Chapter Ten

"There is no light save from that perfect peace
Which never is clouded: it is else darkness,
Shadow of the flesh, or poison of its disease."
—Dante, Paradiso, Canto XIX, Lines 64-66

Sideswipe knew something was wrong, utterly wrong, when he lost Solarflare’s homing beacon. One moment, it was sitting comfortably in the front of his cortex like a femme-for-hire, and the next, it was gone, leaving a gaping black hole.

“Hound –”

“I felt it, too, Sides,” the tracker replied, almost instantaneously. “Sunny, Breaker?”

“Gone,” the echoed.

“It’s those stupid Maximals’ fault,” Sunstreaker added, riding low on his axels, engine humming dangerously low as they raced through the dead streets. “Prime shoulda allowed us terminate that shithead … but nooooooooo …”

Sideswipe rolled mental optics. “You’re getting cranky in your old age, bro,” he chastised, sending his brother a funny image of a decrepit Sunstreaker hobbling around Cybertron with a cane.

Hound coughed discreetly, trying to get the Twins back on track. Sunny snarled a response, but Sideswipe casually closed his aural tracks. Trailbreaker’s calm yet firm tone cut through any animosity that the yellow one might be churning up. “Brothers, brothers, I suggest that we save our energy for the road. We don’t know how long it will take us to reach them. I’ll radio Prime; Hound, can you follow it?”

Assent flowed through their close commlink. Sideswipe generously moved to the left to allow Hound the front of their little band. From the reformatted Jeep’s bed, a slim rod rose and flowered into a small satellite; this immediately began to twist and turn, searching for a dead frequency that only Hound could track.

Sideswipe kept his sensors on the road ahead; he was a warrior to the core, and thus did not fear the unknown, that tendril of doubt he knew was worming its way into Hound and Trailbreaker’s sparks. This did not mean he wasn’t concerned, but there was a time and place for everything; Flare could take care of herself, and as she often reminded them, she hated being rescued.

The old warehouse district was a bunch of cubes set on parallel, crossing roads. There was not a curve in the whole area, and it made their job all the easier. Sideswipe heard his brother grumbling behind him about how many hours it would take to clean all the gunk and junk and unspeakable crud out of his gleaming chassis. Sideswipe begrudgingly agreed. Truthfully, this was a shitty place, all rundown and in need of a good reformatting. The red Lamborghini had no idea why nothing had been done before, but then again, it wasn’t his place to be concerned with such affairs. He had his merchant empire (generously funded by Mirage, if you could believe it) and that was all he contented himself with – that and the occasional gladiatorial matches in the new Cybertropolis Arena (for fun only, slag).

“Right,” Hound pronounced, and in that direction they swung. “Left. Straight. Right …”

The deeper they drove into this miasma of despair, the grittier and grimier it became. Hound and Trailbreaker had no qualms about plowing right through large patches of sludge, but Sideswipe was with Sunstreaker on this one: they transformed, hopped over the stinking piles of goo, then hit the road once more.

Not long into their journey, Trailbreaker spoke up, having previously been deep in communication with Prime, Prowl and Mirage back at the estate. “Smoke,” he enunciated deliberately.

Sunstreaker made a rude noise. “Well, no shit, Sherlock. If you haven’t noticed, this is a dump?”

Sideswipe peered up, then down. He drove close to his brother and gently nudged him, using the precise amount of pressure so that the yellow Lamborghini’s paint wouldn’t flake off. “But there isn’t any smoke around, bro,” he pointed out. “That’s the only one.”

Sunstreaker’s reply was a short pause followed by a revving of his engine. “Well, let’s get to it then! I feel the urge to kick more lizard tail.”

Hound and Trailbreaker sighed, but they took up the chase all the same. Sideswipe jumped forward, matching his brother stride for stride – if you will. This time, neither Sunny nor Sides had any reserves about plowing through refuse; their goal was but a few hundred yards away, and they could feel their Energon pumps hasten in motion, rushing the precious fluid throughout their upgraded systems.

They sped around a sharp corner, down yet another alleyway before the whole street opened up into chaos. Where one of those cookie-cutter facilities should have been squatting and rusting away, there was nothing save blue and red metal. And a very large plume of smoke hovering delicately over the remnants of a tremendous explosion.

The Autobots threw themselves out of carmode and immediately began ringing the site. Sideswipe retracted his hands, bringing forth his famed piledrivers, and got to work. As he dug, he began noticing how strange this site was: here and there, among the rust red metal, were dank blue bits. A large chunk of glass, a faint logo spider-webbed beyond recognition, was poking out of ground. Sideswipe pulled one driver back and turned it over, fingering the ancient glass. Finding nothing worth his notice, he tossed it aside and began digging once more.

Methodically, he moved from one end to the other, idly reflecting on Flare’s poor luck. The little grey femme always seemed to end up being buried under a ton of rubble. This made it what? Five or six? Maybe as much as ten, but that was stretching it a bit. As he shifted a particularly heavy piece, something grabbed at his toe; Sideswipe nearly dropped the bulky blue bit in surprise.

“…zzssshhhssss … he-shzzzzz-llllsssshhhhh-phsssss.”

“I got Flare!” he shouted over his shoulder, bending down to haul the grey femme from under the slag pile. Those damned wings of hers caused a problem in extraction, but Sideswipe was not a gentle creature; he gave a tremendous yank – with Solarflare screaming bloody murder – and out she came. Fluff floated off her torn plumage, coasting gently in the smoke-filled air until it landed with delicate precision on a large shard of dank crimson glass. Holding her up by one forearm, the melee warrior lowered her to the ground, where she collapsed in a tangle of gritty, grimy grey parts. Beyond, Sunstreaker, Hound and Trailbreaker continued to sift through the rubble.

Sideswipe peered myopically at the femme. “Having fun without us, baby?”

Flare glared at him with one optic, the other trained on her kneecap as it wiggled back and forth. “So much,” she returned tersely.

“Seriously.” The red Lamborghini squatted beside her and used the heel of one fat hand to knock the errant joint back into place. Flare’s crest shot straight up and her pinions stood out on either side of her body like a porcupine as the pain slammed home. “There. All better. I’m no Doc Ratchet, but that should hold for a while. Now, what happened here?”

Quietly, laboriously, Solarflare began recounting their adventure. As she haltingly spoke, another contingent of Autobots pulled up to the scene. Along with Tracks, Huffer and Brawn, there was Windcharger, who immediately set about tapping into his Quintesson-augmented magnetic powers to wade through the carnage. One by one, the Maximals were plucked from the pile, all in relatively good condition, considering most of them had somehow landed under Captain Primal’s protective bulk. Four corpses were recovered as well: the two Insecticons, Laserbeak and Buzzsaw – well, Buzzsaw’s head, his beak still in the gaping emotion he’d been found with by Rattrap.

“But no Soundwave,” Brawn groused, his stocky arms folded across his barrel chest.

Rattrap glared at the former Minibot. “Yanno, man, a few hours ago, I woulda been in agreement with ya – but look around. This IS that Soundwavy thingamabob.”

Huffer and Tracks appeared as dubious as Brawn until Captain Primal rose from his Twin-treatment and stuck his hand in a pile of slag. Sunstreaker sniffed. “Look at him,” he complained to Sideswipe. “We pull his sorry, overbulked hide out of that shitheap and he goes diving back in. Hey, Flare – what’d they call it back on Earth – ‘dumpster-diving’?”

“Wouldn’t know,” came her mumbled reply as she sat with her bum leg straight out, Windcharger pulling bits of Soundwave out of her plating.

Sideswipe snickered, shaking his head at the Maximal’s antics. When they downsized bodies, they must’ve downsized their cortexes, too, because it seemed these guys lost it once they took hits to the noggin. How effective. Still, the Captain continued to root around; Sideswipe canvassed his vast repository of rude remarks and was getting ready to fire one off when the oversized monkey yanked something from the rubble.

“Is this proof enough?” he asked genially, a slight smirk hovering about his Prime-like features. The Autobots simply gawked: dangling from that space-age primate’s massive paw was the cracked and caved-in head of Soundwave. The optic band had been blown completely free of its casing, but there was no mistaking who that face plate belong to.

Tracks whistled. He carefully picked his way to the Maximal and stared up at the decapitated head. “I’ll be,” he murmured urbanely. “That is old Soundwave.”

Sideswipe watched as his yellow twin’s head slowly turned to face the Maximal Rattrap. “You did this?” he exclaimed in horror. “With what!”

Clearly understanding that this was his moment to shine among the Autobots, Rattrap fairly preened. “Well,” he blew on his nicked fingertips, “just two sticker-bombs, that’s all.” Tucking his hands behind his back, he rocked on his heels, grinning impudently up at Sunstreaker. “Guess they don’t make Decepticons like they used to, eh?”

Not an individual who liked to be one-upped, Sunstreaker growled low, taking a step forward, black fist raised. “Listen here, pipe-sucker –” He was cut off by a piece of Soundwave’s armor that came into contact with his head. “Who the fuck did –!” He whirled, only to see that Solarflare was standing, propped up between Windcharger and, surprisingly, BlackArachnia; she was digging another piece free with her pointed toe, ready to transfer it to her hand.

“You know,” she began with deadly calm, “I’m getting very sick and very tired of this fucked up rivalry! Right now, I don’t give two shits about how the Elders shafted Prime and gave Cybertron over to them. We have bigger issues here, Sunshine. So, shove your big, fat pipe back where it belongs and get with the program!”

Sideswipe rocked back on his heels. “She’d know,” he murmured as an aside to a less-than-impressed Silverbolt, a lascivious grin on his face.

“How … quaint,” the Fuzor replied, looking away, his ears slanted backwards in light of the information he so desperately did not want to hear. Sunstreaker’s lip curled and he stared at Solarflare fiercely. It was one of his famous psychopathic looks, one that brooked no nonsense. “And what do you suggest we do, girl?”

“Find him.”

Trailbreaker easily stepped between them, hands outstretched. “We regroup and call Prime, understand?” He looked from femme to mech, both of whom nodded in assent – Sunstreaker, begrudgingly. “Good. Trailbreaker to Ligier Tower …”

A dragon stalked among the refuse and wonton disposal of one-time-use items that the elite society was known for. The rusty surface beneath his gilded talons cracked and shifted dangerously, opening in rifts as wide as his tail as his bulk stalked the alleyways. Dirt, grime and unmentionables were piled high, some in mounds as tall as he was. These he was forced to plow through; as much as he wished to rain terror upon the highbrow society, he was constrained to the ground. Powerful as Megatron was, no minions were available as cannon fodder in the event that the Maximals came after him.

At the mere thought of Primal, Megatron’s tail lashed out in a savage arc, obliterating the nearest rusted hut. Ancient metal flew through the air in a feather light rain, coating his fire-polished Transmetal armor in a fine mist. He snorted, tendrils of fire flicking out from his nostrils and curling delicately about his muzzle. “I am not an animal to be caged,” he intoned, snaking his head as he spoke. “No one can hold me, for I am like the wind: powerful, intimidating, ethereal. Tripredacus could not hold me down with their laws; the Pax Cybertronia was a sham. Nor could my ‘illustrious’ ancestors. Fools all. The wisdom of ages was at their beck and call, along with new forms, and still they could not defeat me.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega … the end to all. What is a name but a tool? And though my chosen appellation holds contempt and failure in its grasp, it still holds power. No one can deny that – not even the Maximals. Optimal Optimus named himself for a soft, controllable individual; when Transformers speak the name of Prime, what do they conjure in their cortexes? Someone who willingly stepped aside, though he had all the power. But, ah, not I. The best way to judge a mech is by how much power he holds. Autobots and Maximals lose the battle by delegating power; power flows to the ones who know how to use it – solely. My namesake had the right of that one.”

Megatron paused, arching his serpentine neck skyward. “Let all of Cybertron know this: I am Megatron, and I have come to rule. Forever.”

Illusion fidgeted at her post. Trained by the best she might have been, but she was sparked in peacetime. She had never fired upon a living target, only simulators and cutouts upon her father’s shooting range. She had no interest in those turbofox hunts her father and Spectrum went on from time to time, just to assure the high society that they were still in the game.

The gyrfalcon-femme stared at the long bars upon a field of green, each a different wavelength on the Transformer continuum. This was what her mother was best at. The Ark warriors used to embarrass Solarflare horribly by telling Illusion and Spectrum stories of how they had to almost blow things up in order to get her attention when she was working. “There are two things that can get Flare off the comm,” they used to say. “An explosion, and Mirage with two glasses of high-grade.”

A large blue hand rested itself gently on her shoulder strut. Illusion looked up into Optimus’ bright blue optics. “Anything, Lu?”

She blinked and quickly scanned the board. “No, nothing save our own frequencies, Unc — sir.”

Optimus ruffled her crest. “Prepare a coded missive to Cosmos.” Illusion leaned forward, taloned fingers running over the board as she typed out the old Autobot commander’s request. None of it made any sense to her – something about using the Predacon satellites to bounce a frequency to Cybertron and back again in order to pick up the imposter’s unique signature. She had to wonder if it was even possible. Cosmos was old, and a little bit bumbling in his actions these days. But here, in their Tower estate, the Pax Cybertronia had been unanimously suspended, and Pre-signing ranks were in effect. Illusion did as she was ordered, without question.

When it was sent and they waited the obligatory ten-clicks for the code to pass through the usual channels and reach Cosmos, and for the former Minibot to reply he’d received transmission, Optimus patted her shoulder once more before turning away. Illusion watched him go out of the corner of her optic. Part of her was resistant to the fact of the possibility of another war. She wondered if this was how her father, Mirage, felt when he had first joined the Autobots. As if the military were an ill-fitting cog in his pristine structure. Still scanning, she listened to the conversation between Mirage and Prowl with half an audio:

“I fear that this Megatron is more slippery than the old one,” Prowl was saying.

“I think it would do us all a world of good if we stopped comparing this creature to our Megatron,” her father noted dryly. “They’re obviously dissimilar. We can’t comb old Megs’ haunts, because this new Megatron would not be caught dead there.”

Prowl: “Do we know anything about this time bomb? Where he originated? Who he might be connected to?”

Mirage: “Our time with the Maximals was severely short. I don’t think they even know where he is from. The underground society of the Predacons is far less forthcoming than the Arena days. We could see old Megatron rising from there.”

There was an ironic pause at the Ligier’s remark. It was Cybertron legend that the Tower-dwellers laughed in the face of their low-society compatriots when word spread that Megatron was coming. They paid dearly: with their lives, and the very Towers they built.

“Adjectives, then,” Prowl continued. “What words did they use to describe him?”

“ ‘Megalomaniac’. That was from the femme, BlackArachnia.”

“That can lead us down many paths,” Prowl ruminated. “Self-importance, a sense of immortality, blatant disregard for any life other than his own.” He sighed. “Illusion, call up Skyfire and Powerglide. Patch them into my console. He can’t hide forever in that sinkhole.”

Illusion jolted herself out of her half-daydream. “Yes, Commander …” She fiddled with the controls, trying to remember which ones were designed to formulate a link between this inner sanctum and the Autobots. Located in the heart of the Ligier estate was this saferoom, constructed entirely by Grapple, Hoist and Wheeljack; Mirage would have no outsiders know of its existence, or their intent to build such a structure. It was about as large as the old comm station in Autobot City, where her mother and Blaster reigned supreme; smooth white-silver walls concealed advanced Cybertronian technology: radios that were capable of connecting to any Ark warrior on the planet, among other things.

“Trailbreaker to Ligier Tower …”

Illusion jerked her fingers away as a familiar voice rang in her inner audios. She pulled the external mic close to her lips. “Ligier Tower receives you, Trailbreaker.” Behind her, chairs pivoted and three large mech bodies were suddenly at her back. Mirage’s slim black fingers reached in front of her, pulling the wire that connected her to the comm free and cranking up the volume.

“Visual,” the noblemech prompted his spark-daughter.

Illusion bit her lip and strove to comply. “No visual attainable, Father.”

Mirage grunted. Trailbreaker’s voice came over the comm once more: “Sorry about that, boys, but we’re a little low on energy over here. Been digging for a few cycles.”

“Digging?” Prime leaned forward. “Explain, Trailbreaker. What have you found?”

Succinctly, in classic Trailbreaker style, the black mech relayed Solarflare’s story to them. “Unfortunately,” he continued, “we arrived too late. Everyone is fine on our side, but there is no sign of Megatron.”

“We’re having Cosmos try to track his signal from space,” Optimus told the older warrior. “Shortly, Skyfire and Powerglide will be flying over. Link up with them and continue your search. I fear this has gone on for far too long; we’re bound to be discovered sooner or later.”

“Aye, Prime. We’ll keep an optic out for them. Any instructions?”

Illusion turned her head slightly and saw a light in Prime’s optics that she had never seen before. Conflicting emotions rolled behind those sky blue lenses as he fought an intense internal battle of morals. “Call us when you get there,” he said at last. “I want to see this Predacon for myself.”

Prowl and Mirage looked up at the old Autobot leader, jaws slightly slack. Even Trailbreaker’s cool demeanor seemed shaken. “Uh, of course, Prime. Trailbreaker out.” Illusion smartly cut the connection as static from the other side began pouring through the speakers.

“Do you think that is wise, Optimus?” Prowl asked, looking at his old leader with a touch of concern. “We have more than enough warriors out there.”

Optimus’ brow ridge drew down sadly. “Don’t begrudge an old soldier one more battle, my friend,” he replied before moving back to his seat of command. This close, Illusion could sense the signals that flew back and forth between Mirage and Prowl as they conversed via internal commlink. She looked at them – old warriors with more than enough scars despite the shiny exterior.

“Skyfire and Powerglide,” Prowl prompted, tapping his index finger on the back of her chair. Optics wide, she nodded, slamming the plug that draped from her neck back into its port in the console.

“Skyfire. Powerglide. This is Ligier Tower. Respond.”