Prologue: Not Good Enough
A band of Deception footsoldiers trudged through the fog-soaked, city-turned battlefield. One, a tall, green-colored grunt, randomly stopped, and lifted his hand into the air, signaling to the others to do so as well. Something was off.
Suddenly, he let out a startled cry as a loud shot rang through the air, and went down, a smoking hole in his abdomen, and the one standing next to him fell as well not even a few seconds after that. With several confused shouts, the rest of the forces struggled to find cover as more sniper shots came for them.
"Good shot" Crosshairs commented, as he searched for a new target from the floor window of the building his teammate and himself were in. Quickscope merely shrugged his shoulders in response, as his rifle fired again, releasing blue bolt of energy that struck home, sending another unfortunate trooper tumbling to the ground.
The thundering noise of giant footsteps through the scrap-scattered ground suddenly came from the left of them. Looking over his shoulder, Crosshairs saw an enormous white-and-red figure, several times bigger than either he or Quickscope were, step out from behind the building they were stationed in. The being looked at them with large, blazing red visor, two long radio antenna clearly visible on both sides of his coal-black head, then it glared at the many Decepticons, a crimson Autobot symbol shining proudly on his chest.
"We are Superion" the giant shouted in a deep, echoing, somewhat metallic voice, mouth unmoving. "We have one designation: Destroy all Decepticons in this vicinity."
"So... Th-that's a combiner? Wow..." Crosshairs gasped in awe, as the giant began romping through the battlefield again, stepping over, and even on several barricades and obstructing debris, flattening them like cardboard, approaching the now-terrified opposing soldiers. "I... I actually thought he'd be smaller."
The goliath began firing his multiple, small turrets on his body, shredding to bits many of his enemies unfortunate enough to not get out of his way, while simultaneously stomping or crushing them as well.
As Crosshairs began to resume his duty, he took aim, and pulled the trigger on his weapon when he caught sight of an enemy troop. However, to his surprise, the rifle only made a clicking noise, and nothing happened.
"Son of a scrap-eater..." Crosshairs cursed, shaking his weapon around, uselessly. "I'm already out of ammo. Darn."
"Oh, well whaddya know?" Quickscope beeped from his electronic voice, courtesy of losing his voicebox a few weeks prior, looking to his partner with as much of a sarcastic look as he could make, given that he didn't have many features aside from two, unblinking, orange optics. "Who's the one that said "pack extra ammo" before we went off on the mission?"
"Oh, hah, hah" Crosshairs laughed, dryly, watching with some amusement as Superion continued to topple over small buildings and bits of rubble like toys in his effort to chase down his remaining enemies.
"I'm heading back" he said again, lifting his rifle, turning to the window in the back of the abandoned building they were both in. "You should too. This fog is getting worse, and it looks like that combiner has things all settled."
"I'll go after my next shot, don't worry" Quickscope beeped again, trying to find an available target to take out. "If that scout Tailpipe gets back before I do, tell him I said "good work for not getting killed this time.""
"Why? You never even talk to the kid" Crosshairs rebutted. Quickscope only ignored his friend and continued aiming. Giving up on the conversation, Crosshairs turned, and left his friend to his work, jumping out of the window, landing smoothly on the ground below, transforming into a four-wheeled car-like vehicle, and driving off.
As soon as his ally had left, Quickscope peered through his scope again, only to see that Superion was standing alone, surrounded by smoke, fog, and what remained of some buildings. All enemy troops were either dead, or had fled.
Sighing, Quickscope peered across the vast area, scanning in the hopes of finding one last enemy to offline ...Then he saw something that made him blink.
Sprinting through the smoke of one of the nearby, low-lying buildings, was a black-painted, red-visored, clearly feminine figure, wielding some sort of sword of curved, slender, single-edged make. Running to the edge of the flat roof she was on, she took a single, tremendous jump, and began soaring through the fog like a bullet, landing on the combiner's left shoulder, planting her sword in it to catch herself.
Startled, Superion turned his head to her as fast as he could, but only in time to see her pull her blade out of him, and silently slash it horizontally past the part of his visor where his left optic would have been, cutting through it deeply, brushing shards of glass into the air next to his head.
Immediately after the attack, she turned and fell to the ground, dashing toward the building she had just left from, entering it through non other than the door.
"Argh!" The enormous mech cried out, finally reacting to the pain, clutching at the cut-open part of his visor with one servo, stumbling back almost a hundred feet before finally stopping. One of his legs got caught in between a crevice made from rubble and a part of a fallen building, rooting him in place.
"We will destroy you!" Superion yelled out, raising his right arm to the building his small foe ran into, an abnormally long, steel blaster extending from it. Within seconds, a bright, purple beam flew from the barrel of the weapon, hitting the building, followed by an explosion of fire and noise, bringing an annoying buzz to Quickscope's audio receptors.
Before the last bits of metal could even finish falling to the ground, a figure flew out of the smoke and flames, jumping out of what remained of the building, and back onto the ground, immediately following it up by running back to Superion, who by now had forgotten his enemy, and was focussing on his stuck leg.
I think I'm actually starting to root for this one... Quickscope thought, when the determined bot leapt through the air, and slashed at Superion's exposed tendon on his free leg. The titan stumbled, falling to the leg with a grunt of surprise, and struggled to catch itself from plummeting face-first into the cold, metal ground by outstretching his arm, saving himself just in time.
The second his hand touched down, though, the mysterious bot circled around, and hurdled onto the arm, and, as if it was a flight of stairs, quickly rushed up to her foe's face, sword in hand, dodging any shots from the multiple turrets on Superion's body. She finally reached the combiner's head, and ran her sword through his neck, ripping it back out right after, and taking another leap to the other side of his body, landing on his opposite, right shoulder.
Unable to do anything for the moment, the only thing that Superion could do was send his right servo to intercept his injured neck, all while his small enemy calmly walked over to his head, sword twirling around in her hand, just before she got into another combat position, tapping the tip of her weapon on his unguarded, more-than-exposed nape.
She's good... For a Decepticon Quickscope thought again, focussing his aim to the enigmatic swordbot, who had raised her blade, preparing to deliver a finishing blow to her giant opponent.
The coup de grace.
Quickscope quickly got a good lock on her with his rifle, and coldly pulled the trigger before she could finish her attack.
The killjoy.
A blue beam zoomed from the long barrel of his sniper rifle, flashing briefly through the air, and directly hitting the Decepticon, blowing a hole clear through her chest, as the blade still hung, raised, in the air.
The sword instantly, and limply, fell from her grasp, bouncing off of Superion's body, and onto the metal ground, clanging when it hit the surface. The bot herself, visibly trembling through Quickscope's view, slowly dropped her shaking hands to cover the bleeding hole that had emerged through her body, helpless to do anything other than gasp in disbelief over what had just happened, and stumble back on the combiner's shoulder.
Superion, who by now had reclaimed his wits, shot his outstretched, left servo at the defenseless, dazed bot, and snatched her up in it, off of his body. As the combiner began to stand up again, he lifted her up as well, showing that her lower body was exposed in the titan's grip.
Looking back to his prey, Superion's other servo grabbed the exposed lower half of the bot, and with a growl, and a brutal snapping noise, ripped her in two with as much effort as would be used when snapping apart a tooth-pick, discarding the bits of metal and limbs that were once her legs and abdomen, before throwing her upper half to the ground in disgust.
"Good... But not good enough" Quickscope snickered, as he watched Superion mercilessly step on the hapless, disarmed bot in a final move of retaliation, leaving what remained of her in an imprinted crater.
"...Not good enough."
The dark is generous
Its first gift is concealment: our true faces lie in the dark beneath our skins, our true hearts remain shadowed deeper still. But the greatest concealment lies not in protecting our secret truths, but in hiding us from the truths of others.
The dark protects us from what we dare not know.
Its second gift is comforting illusion: the ease of gentle dreams in night's embrace, the beauty that imagination brings to what would repel in day's harsh light. But the greatest of its comforts is the illusion that the dark is temporary: that every night brings a new day. Because it is the day that is temporary.
Day is the illusion.
Its third gift is the light itself: as days are defined by the nights that divide them, as the stars are defined by the infinite black through which they wheel, the dark embraces the light and brings it forth from the center of its own self.
With each victory of the light, it is the dark that wins.
The dark is generous, and it is patient.
It is the dark that seeds cruelty into justice, that drips contempt into compassion, that poisons love with grains of doubt.
The dark can be patient, because the slightest drop of rain will cause those seeds to sprout.
The rain will come, and the seeds will sprout, for the dark is the soil in which they grow, and it is the clouds above them and it waits behind the star that gives them light.
The dark's patience is infinite.
Eventually, even stars burn out.
The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins.
It always wins because it is everywhere.
It is in the wood that burns in your hearth, and in the kettle on the fire; it is under your chair and under your table and under the sheets on your bed. Walk in the midday sun and the dark is with you, attached to the soles of your feet.
The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.
The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins...
- Matthew Stover