But nobody wants to die

Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit.


Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die. It was a quip meant to be funny that Spike had heard many times – it had been funny before. Now Spike was trying to wrap his brain over the concept of immortality.

Immortality was the negation of mortality, not dying, ever. Well, it wasn't that eternal deal what Spessartine was offering to him, at least according to the Quints, since he could be killed. He just wouldn't be growing old. Well, his body would do just that and die, and that was part of what felt so iffy to Spike. Would he really be transferred to Spessartine as a soul, or would his mind just be copied? And just how much worth it would it be to hang to the Insecticon forever? But, a small, base part of him kept piping, I don't want to die!

If he became immortal he would have to witnesses everyone he cared about dying around him. Exept most of them were Autobots nowadays, so it would just be dad and Carly… Bad enough! But they might die before him anyway, dad almost surely.

He remembered the video feed Optimus had shown him the day before. Windcharger and Tracks looming as guards over squid-like Hepatizon, their bright blue, white and red dimming her more muted colour scheme. Ratchet like some great, pink fury, Optimus towering over them all and in the middle of all this him, pale, passed out, tiny. Pitiful. Helpless.

If you are going to collect Spessartine's hivebody from Cybertron, his mind will imprint on the thousands processors of the Insecticons. If he lives long enough for the process to be completed, he will live on after the death of his flesh shell. Though even the he will be tied to Spessartine.

And that was the crux of it. Tied to Spessartine and probably unable to control his new body at all. All this supposing the Quints weren't just lying. Spike just had way too much time to think about pipe dreams and watch stupid, brain-rotting programs.

Sparkplug and Spike Witwicky were the Autobots' public relations liaisons and they doubled as field medics and general handymen, but their original job description had been to educate their new allies in all things human so they could function at least in the fringes of everyday human society and not commit any faux passes or accidental crimes. They had taught their friends that red light means stop and green light means go, that the speed limits are there for a reason, it isn't polite to ask a human why they aren't having sex when their body chemistry maximises the chances of pregnancy, why they get embarrassed and annoyed when Ratchet points the correct time out and that Hound can't have a pet puma because the law says so.

But of course the Autobots were interested in non-essential things also and Bumblebee shared a pretty common weakness for soap operas. The first ten minutes of watching a millennium-old relatively giant alien robot playing with TV had amused Spike. After three hours of shiny-opticked amazement it hadn't been so amusing anymore. Apparently Cybertron had lacked the whole genre altogether, which Spike would have taken as a sign of their greater intelligence if all Autobots starting from freaking Sunstreaker and ending with Optimus Prime himself hadn't been so taken with the little daydreams.

"It's time to go, or we are going to be late from the aerial show. Now let's go!" With that, Spike had grabbed Bumblebee's finger and attempted to drag him towards the rec room's door, ignoring the resulting whine of cooling fans, meant to imitate a sigh.

"But I wanted to see if Erica was really going to marry Mark. They aren't well suited for each other at all! Alex is a much better man for her, loving and not hiding a car accident where her step-uncle was crippled!" Bumblebee, scout extraordinaire, had whined.

"Oh, God above, please don't tell me you have gotten hooked on soap operas too. Please." Wincing, Spike had almost shoved him out the door, followed and shut it behind himself. Aeroplanes, he had thought, real aeroplanes that weren't red and purple and white and weren't going to shoot at them.

"But Alex loves her!"

Somebody save me.

So he had thought and here he was, watching the very same series from the little telly father had brought him. Ratchet wasn't too keen to let him out of the medbay so soon again and to tell the truth Spike just wanted to avoid all the curious optics and well-meaning questions that would be sure to follow him like a storm cloud.

The signal of the little thing wasn't the greatest after it had to penetrate Ark's very formidable walls. On the flickering blue screen Blythe Summerfield had just found out that the illegitimate child she'd had with Mark Spencer had gotten switched at the hospital so she had been actually raising Erica's child. Whoopee-do! Who would have thought?

"I can feel my brains liquefying," he complained. He hadn't meant it like that, but he saw his father flinch from the corner of his eyes and flinched also. "Not like that, it's just…" He made a gesture towards the television and put a piece of carrot, healthy snack courtesy of Ratchet, to his mouth.

"Don't joke like that! Just don't," Sparkplug whispered and took Spike's hands to his own. Spike looked at him, but not to his eyes, uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry," he whispered back, acutely aware of the extra weight at the back of his head, the giant, pink elephant in the room that no one would discuss when he was there. Spessartine who was a probably evil Insecticon, Hepatizon and her cohort who were certainly evil, megalomaniac Quintessons and his dependence of them. Spike didn't remember when the lines on his father's face had become so deep and old-looking.

"You should be," Sparkplug said and grabbed him into a bear hug. Spike made comfortable circles with his arms against his father's back and regulated his breathing: inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, hold your breath and count to three before releasing. Don't cry.

He shut off the telly, but that only resulted in an awkward conversation while Spike waited to become tired enough to sleep some more. He was used to a lot more physical activity than what Ratchet had allotted to him now.

He wasn't sure when it happened. He had lied down and closed his eyes and he didn't remember being tired, but it was like he dropped through some deep, dark well, like Alice to Wonderland, and the effect wasn't far from that either. Spike was standing in a deep metallic gorge. Most vibrant green vines were flowing down the dim grey sides, but when he looked closer he realized they weren't really vines at all, but some kind of crystal formations. He frowned and his vision shifted, now the crystalline leaves, no two completely similar among them, very smoky transparent, the again deep green, then with small reddish line traveled inside the smoky-colour and he realized that it was heat. He was seeing them in ultraviolet, visible spectrum and infrared.

The acoustics were great; chorus of deep female voices was singing a song that seemed to vibrate and echo its way right through his skull. The tune was obnoxiously bubbly and… he had no words.

Call upon the seaponies when you're in distress! Helpful-as-can-be ponies, simply signal S.O.S.!

Spike wasn't going to admit under the pain of torture having ever watched My Little Ponies. He had been babysitting his cousin, it had been extenuating circumstances! It wasn't like he could have left Rebecca alone! He had been scarred for life!

He was standing alone in the gorge, defending himself from hypothetical accusations of total lack of dignity, and then he wasn't alone anymore. With a sound that seemed to fill the sky a swarm of Insecticons flew through the gorge, there seemed to be no end for them. Shift and they were humans in strange striped uniforms, turning to salute him as they marched by, shift and they were wearing shining armour like knights of old, carrying battle flags with golden and black wasp crests. Rhythmic drumming accompanied the marching and the woman voices.

Shoop be do, shoop shoop be do! Are you sinking fast? Had some nasty shocks?

And Spike wasn't in the gorge anymore. Now he was standing in a strange rainforests where huge, crooked trees hosted what looked like dry-land oysters and sponges, which turned out to be metallic when he looked closer, copper-marble in colour. Somebody with soft breasts draped her arms around him from behind and with explosion and huge roar of many engines all Pit was unleashed. War bellowed around them, blazing in scarlet and energon-pink battalions of mechs Spike couldn't recognize as either Autobots or Decepticons, and a horde of Insecticon swarms, millions of bodies closing ranks around organic beasts of all kinds.

"What war is this?" he asked and turned his head to look at the woman holding him.

My kind calls it the War of Wrath. Cybertronians know it as the Beast War or Predacon War.

Count upon the seaponies! They'll see you get help!

"Seaponies?" he asked. He tried to elucidate, but the words still wouldn't come. The rainforest was in fire around them, but he couldn't feel any heat.

Don't blame me. That part comes from your subconscious.

"Well, I do associate the song with unspeakable evil," he muttered sarcastically. Spessartine abandoned hugging him in favour of turning him around and holding his chin with a firm hand, making him look into her eyes, except she didn't have eyes, but bright red optics. They made her face look like a fine porcelain doll's that had had ragdoll's button eyes sown into it.

Am I truly so repulsive to you?

"This is my mind, not a commune! You have no business being here!" Spike shouted and managed to turn his head.

I understand why you are upset, but please understand, this isn't easy for me either. Always before I have been the master of my mind, now I tag along with someone who detests me. Neither of us is going to get out of this arrangement so we should make the best of it.

That made sense. Spike didn't want to see it like that because it was still his mind, not a commune, and if he started feeling bad for Spessartine then the next thing he knew he was probably going to feel bad for Starscream when Megatron began to bellow to him at top of his non-existent lungs for something he wasn't to blame for and that was a creepy thought. He was in no way obligated to be understanding about anything now.

"What do you mean?" he asked sullenly. Because there was no reason to make it more painful than it already was and Spessartine…

Spessartine felt like father, like Bumblebee, and Spike would forgive them for anything. Surely he could forgive Spessartine for being friends with Hepatizon? She was home.

Home? He was feeling dizzy, it was hard to think. Thought were like multicoloured jewel-like birds flying through his skull. Little, pretty hummingbirds.

Let's negotiate.

And later Spike woke up. He didn't remember agreeing upon anything, didn't remember even discussing any conditions, but somehow the strange weight in his mind felt more settled sat gingerly, trying to regain the use of his limbs again, and looked at the anaesthetic machine. He could see his reflection from its mirror-shiny side, if a bit distorted, and he turned his head left and right trying to catch a good glimpse of his Insecticon symbiote.

He hadn't been able to bear to look at it, her, when he had been let out of the medbay earlier. It looked a bit like some strange hairbun at the back of his head, if one was used to comparing Sunstreaker's fins to Princess Leia's buns (but never out loud!)

She didn't look that bad, really, especially with her dangly, proboscises-like bits shoved inside him… that thought made a shiver run down his spine. A fleeting second he felt tempted to throw up, but he shoved to the picture of those things in his brain aside and felt immediately better.

It was then that the lack of Ratchet's voice thundering him to lie back down got to him and Spike looked around in the most empty medbay. Where was everyone?

[Alert: code Ark585nm] Starscream's trine and all the Constructicons are converging on the coastline, ETA two breems. Dinobots and Aerialbots to the main entrance immediately. Repeat: Dinobots and Aerialbots to the main entrance. Cosmos out.

It flashed through Spike's mind, tinted in orange nearing red, yet not seen, spoken yet not heard. And he knew without a doubt that it was a memory. So now he knew that people were out defeating Megatron's Masterplan of the Week, but that didn't explain remembering something from time he had been out cold.

(I will also allow you to access my memory, within agreed parameters, to compensate for the flaws in human memory storage system, but in return I demand)

Something cold ran up and down Spike's spine and he hugged himself. They had talked, back in the safe gorge, but what had they talked about? It was so hard so remember, back in the spacious medbay, surrounded by the familiar orange walls. He was feeling terribly empty and first he thought it was psychological and psychosomatic and deep, but then his stomach grumbled and Spike realized he was mundanely hungry and felt silly. He wondered if there was any chance the Decepticons were wreaking havoc far enough from the Ark that someone would deliver pizza; fast food was a rare treat in the Ark and now he could almost taste tomato sauce and hot cheese and salami, could smell the wonderful, appetizing treat and his mouth wetted.

To the Pit with carrots and cottage cheese. Ratchet wasn't there to glare him into submission.

He wondered if he was strong enough to climb down the ladder and decided he was, stood up and walked to the edge of the berth. The gorge and Spessartine were still nagging at the edge of his mind, but he pushed that away. He wanted to have a break, now please, and it wasn't like anything was going to happen before Wednesday, right? It was only Saturday now, he was pretty sure.

Everybody wants to go to Heaven. Nobody wants to die.


It was no simple matter to be in contact with the forces on Earth. The sheer distance between the two planets saw to it that all time-sensitive messages needed to be sent through the Spacebridge. Shockwave controlled the Spacebridge network, however, and to attempt sending a femme through was always high risk operation, especially since the other end of the dimensional jump was in enemy territory also.

Their plan was simple: distraction team Alpha, consisting of Firestar, Aurora and the triapartite Eponym would place explosives along the underside of outer wall of Shockwave's facilities north-east side. It was comparatively rather lightly guarded and the obvious point of entry. Team Beta, the distraction number two led by Chromia, would attack the med supplies warehouses from west. Hence, Shockwave would believe that the real goal and would be quick to deploy his security forces on that section. If all went well they would get some new endonanites and spare parts out of this also. Meanwhile, with everyone hopefully distracted, Persona Omega, Elita 1 herself, would infiltrate the building quietly from the south side and hack into the Spacebridge controls.

It was simple on datapad and incredibly dangerous in practice.

"Are you sure about this, Elita?" Chromia asked heatedly. She had dragged her leader into a lesser used storage room. She was much too professional to undermine their commander in public, however much she thought this course of action unwise.

"The only way to make sure the messenger can get through the Decepticon territory on Earth is that I am the messenger and I use my ability," Elita pointed out. It was both her greatest power and weakness, the gift granted to her by Vector Sigma.

Orion Pax, Optimus Prime, had been given the Matrix of Leadership and Dion, Ultra Magnus, had been made duopartite, given the second body that was kept in stasis in between operations due to its high energon consuming: Metroplex. Elita 1 had been given the ability to briefly stop time. Sadly, this ability drained much of her spark energy and was extremely dangerous. A stasis field could create a bubble where only she existed, to cause her to cease moving in space/time, but nature abhors lack of motion just as much as it abhors a vacuum. Which was why she only used it in the direst of situations.

"You are risking this because Acid Storm said so? The mech is a few processors short a motherboard. Who can tell what he will do and why?" Chromia pleaded in the dim space filled with weapon spare parts and batteries in neatly color-coded crates. Her eyes cast blue light and shadows on her face, making her look almost like an oracle of Primus who had been etched into the walls of the Great Temple of Iacon. Elita had to fight a sense of foreboding.

"I would be concerned had he actually met Optimus, but as long as he remains a perfect icon for Acid Storm to obsess over obsess he will, loyally, as much as I loathe using this. We will be run over, easily so, if Shockwave manages to wake and subdue the Insecticons still in stasis in the Fortress of the Lost Ones. This must be a success."

This was how Elita 1 came to stand in the wildly pulsating red and golden light of a Spacebridge already activated, the window of opportunity rapidly closing and a peculiarly reddish-orange Decepticon pointing his gun at her as she threatened him, looking just as desperate as she felt. The bodies of his comrades littered the floor around them, but he paid them no heed and Elita dimmed her optics in suspicion; she had hit the room with powerful EMP burst before destroying the door. That the seeker was still standing wasn't too suspicious as some were better protected than others. What was odd was that there was a thin line of energon trickling from under the neck of the one con she could see without taking her optics from the seeker.

An inner conflict of some kind? She could use this. Should the alignment between Cybertron and Earth pass the Bridge couldn't be reactivated for three thousand astroseconds and she simply didn't have time like that, in the middle of Shockwave's keep. Both of them could destroy the other, but not without risking death in the process.

If only I could stop time now, she thought, but to travel through a Spacebridge was to take a shortcut through the space/time continuum. A very simple definition: space and time considered together as one entity. If she cut herself apart from the whole continuum and went through, well, it would not be pretty.

"I didn't see you, you didn't see me," Elita proposed uneasily. He didn't recognize the seeker, there were only two different builds among them and little personal touch in root mode, but something of this one was nagging at her. She made an image search, but at the same moment the seeker accepted and they turned as one, lunging through cylindrical tube two astroseconds before it closed.

What was traveling through the spacebridge like? It was an unnerving moment of nothing but herself in the whole universe. The search was concluded, no match, and her feet hit the ground made of eroded rocks and organic matter between two purple pylons, no Decepticon in sight other than the one who had gone through with her. She saw him in the neutral, colourless daylight of Earth and she swore. The orange paintjob had been merely a trick of the light the spacebridge had given off. The Decepticon in front of her was chrome accented with opticsore yellow. They make a point, state they are invincible enough to not need camouflage, Ultra Magnus had told her at the very beginning of the war. How advanced is his stealth ability? He's neon yellow and still can't be seen if he doesn't wish to.

Fearswoop. The very mech she had come to warn Optimus of.


Optimus Prime regarded the tactician standing before him with serene, confident air, but for those who knew him best, the distinct tilt of his head betrayed his exhaustion. There were the hundred everyday little things, like Prowl reporting the twins welding a sign into the door to Wheeljack's lab that said: Stand Back. Science in progress, abandon hope all ye who enter here! That point had been rendered moot when it had turned out that Wheeljack actually liked it, but that still left the other ninety nine that made him question from time to time whether he was running an army or an asylum. There was the big thing that hadn't changed into anything: strangely serene Spike, whom he hoped to be in denial because that was the better option, Spessartine, the Quintessons in his brig and what he should and could do about them.

Now there was also the matter of the unexplainable behaviour of Decepticons during the last two days. There had been five attacks, two of them to human settlements and three not. A small group had attacked a spot that had not been obviously remarkable in any way, razed it to the ground and retreated immediately. Much of Optimus' soldier's time had been spent on chasing the fleeing cons and Jazz had improvised an ops mission to try and find out why Megatron felt sudden, burning need to destroy a half hectare's worth of rocks and cacti and a cemetery, among other things.

Nothing had been found out thus far. Unless Megatron had come up with a way to make energon from sand and human bones there was nothing to gain.

"Megatron wouldn't do this if he didn't believe this will help him defeat us or at least score a minor victory," Prowl said. "While assuming tends to be dangerous, I believe that we must assume that some changed circumstances have brought this change in strategy, and the only major chance is the presence of Hepatizon and Molybdochalkos. They have both expressed belief that Principality Inquirata would follow them."

The atmosphere in Optimus Prime's office was uncommonly solemn. Or rather, it had been uncommonly solemn since they had arrived to Earth. Optimus remembered the orns when they had heard bad news after bad news, been pushed further and further into the night. Jazz's frame, the engines making his shell vibrate with barely leashed frustration, when he had brought new of yet again seemingly insurmountable odds. Ironhide who had escaped Ratchet to attend, the new welds still smelling like heat and liquid metal and energon, his optics dimmed. Red Alert barely controllable in his paranoia, it had permanently damaged his processor, but also saved them too many times to count.

Those who had been left to Cybertron, Elita 1 and Ultra Magnus and Alpha Trion. Optimus hoped Alpha Trion had been there to offer them his advice. He had been the one who had rallied Cybertronians against their enslavers; he would know what to do. But it was Optimus' job to know how to save his people now.

You fight fire with fire, the humans said. With fire the tactics worked if the firefighters were careful enough, mindful of the wind.

Sunstreaker, Sideswipe. Bring Hepatizon and Molybdochalkos to my office. Open channel, so the rest of the command staff could argue if they so chose.

Consulting them now wouldn't hurt Spike in any way. Whatever the Decepticons were planning just might. It certainly was designed to harm them all.

Are you sure, Prime? What if they are in fact in league with this Inquirata and this has all been a convoluted plan to get them into a position where they can influence our decisions. Red Alert. He was flailing wildly, but his horns weren't sparking, so he was still all right, all right enough to not be relieved from duty.

Fighting fire with fire, eh? We're not gonna blindly do whatever they tell us to, Red. We just need answers. Ironhide. For now they were all fine, but that could chance anytime. They had become more secure on Earth, a planet generous with resources and allies, but this was the way of war. Optimus Prime despised it.

"And why are we talking over comm. when we are in the same room?" Jazz asked. His voice was languid, almost lazy, but Optimus could feel the tension of him, radiating through the link every Autobot shared with their Prime.

The pace of the war, of their very lives, had changed since they had woken on Earth where the planetary rotation period relative to the Sun – its mean solar day – was mere eighty-six thousands and four hundred seconds of mean solar time and where the longest average human lifespan was eighty-two point six years, in Japan. Optimus was reminded of this again when Hepatizon and Molybdochalkos walked into the room sandwiched between Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, their arms bound with energon bonds, but their overall demeanor anything but cowed. In fact they were being remarkably emotive for a species reputed for their cold disposition. Every diode in Hepatizon's body emitted bright blue and green and violet light and Molybdochalkos was only marginally subtler.

Earth-time things were progressing at snail's pace. By Cybertronian, and Quintessan, standards this must seem like they had relented immediately.

"There has been a recent change in Decepticon strategy and the only major chance in the circumstances is your presence. You have both expressed belief that Principality Inquirata would follow you. I demand your help in rectifying this situation." They usually used Earth languages now, most often English as they were situated in a country where it was the most common language and it was spoken all around the planet, but there were nuances in Cybertronian that humans languages simply couldn't feature, one of them an old subdialect, Quintessa kind of old, that conveyed perfectly how accommodating Optimus Prime wasn't feeling now (theocratic-dialect).

Cybertron was a theocracy. It was their God who had changed, and their ruler. As much as Decepticons were loath to acknowledge it, the Prime had been chosen by Primus, their (superintelligence/spark-creator/energon-source/homeplanet/HolyHeavenlyBody/GOD) and as such he was the only one who – very, very rarely – spoke that dialect anymore.

Hepatizon tempered and dimmed her body language accordingly and she and her companion received the analysis of the situation so far.

"This is more Molybdochalkos' pace than mine; he's the soldier. Dear?" She touched him briefly with one of her tentacles.

"I need to see a map of the attack sites," the mech said, standing straighter now, his fingers making movements that might have been some secret code or just normal Quintesson body language; Optimus had no way of knowing.

A map was provided to them both, sent as a compressed file. They had both been remarkably co-operative in all matters not involving Spike and Spessartine indeed, to the point where they had given their wireless codes and downloaded the language packs Ratchet had sent them. When asked why they were acting so uncharacteristically trusting Hepatizon had said that if she was going to become an Autobot she could as well get into the proper mindset immediately. Optimus had felt like banging his head against something hard.

It didn't take Molybdochalkos a full second to come up with an answer.

"I thought so. This might be some kind of explosive nano blockade. Those are air-tight chemical containers that have been programmed to open at command. The chemicals would have been chosen so they react violently with the planet's atmosphere. As you can see, these sites surround our base, though the circle isn't complete: there will most likely be at least two more attacks. We need to either remove the nanites or we need to remove the Ark." And he sent them technical data about what those nanites were exactly capable of. Optimus Prime's cadre then combined it with what they knew of planet Earth and human structures. It didn't program a pretty picture.

A pandemonium erupted.

"Even if we remove Ark that won't save the humans within the blast radius. What can we do to remove those nanites? If we try to remove the soil they were planted on the cons will just blow them up straight away," Ironhide demanded with a voice loud enough to carry over all the chatter that kept slipping from English to Cybetronian and back. Molybdochalkos didn't appear concerned.

"Simple. We will hack into them and change the ignition sequence, then program them to remove themselves and send them into space." His fingers were making those little movements again, now quicker, and his cooling systems were making very disparaging hum. "Inquirata obviously didn't want to give the Decepticons anything of real use. This is old technology." And the implication that what he and his lady had offered them was much better went unsaid, but not unheard.

"How can we hack into them? Do you have equipment?" Jazz asked him. He would be very interested, even beyond the present threat, of anything that could improve his ops.

"No." Molybdochalkos didn't sound apologetic or even particularly callous, only very matter-of-factly.

"I could re-invent and build us some, but that will take at least three orns," Hepatizon volunteered. "That will not be necessary if you will stop coddling Spike Witwicky, however."

"What do you mean?" Optimus asked sharply, again in theocratic. That comment hadn't earned her any goodwill. But it didn't really effect Quintessons the same it effected Cybetronians; the cultural connotations were so different. Hepatizon pressed on.

"Spessartine was born hivemind and during the War of Wrath she took over quite many Cybertronians. I have familiarized her with Quintesson technology. If anyone can save us now she can."

Optimus could connect to the security cameras in the medbay. Spike was sitting cross-legged on the Nightingale berth, playing a game of cards that he identified with 72.5 percent probability as Old Maid; Spike was the one holding the Queen of Spades at the moment. Carly was sitting beside him in oil-splattered cover-alls, leaning against his shoulder and looking dreadfully tired; not only had she been worried about her boyfriend, but also assisted Ratchet with the repairs of the injured Autobots. Bluestreak was lying on the berth next to theirs, connected to the energon feeding system since his own tank and processing unit were still under repairs, and he was cheering both Spike and Sparkplug on equally.

Sparkplug seemed pale and nervous, Carly was tired to the bone and Bluestreak's chattering held pained, worried undertone, but Spike himself seemed at ease and content if not outright happy, and it was getting more and more worrying. Yesterday, finding him eating pizza like nothing was wrong in the world, walking around until Ratchet had caught up with him and not attempting to hide Spessartine with a hard hat might just have been a freak good day, but this continuing serenity... Optimus Prime had a bad feeling about this.

"Come up with another solution."


It had been barely believable; the bedrock telling an aurora borealis that he'd withstand the ages with her. Calabi-Yau was supposed to be there forever, Fearswoop was the bright, but fleeting one, but now she was the one gone. But he still had one, precious chance and he wasn't going to waste it.


AN: Sorry about the long wait; I have been Narutofied.