborted a pass against Skywarp, headed away for a few seconds - then turned back and bore down on the Decepticon again, guns blazing. Skywarp was so startled by this sudden double turnaround that he was caught flat-footed, and before he could teleport away he'd taken several savage hits, the last of which sent him spiraling groundward with black smoke pouring from his starboard engine. "Skywarp!" Terror cried. "GAAAAAAAH - URGH!" Skywarp replied, plowing through a couple of buildings and coming to rest halfway across a causeway. "... mEdiC... " Terror scanned her surroundings. Nobody else in sight; all the other Decepticons were still busy with Cyclonus's pals. Starscream was nowhere to be seen. She had a panel full of flashing low-ammo indicators and a shield array running at about 30% efficiency, and her dance partner seemed to have just acquired a major bee in his helmet about -something-. He was a few miles out, having taken the long way around to make sure Skywarp went down, but he was coming like a freight train and wherever he was headed, it was on the other side of her. She tightened her straps and muttered to herself for about the millionth time in her career, "You -could- have gone home in '92," then throttled up for a head-on, zero-deflection pass, intending to throw everything she had left in the shop at Cyclonus's forward shields and see which one of them burned. Just then, Starscream's face - different, configured like a regular Sky Soldier's now, but instantly recognizable - appeared on her VDU. "Excuse my tardy arrival, General, but Scourge gave me a bit more trouble than I was expecting." He blinked in consternation. "Oh dear, were you about to mount a suicidal frontal assault on Cyclonus with those puny weapons? That won't do. Oh - you should know, I've never tried this before, it may get a little bumpy. Or it may not work at all." Then, grinning, he shrugged and added, "But we're no worse off if that's the case. Hold on tight!" /* Tak Matsumoto "Theme from Ultraman" _Ultraman_ (2004) */ "WhaAAAAAAAAAAAH," Terror said as, with a sudden, fizzling CRACKLE like a high-tension line parting in a storm, her Cosmo Eagle suddenly went completely haywire. Gauges shot to the tops of their scales, wavered there, then bottomed out as the panel lights blazed above full intensity and then went out. The engines faltered, sputtered, and then changed to a whole different pitch as they roared back stronger than ever. All around her, the structure of the airframe seemed to -shiver,- as if she were exceeding VMAX... ... and then the Cosmo Eagle -transformed.- Terror felt an instant of vertigo, and a half-instant of her namesake, as she thought the aircraft was coming apart, until she realized that her seat was still firmly anchored, the structure around it still whole, and she wasn't in fact hurtling through the air at the center of a cloud of disjoined metal debris. The controls and displays had all reoriented around her, just as they would have in a Veritech fighter, leaving her sitting upright in the cockpit blister where before she had been, in the normal scheme of things, horizontal - - but the SF-15D was not a Veritech fighter. "Phew!" said Starscream on the monitor, shaking his head. "Well, -that- worked." Terror stared at him. "Wha - how did you do that?" Starscream shrugged, both on screen and around her. "I've no idea. Didn't know I could. Would have saved me a lot of hassle over the years if I had!" he added with a wink. "This aircraft is a prototype!" Terror sputtered, knowing she was talking nonsense but unable, for the moment, to stop herself. "Irreplaceable!" "And very stylish, my congratulations to your engineers," Starscream replied. "No time to argue about it now, here comes Cyclonus. Are you sitting comfortably?" He smiled coldly - the coldness, she realized, for his so-called fellow Decepticon, not her. "Then we'll begin." So saying, he returned to fighter mode and opened his throttles wide, surging even more powerfully into combat than the Eagle had before he'd "moved in". Terror just sat there, her mind racing to process all that had just happened, as Starscream and Cyclonus took a couple of passes at each other; then Starscream appeared on the screen again and said, "Well, don't just sit there! Bear a hand, those controls aren't just for show." Terror blinked at him; sighing, he went on patiently, "You're supposed to be a great fighter pilot, I'm a great fighter, LET'S GET TO WORK!" Terror took one second to work her way through the remaining shock, then grinned, put her feet back on the rudder pedals, and took hold of the controls. "Our intel files from '05 said you were a big ol' coward," she observed. "Why aren't we running like hell? Not that I'm complaining." "That was then, this is now, work to do," Starscream replied distractedly; then, with a hint of petulance, "I wish you had a proper neural interface." Smirking, Terror said, "I don't need one, man." Starscream eyed her. "Prove it," he challenged. Terror grinned. "Oh, it is ON," she said, and together the two aces settled down to work. When the dust settled, Priss could see parts of Galvatron protruding above the small sea of rubble that had settled above him. One of his hands could be seen, its fingers frozen as if grasping for something. It was utterly motionless, which was perhaps not surprising when the girder that had transfixed the Herald through the upper chest was taken into account. Silence, but for the distant sounds of the ongoing air battle, fell. Priss observed Galvatron's still hand for a moment longer, scratched her head, and said, "So... is that it, then?" The words were hardly out of her mouth, instantly regretted, when... -something- happened. For a second she thought it was just something inside Galvatron's carcass cooking off, as a sort of -creeping fire- seemed to consume his remains from within, disintegrating much of the rubble that made up his tomb. It collapsed inward... and then Galvatron heaved himself up, the impaling girder melting away, as his remains seemed to burn from within. The impact had smashed his body, wrecking his other cannon and snapping the -other- horn from his crest, and the collapse of the building had pierced and broken him in a dozen places; from all the cracks and gaps in his armor, and all of his joints, that same silent, unnatural fire could be seen seeping and flickering. It was quite the most disturbing thing Priss could ever remember seeing. Turning his optics - now empty pits of that same fire - toward Megatron, he spoke. His voice was still essentially the same, but it had acquired an undertone, a cold and hollow echo, and its cadence and diction were entirely different as he said, "Foolish child of Primus. This shell is but a tool. I have many others." Megatron would have stared, if he'd had working optics. As it was, he took a half-step back, shock plain on the half of his face that still worked. He knew that slow, deliberate way of speaking; knew it of old, and even though he'd been told of its owner's return, some part of his spark hadn't quite believed it until he heard this empty, burning revenant speak with its master's voice. "... Unicron," he whispered. Then, in a louder voice, he commanded, "Run, human! RUN!" Before Priss could reply, the thing that had been Galvatron launched itself at Megatron, seized the battered, blinded Decepticon leader, and hurled him bodily down the street, where he fetched up against the block of rubble Priss was standing on hard enough that it almost knocked her from her perch. She half-knelt for a more stable firing position, peppering the oncoming Harbinger of Unicron with an even more furious volley of blasterfire, but it ignored it like a man in power armor would ignore rain, striding toward them with an implacable hatred literally glowing on its face. Getting involved in this was -suicide,- Priss said to herself. What the fuck did you think you were doing? Then she glanced to her side, saw Megatron once again hauling himself to his feet, and smiled. Elementary history, my dear Agent Morgan, she replied to herself, and then cried aloud, "Megatron! Transform!" The half of Megatron's face that could still scowl scowled. "What?" he replied. "Transform!" Priss roared. Shoving her sidearm into its holster, she demanded at the top of her voice, "Damn you, do you -want- to die here? You have trust me!" Megatron weighed his options and did something he never, in six million years, though he would ever do: He entrusted himself to a human being. /* The Crystal Method "Vapor Trail" _Vegas_ (1997) */ Priss saw the process beginning, the mass-displacement sequence accompanied, as she'd seen it in the historical holos, by a flashing, sparking energy discharge. A momentary panic crossed her mind - suppose Megatron was too seriously damaged to transform? Then what the hell was she going to do? But even as she thought it, she saw that it was working. So did the Harbinger. It redirected the first blow it launched upon reaching melee range, intending to bring its fist down on the tiny organic before she could complete her audacious play - but Priss was already moving, breaking to the right, running for the end of the rubble block. The impact of the Harbinger's blow heaved the far end of the block upward, hurling her into the air. She twisted in midflight, reaching out. Her mind raced as she called on her acrobatic training to shape her fall so that she would both intercept her target and not break her neck when she reached the ground. Her left hand closed around Megatron's grip a half-second before she landed hard on the metal-plate pavement, the breath gushing explosively from her lungs; something twinged in her right shoulder, but she ignored it, rolling through a standard drill her mother had gone over with her a million times. Dive, roll, up, take aim - pivoting to face the Harbinger as the remains of her cover shattered under his fist, raising Megatron in a two-handed grip. Some part of her mind noticed that he was heavier than he looked as she sighted across the open iron sights at the Harbinger, who was now turning to face her. Megatron's front sight - indeed, the first half-inch or so of his barrel - was missing, but at this range, with a target this big, that wasn't much of a concern. As Priss took aim, the cybernetic induction pad built into the second joint of her index finger touched Megatron's trigger face; she was surprised to feel a fizz of sensory static as something in the Decepticon leader linked to her neuroprocessor's smartgun interface. Now the lack of a front sight was even less of a problem. He might not be able to see, but he apparently still had something akin to smartgun radar. Satisfactory. Her first snap shot took the Harbinger high in the chest, just to the right of the remains of the Decepticon symbol embossed there. The analytical part of Priss's mind wondered why it was there; Galvatron wasn't a Decepticon, wasn't even pretending to be one as his predecessor had done. She wondered whether Unicron had just added it out of force of habit. Forgot to delete it from the CAD file when he'd stamped out the new model. The thought, even in this dire situation, made her smile as she jumped out of the path of an attempted stomping and fired again. Megatron's pistol mode packed more punch than her Deece, that much was plain - she could crater the Harbinger's armor, even penetrate it with a lucky enough shot - but it was still like shooting a buffalo with a .22 rifle. She'd have to chip away at it all day to bring the monster down like this, if it was even possible, and she didn't -have- all day. "Can you give me more power?" she asked as she ran with all the speed she could muster up a side street, away from the site of the battle. "I don't know," Megatron replied. "Possibly... possibly one shot. But my discharge attenuators are gone. The blast will be... wild. Uncontrollable. You may be caught in the backlash." "Well, we don't have a ton of options," Priss replied, skidding around a corner. Behind her, the Harbinger ignored all obstacles, simply smashing through the buildings and taking the most direct route in pursuit. Galvatron, by this time, would have been ranting about the terrible punishments he was going to inflict on the human germ when he caught her. The Harbinger made no comment at all. "I need time," Megatron said. "As much as you can get me. In the meantime, try to make your way north. My forces are there, if they haven't been entangled in their own battle by now." Above, the air warriors of Forces Red and Blue were gaining ground against the Sweeps and the anomalous blue fighters that had joined them - enough so that a few of them had the processing cycles to spare on a quick scan of the ground and realized that something was going on down there. "Hey - where's Megatron?" Sideslip wondered. "Megatron can take care of himself," Slipstream replied, wiping a blue jet off her wingmate's six with a pair of Hydra multi-warhead missiles. "How about we pay a little more attention to saving our own tailpipes." Priss rounded another corner, trying to remember how more of these largely identical abandoned res blocks she had to get past before she'd reach the Blue camp and, she hoped, the Combaticons - when she came up instead against a blind wall. "Fuck," she said. Turning, she saw the Harbinger bash its way through a wall, shake off the rubble, and turn to look for her. Spotting her, it turned to begin stalking toward her. With a momentary pulse of horror, she saw that its face had mostly burned away from within now, revealing nothing but a dark emptiness limned by Unicron's reanimating fire and the empty frame of one optic. "OK, it's now or never," she said, holding the cool side of Megatron's slide against her cheek, the broken stub of his barrel pointing skyward and a little off to the right. "We're cornered and here he comes." "Let him get close," Megatron replied. "As close as you dare. Aim for his center of mass and then protect your optics as best you can." "Roger that." Priss forced herself to stand pat, watching the faceless Harbinger of Unicron approach, and then, when she absolutely dared not delay any longer, she braced her back against the wall and raised Megatron into firing position, aiming his truncated barrel bang at the false Decepticon brand in the center of its chest. "GIMME EVERYTHING YOU GOT!" she cried at the top of her lungs, her eyes going completely black as she kicked her bionic flash compensators to full intensity, and fired. The bolt of energy that raved from Megatron's jagged barrel bloomed instantly to more than the Harbinger's full height in diameter, blasting a trench in the ground before Priss, shearing off whole slabs of the buildings on either side of the dead-end street, and engulfing the Harbinger so that its silhouette was completely lost within the brilliance. The sound it made would have been beyond Priss's comprehension, if her aural implants hadn't momentarily deafened her outright in defensive reaction. The flash made even the explosion of Megatron's opening shot in the duel seem tame, and it was picked up by cameras in orbit and as far away as the Tower of Pion, since at the same instant the Harbinger's final destruction canceled the pall of silence that had fallen over Aravex. Half a second later, nothing remained of the Harbinger, or indeed of that little bit of Aravex, but smoke, dust, and an eerie silence. "Did... did we get him?" Megatron asked. Priss held Megatron, smoking barrel skyward, in her left hand, wiping the sweat from her forehead with her right sleeve, and grinned. "Oh yeah," she replied. "We got him." "He's bugging out," Terror observed as Cyclonus broke off and headed for orbit as fast as his thrusters could drive him. "Should we chase him?" "Mm... better not," Starscream replied with evident regret. "They're probably going to need our help picking up the pieces down below." Down below, Thundercracker was already on the ground, intent on picking up one of the bigger pieces. "Megatron!" he shouted, standing at the end of the smoking scar in the ground which was all that remained of Unicron's Harbinger. This was surely the work of Megatron, he had seen its like many times before, but where was his commander now? "Megatron, where are you?" "I'm here, Thundercracker," Megatron's voice replied. It took Thundercracker a moment to realize that it was coming from the human who stood at the far end of the blast furrow, and that she held Megatron's weapon form in her hand. The Seeker hurried over, kneeling by her side. "Sir, you're damaged," Thundercracker said, seeing the jagged stub of Megatron's gun barrel and, obvious even at this much-reduced scale, the cracks and burns in his plating. "Ha! You ought to see the other guy," Priss joked, riding the post-combat adrenaline surf. "We had to kill him -twice,-" she added, gesturing to the furrow. Thundercracker looked bemused. He'd never really known how to talk to humans at the best of times, and this was clearly not the best of times; after considering a couple of different courses of action, he settled on saying a bit lamely, "Uh, I'm sorry, you are?" "I owe this brave human my continued functionality," Megatron informed him. "Without her to take control of the situation after Galvatron blinded me, I wouldn't be talking to you now." Thundercracker drew back in shock. "Galvatron!" he blurted. "This brave human has a name, you know," Priss remarked. "She even told you what it is." "Did you say Galvatron?" Thundercracker asked. Megatron said archly, "You are to consider, Priss Morgan, how long it has been since I had occasion to -address- a human by name." "Uh-huh," said Priss skeptically. "EXCUSE me," Thundercracker broke in with a strange mix of deference and annoyance. "GALVATRON?!" "I'm afraid so," said Megatron. "Take us to Vilnacron, Thundercracker; I require more extensive repairs than can be accomplished here." AUTOBOT COMMCEN IACON The chaos in Commcen had amped up by at least ten degrees when the comm blackout in Aravex lifted and everyone started trying to get status reports at once; but even through all the noise, and the echoing cocoon of her own misery, Alexis heard Starscream's voice: "Starscream to Soundwave." She whirled, looking up at the screen above the Decepticon comm officer's station, as he replied, <> "The situation here seems to be under control," said Starscream, and yes, there was his face on the screen - different, she saw, undamaged, with the same little I'm-up-to-something smile she remembered of old. "Skywarp is down and needs medical attention at these coordinates. Cyclonus and the surviving Sweeps have withdrawn. Scourge is destroyed." <> Soundwave tilted his head, listening to an internal transmission, then added, <> "You may inform his lordship that I shall be delighted," Starscream replied. "I may need to drop General Currier in Iacon first, though." Terror appeared in a diagonal offset window. "Is Vilnacron where I go to present my bill for the F-15 you just stole?" she asked with a sardonic grin. "Probably," Starscream said cheerfully. "Starscream!" Alexis called, moving to the rail, not sure whether to be relieved or furious. "Hello!" he said, then peered closer. "You've been - oh dear. I'm sorry, I must have scared you to death with my little stunt with Scourge. Come to Vilnacron, I'll explain." He looked thoughtful. "No, there's too much. I'll sum up." She laughed in spite of herself, wiped at her eyes, and said, "I'll be there." Rumble and Frenzy looked at each other as she left the room, nearly skipping. "What was that all about?" Rumble wondered. Frenzy shrugged. "Dames. Who gets 'em?" DECEPTICON CENTRAL INFIRMARY VILNACRON There was already a fairly sizeable contingent of Decepticons waiting in the outer courtyard of the Central Infirmary by the time Thundercracker arrived, though how they could possibly have beaten him there he couldn't have said. They stood in loose ranks, staring, as Thundercracker landed in jet mode, rolled to a stop, and raised his canopy to let the human female disembark. She was still carrying Megatron, holding his battered weapon form in her hand almost as if it were a talisman of some kind. Thundercracker was troubled as he transformed and followed the human through the impromptu (and completely unintentional) honor guard to the infirmary's main entrance, but he kept his worries to himself. On the way up, Megatron had given him as complete a debriefing as any badly wounded Transformer hovering on the periphery of stasis lock could have managed. What he'd had to say was most alarming. Not just that Galvatron had somehow returned from the dead - that kind of thing was almost getting to be de rigueur around here - but what Galvatron had told Megatron before the fight had broken out. Unicron returning? Could that really be true? For her part, Priss was still too jazzed from the fight to give that the consideration it probably deserved, and anyway, the Unicron Incident had happened four centuries before she was born; the horror wasn't a real, living thing to her as it was for someone like Thundercracker, who had seen the All-Consuming in action before and knew what he was capable of. Instead of dwelling on Galvatron's remarks (or his bizarre "rebirth"), she looked around herself, taking in the unfamiliar sights. Vilnacron was different from Iacon, as different as, say, Eleanor City was from New Avalon, or cities in different countries on old Earth. She didn't know why that should surprise her, but she found that it did. Vilnacron seemed... more ancient, somehow, than Iacon did, perhaps because it had been sealed off and abandoned for so many eons before the Decepticons' return. Its architecture was more imposing, more -looming-, its towers and ramparts rendered in a slab-sided, brutally efficient style that put her in mind, insofar as it put her in mind of anyplace else in the universe, of Cardassia Prime. There was that same sense of a society given over entirely to military excellence, with little time or inclination left for embellishment. In the lobby of the Central Infirmary, they were met by the first female Decepticon Priss had ever knowingly seen, a slim and severely pretty specimen with features suggesting an Autobot-like alternate mode and a color scheme leaning primarily toward surgical green. She folded her arms and regarded the new arrivals with faint, resigned asperity. "You just -had- to have a live-fire exercise," she said. "Not now, Kitbash," Thundercracker told her. Kitbash sighed. "That should be in my personnel file. 'Not now, Kitbash.'" She half-knelt, closed one optic and extended the other to examine Megatron more closely. "Hmm." She regarded what parts of the damage she could see with a critical air, then retracted her optic and said without rancor, "You're going to have to let go now, human. I can't examine him properly with your little pink fist in the way." Priss blinked. "Oh. Uh, sorry. Ready, Megatron?" "We'll find out," Megatron replied. "Stand clear." Priss nodded. "In three. Two. One. Go!" she said, then released her grip and sprang back. Megatron did make it back to robot mode, but it looked painful even to Priss's unpracticed eye, and Kitbash's grumpy facade visibly cracked as she watched her leader struggle through a sparking, grinding transformation, then fall to one knee, internal fluids leaking from a dozen damaged places. She covered up her dismay by grumbling about the mess on her nice clean floor, but that couldn't mask the compassion on her face or in her voice as she went to his side and helped him to his feet. "Tsk," she muttered. "Look at you. Just like old times, hey? Come on, lean on me. I've got a bunch of work to do before I can even send you into CR." "Wait," Megatron told her. "Thundercracker, are you here?" "Here, sir." "You and Onslaught are to report to me here in one hour. I need to know as much as you can learn in that time about what happened in Aravex while I was... otherwise occupied." Thundercracker nodded. "As you command, Megatron." Priss stayed as close as she could and still be out of the way while Kitbash worked, patching the most important leaks and fractures. The Decepticon surgeon, once satisfied that her human observer had enough sense to stay out from underfoot, ignored her, working in an intent silence. It took perhaps half an hour for Kitbash to finish stabilizing Megatron to her satisfaction. The Decepticon leader reclined on a monitor couch, his plating criscrossed with bright yellow strips of duraplast emergency patch, connected to a suite of status monitors and an energon infuser with a clutch of cables and a couple of faintly glowing tubes. He was still blind, his upper face encircled by one of the duraplast bands, but he seemed much more comfortable. "There," said Kitbash, adjusting one last setting on the energon infuser. "Couple hours of this, you should be stable enough for me to put you in a CR chamber and get started on the major reconstruction work. And believe me, there's a -lot- of reconstruction work. Do you want the complete parts list?" "No, thank you," Megatron replied dryly. "Just a time estimate." Kitbash sighed. "Typical. No appreciation for what I'm up against, just worried about how long it'll take. Well, Supreme Commander, in the state you're in you -should- have a solid 48 hours in a CR chamber. Seventy-two would be better. So naturally that means you're about to say:" "No more than 12." "You are the worst patient in the history of medical care." Priss partially suppressed a snort; Kitbash glanced at her and, unexpectedly, winked, then turned back to her patient and went on, "But have it your way. Twelve hours it is. Don't blame me if your face doesn't come out quite as pretty as you're used to." Megatron emitted a dry chuckle. "So noted," he replied, then addressed the room in general: "Priss Morgan, are you still here?" "Right here," said Priss, faintly surprised. "Come here," Megatron said, extending a hand toward the sound of her voice. He couldn't reach to the floor from where he lay, and unlike Iacon, Vilnacron was built with no allowances made for human-sized lifeforms, so there was no mid-level catwalk as there was in so many rooms of the Autobot capital. Priss crossed the room and stood looking up at him for a moment, at a loss, then turned to Kitbash and shrugged. Kitbash clearly didn't know what Megatron had in mind either, but, returning the shrug, she knelt and allowed the human to step onto her hand. There was just about room for Priss to stand there and be lifted gingerly up until she could step across to Megatron's much larger hand. From there, Megatron conveyed her to his right shoulder, where his armor was flat enough to make for a fairly decent place to sit. "Uh... not that I'm objecting, exactly, but what are you doing?" she asked. "I believe your people call it 'making a statement'," Megatron replied. "Kitbash, I need to speak to a few people before I begin the CR process." If he expected Kitbash to object that he should be resting, Megatron had misjudged her; she simply said, "Well, don't get too worked up. I don't want to repatch those oil lines," and went out to the lobby to start managing the crowd. The first two to enter were the leaders of the wargame teams, reporting as he'd ordered them to before the repairs began. Neither seemed to react to the presence of the human on Megatron's shoulder; Thundercracker had suspected as much when he'd carried them up here, and Onslaught was just too professional to let it ruffle him. Megatron himself said nothing about it, letting Priss's presence speak for itself as he ordered, "Thundercracker. Onslaught. Report." "The surviving hostiles have fled the district," Thundercracker reported. "Pursuit was unsuccessful. Sideslip and Slipstream came the closest of anybody to catching them; they think Cyclonus and the others have left the planet altogether." "There are no signs of any non-aligned ground forces within the search area," Onslaught added. "This appears to have been an aerial assault only. The Autobots have been... surprisingly cooperative as regards the Aravex perimeter. They seem distracted, particularly their military police. I suspect something else has happened in Autobot- controlled territory today, but it doesn't appear to be related to our incursion." "Very well. How stands the game?" Thundercracker and Onslaught glanced at each other; then the former said hesitantly, "Er... well, sir, your optics... we thought it best to suspend - " "Nonsense," Megatron said flatly. "Would you give up if I were disabled or destroyed in real action? Resume your stations. Onslaught, Force Blue is yours. The game will recommence in one hour." "As you command, Megatron," both commanders replied - what else was there to say? "I will be out of communication in deep CR until sometime tomorrow morning," Megatron went on. "If you are in doubt regarding any aspect of the game, consult Soundwave. I intend to observe the endgame myself. Dismissed." Onslaught and Thundercracker glanced at each other again, could think of nothing more to say, acknowledged their orders once more, and took their leave. Soundwave came next, having hurried over from Iacon. Sylvie was still with him, and she paused in the doorway, surprised to see her partner perched on the battered Decepticon leader's shoulder. Priss gave her a wry little demi-salute, shrugging in a what-can-you-do sort of way. Sylvie just shook her head, silently acknowledging that she might have known something like this would happen. I suppose it stands to reason, she told herself with an inward half-smile. She's been looking for a gun like him her whole life. Soundwave gave a terse report on the strange events in Little Iacon, their lack of apparent correlation with the strange events in Aravex apart from the timing, and the cooperative investigation he and Blaster had only just begun into the information and communications aspects of both incidents. Megatron listened gravely, not interrupting, and then issued a few instructions for the continuation of the wargame. "Finishing the exercise must be our first priority," he concluded. "Optimus Prime and his forces can manage the physical aftermath of the Little Iacon incident without our help - but you may continue your investigation. If nothing else, it's a valuable demonstration of our willingness to... coexist." <> Soundwave agreed. "Very well. I must address the troops briefly. Put me on all- forces visual." <> Stepping back for a slightly wider field of view, Soundwave powered up his holo-array in capture mode. <> Almost all the Decepticons were in Aravex, preparing to resume the games as soon as Onslaught and Thundercracker were back in the district; now they paused as one, regarding their com screens. The message was relayed to the Autobot observers in Aravex and back at Autobase Commcen as well. All of them saw Megatron, his plating battered and patched, bands of mediseal entirely obscuring his optic bridge, but his resolve clearly undamaged - and all of them saw the redheaded human woman sitting on his shoulder, too, where no human had ever been permitted to sit before. "My Decepticons," he said, his hoarse voice slightly raspier even than usual. "With the usual speed and the typical veracity of rumors in wartime, some of you may have heard by now that I have been assassinated. As you can see, that is very much not the case - though I'd be lying if I said my attacker hadn't given it his best shot." Decepticon and Autobot listeners alike glanced at each other in surprise. Had Megatron just made a -joke?- "The interlopers who attacked our wargame wore the forms of those so-called Decepticons created by Unicron in the early 21st century," Megatron went on. "Their leader, who engaged me, appeared - despite what we know of his fate - to be Galvatron." He paused to let that sink in, then continued, "In the end, this young human, Priss Morgan of the International Police, and I were able to destroy this... apparition." Startled that he'd mentioned her by name live on air, as it were, Priss gave the whole planet Cybertron a bemused little wave. If having been namechecked by the Decepticon commander was a surprise, what he said next was a bigger one, for Megatron went on to declare flatly, "Without her help, I would not have prevailed. In recognition of her bravery and quick thinking, I hereby commission her an officer of the Decepticon Forces." Priss blinked, glanced at his profile, then looked down at Sylvie, who grinned and gave her an exaggeratedly earnest double-thumbs- up. "This raid by Unicron's creations has significant implications, which we - and the Autobots - must discuss at length once the game is concluded. In the meantime, it is even -more- critical that we gauge our state of readiness. Force Blue will be under the command of Onslaught for the remainder of the game. That is all." Megatron nodded to Soundwave, who shut down his holoarray and signed off. "That should give them a few things to think about," Megatron mused with slightly dark satisfaction. "They're not the -only- ones," Priss remarked. "Oh, don't worry," Megatron told her dryly. "The duties are largely ceremonial." "Uh... thanks." "Not at all. Soundwave, you may return to Iacon. We'll meet for the post-game debriefing tomorrow." <> Soundwave replied; then - with a pause for one last look back and grinning wave - Sylvie followed him out. /* Team Sleep "The Passportal" _The Matrix Reloaded_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Imagination, Unlimited presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT TRANSFORMERS: CYBERTRON RELOADED Issue #6 - "Adapt and Survive" The Cast (in order of appearance) Megatron Feedback Onslaught Priss Morgan Galvatron Armada Patricia Currier Starscream Cyclonus Scourge Alexis Thi Dang The Technobots Red Alert Soundwave Blaster Sylvie Daniels Thundercracker Sideslip Slipstream Baffle Jetfire Skywarp Unicron? Rumble Frenzy and introducing Kitbash Written and Illustrated by Benjamin D. Hutchins Philip J. Moyer With the Gracious Assistance of Geoff Depew and the EPU Usual Suspects NEXT ISSUE: With Megatron down for repairs and strange things afoot all over Cybertron, it may not be the best time for the Decepticons to finish their war games - but most are determined to finish what they've started! What else lurks in the shadows of Cybertron, and how will it react when escalating tensions within the Decepticon ranks threaten to make the games all too real? TRANSFORMERS: CYBERTRON RELOADED #7 "The Future of Ancient History" E P U (colour) 2012