Jazzerman here, I do not own any of these characters, they are owned by their respected companies, as many as there are. You've heard this crap before. I only own my OCs.
Broken boundaries
Part 11
Scourge reveled as he glazed upon the glowing blue sphere in its oval-shaped container. He remembered how much Thunderwing had obsessed over this device and he knew how much the Pretender would kill to get his hands on it. Scourge chuckled at the idea of Thunderwing demanding it of him while being trapped under Abominus's foot.
"Scourge! I'm hungry can't we eat what's left of him?" Hun-grr growled, if he was capable of it he would be salivating at the sight of a tasty Autobot laying broken and only barely clinging to life.
"No... Leave him." Scourge said. "Leave his broken remains here to let the rest of the Autobots see the fate that awaits them. Decepticons, fall back!"
The Terrorcons growled, very displeased that they had to leave behind such appetizing spoils but if what Scourge said was true and they would have more than their fill when it was all over. Rumble and Buzzsaw transformed and returned to the safety of Soundwave's chest compartment before Soundwave flew off to follow his comrades.
"Fall back?" Thundercracker whined, with the loss of the Terrorcons it was now three against eight and even Thundercracker wasn't confidant to take those odds. "Wait for me boss!"
"You know I get the feeling that that Scourge guy doesn't really care about us." Ransack said, kicking off from the ship to head towards the Atlantis.
"Did Megatron ever care?" Crumplezone asked, showing a rare show of wit and following Ransack like the lackey he was.
"Good point." Ransack nodded his head. "We better keep our eyes on open for trickery."
Thundercracker turned his radio to broadcast directly to Scourge, the channel was still open to his comrades he simply wanted to get Scourge's attention. "Hey boss-man, aren't we going to go get Thunderblast? She fell into the atmosphere with that other 'bot."
"She met her end taking an enemy with her to oblivion. A noble death." Scourge said. He didn't really care if Thunderblast survived. If she were to make it back to Cybertron alive on her own he would consider her a worthy Decepticon, inferior to himself but worth still exploiting further.
Below the Autobots scrambled out of their cover to find a harrowing sight, their leader and inspiration laying in tatters amid the weightlessness of space. Red Alert, the only native Autobot not stricken stiff by the view of Optimus torn to pieces raced over and checked the collection of chassis bits and parts. Hound and Jazz were sickened by the sight but the two Autobots felt more helpless than saddened, having seen this before with the Terrorcon's victims.
"His spark core (1) is intact and stable... We need to get him in for repairs stat!" Red Alert urgently ordered.
Jazz and Hound aided their otherworldly cousin in gathering up Optimus's parts and returning with them to the medical bay of the Ogygia. Once all of the Autobot commander's pieces were in place and Red Alert began to hook up Optimus's spark core to life support Jazz and Hound returned to space to pull Leobreaker out of the communications array.
"Took you long enough!" Leobreaker grumbled, annoyed that he was held prisoner by a Decepticon that wasn't even half his size.
"Sorry, but we had to get Optimus to the repair bay." Hound said, "As a code X medical emergency(2) he had priority."
Leobreaker was shocked to hear that Optimus, his commander and friend was in such bad shape since he had taken down Megatron without such a severe condition. "Those Decepticons did that bad a job on him?"
"Anyone who takes on the Terrorcons, Scourge, and Soundwave alone would end up as either chewed up bits or molten slag." Jazz said somberly, shaking his head at the disturbing thought of any Transformer actually enjoying consuming another. It was not something he wanted to dwell on.
"Don't worry, Coby and everyone on board is doing their share in trying to repair Optimus." Hound said, giving the native Autobot a thumbs up and a cheerful smile. "He'll be up and at 'em soon enough."
Leobreaker wasn't familiar with Hound's 'up and adam' reference, but he did feel reassured by Hound's words. All three Autobots made their way back to the medical bay to see if they could offer any aid.
---
Meanwhile on board the Atlantis the Decepticons waited as Scourge promised to divulge the entirety of his plan to them. They had plenty of time to spare now that the Autobots would be working on repairing their forces and their ship.
"Now that all the pieces are in place I shall explain what my plan is." Scourge said turning to face his combined forces, "The Omega Lock and the Cyber Planet Keys, the Albonite crystals, The Matrix, they are what I will use to break the boundaries of time and space and bring our allies here regardless of how long ago they were terminated."
"Whoa whoa whoa..." Ransack interrupted, "What are you talking about? Are you sayin you wanna knock a hole in space and time so you can bring back the dead?"
Scourge gritted his teeth, as much as he wanted to scrap the little whelp then and there for stealing his moment he held his anger in check. "Yes, in a manner of speaking. I see few of you realize the scope of what I am planning."
Soundwave clicked a few buttons on the console and images of schematics of the ship and designs for the device appeared. "This ship has enough adequate technology that with a sufficient amount of modification the communication array could be used for our purposes. The purest crystals we have must be used to amplify and focus the power needed and the rest will be used to protect ourselves and the ship in case of an overload, there is no sense in dying just to bring back ungrateful allies."
"Then why'd you steal the Matrix?" Crumplezone said showing some mild initiative despite his plodding mind. "Wasn't that your whole plan?"
"And the algorithm, why'd you want us to steal that from the Decepticons of our world before coming here?" Cutthroat asked.
Scourge snorted, but inwardly he was enjoying making himself seem so in control. He knew these peons were too simple minded to put together such a controversial plan. It pleased him to see all of his Decepticons waiting to hear the rest of his plan with baited breath.
"The Matrix is connected to every Spark that has and ever will be. Although it has never been tried, I believe I can use the Matrix and the algorithm we stole to locate and extract them."
"This is theory of course." Soundwave spoke up. "The Matrix is not fully understood, and those who knew it best are now terminated."
"Wait, you mean you're going to take Sparks out of the Matrix?" Crumplezone asked, scratching the back of his head.
Scourge was irritated by Soundwave's indirect jab at his plans but would let it slide this once. After all he was correct and destroying him now would simply delay his plans even more. "Not exactly, the last step of my plan is we use the algorithm to scan the Matrix until we locate the Spark we desire. Using the Albonite crystals we will focus the power of the Omega Lock into a single point, cutting a hole in the fabric of time and simply draw the Transformer we want through the hole and into this reality. Imagine it, we can bring back Bludgeon, Cyclonus, Megatron, if we wanted we could even restore Thunderwing to life"
"I don't think we're THAT desperate." Rumble said, remembering how much damage that Matrix obsessed fanatic caused. He remembered that was perhaps the first time he was glad to hear the death of such a powerful Decepticon. By the hand of Unicron himself no less.
"Squawktalk, put in a heading to Velocitron. I want our first test to be near a suitable world for our first guest." Scourge ordered, keeping his channel to the condor-cassette mute so he wouldn't have to deal with the loudmouth translator.
"Do you have someone selected to wreck that world?" Sinnertwin asked, liking the idea of seeing more old friends.
"Oh yes," Scourge said. "five of them in fact."
---
In the medical bay of the Ogygia, Red Alert had just finished scanning the Autobots that had entered battle and had determined that aside from singed exo-plating from near hits from enemy fire the group was perfectly fine. On the question of the condition of Wingsaber and Hotshot the medic responded;
"Wingsaber and Hotshot aren't in any danger. Aside from a little damage to the joints in their arms and legs they're fine."
"How's Optimus?" Came a reply from nearly everyone, the question seemed especially loud coming from the children.
Red Alert sighed, he knew this was coming so he taken ample time while examining the other to prepare to deliver the news. "He's severely damaged, but he'll live. He won't be fighting Decepticons for a good long while though. It's a wonder how he's even sill online."
"Don't you guys have CR chambers? One of those would have him on his feet in a fraction of the time it would take to repair him by hand." Jazz asked, not certain why they wouldn't have done so if they had such standard devices. (3)
"CR chambers?" Lori mused, tilting her head.
"What's 'CR' stand for?" Coby asked.
"A Cryonic Regeneration Chamber repairs any Transformer that is shut inside by shutting down nearly every system in a Transformer and rerouting his or her own repair systems to focus more critically damaged areas while increasing the repair rate with advanced nanotech that makes the process all the faster." Hound explained. "If it weren't for those repair chambers we would have lost the war back on our Cybertron."
"I don't believe we have anything like that." Override said, but just to make sure she began to search through the old ship's systems to check if they indeed lacked that technology. "There is an Energon tank that is used to aid in recovery but I don't know how much energon we can use on him. I'm a racer not a medic."
"That's an interesting piece of technology, I hope to see it sometime Hound. But the Energon bath would be the fastest choice." Red Alert said, turning to Override. "Don't worry about the energon levels I'll take care of it. His Spark Core, like all Transformers is surrounded by strong metals that protect the Spark against attacks. While energon would instantly snuff his Spark upon contact we don't have to worry, if there was a hole in the core even a micron in size I'd know."
"So what we just toss him in there?" Leobreaker asked as he looked at the many parts that were loose on the table. He obviously didn't know how this worked even though he had been in these containers off and on since the war with the Decepticons began.
Red Alert shook his head. "No, Coby and I need to repair him just enough so that all of his parts will stay in place. If we do not at least do that Optimus will not be repaired quickly or correctly and we'll have to do a lot of the work ourselves regardless."
Jazz carefully picked Coby off the floor and set him on the table. He was a little worried that the human might fall off but remembered in all his years of seeing Sparkplug and Spike work on damaged Autobots he never saw them injure themselves.
"Okay guys, while these two grease monkeys are working on Optimus that means we need to get to work on the ship." Jazz said, using what leadership skills he had learned from his many years under Optimus Prime both before and after arriving on Earth.
The Autobots and Minicons quickly agreed and began to piece together the engines as best they could. Lori and Bud were left in the medical bay to hope for good news soon as Coby and Red Alert worked their hardest on Optimus Prime. Tension on the ship was high, all of the Autobots felt that their best warrior had been taken down with relative ease and were trying to be optimistic about his odds for recovery.
While the others worked Jazz had felt it right to inform Cybertron of the situation. After a few moments of studying the controls on the bridge he managed to patch a signal to Cybertron. Jetfire answered quickly and after a quick report of what had happened after the battle Jetfire held his forehead as if he had just been trying to hold his own with fueler bot in an energon drinking contest.
"Optimus is damaged? What else went wrong?" Jetfire said grudgingly, still holding his head. "Repairs are all done on this end, do you want me to send one of the other ships?"
"I wouldn't recommend it." Jazz said. "It'd be better if you put everyone on alert and keep an eye out for anything. There's no tellin' what these jokers are plannin'."
"Good idea. We'll be standing by incase you need us. Jetfire out." Jetfire was about to terminate the vidlink when he stopped. "By the way, have you seen the kids? They seem to have up and vanished off the face of the planet."
Jazz did nothing to hide his wide smile. "Those kids are here. Apparently they snuck on board in that Scrapmetal of Coby's. The human kids you guys hang around with in this universe are just as sneaky are they are in ours."
"Those kids have done a lot for us. It's surprising how much considering how small they are." Jetfire meant it. He found the children to be a blast to be around, they made a dire and potentially deadly situation an enjoyable adventure.
"I know what you mean. I've got to get back to work repairing the ship. Organize what you can and keep an eye on the other planets." Jazz warned. "We don't know what Scourge is planning to do, and keep that information about the Matrix being 'tolen-say'."
Jetfire nodded and terminated the link. This was not a good day to be left in charge.
---
Thunderblast opened her eyes and at the sight of herself as a transparent version of herself around what she could only imagine was her own Spark and the first thing that came to her mind was: "Am I offline?"
The landscape was not what she expected the inside of the Matrix to look like. She had expected there to be countless other Sparks around her and little else but a sense of absolution but she felt nothing of the sort. Instead she was confused, disoriented, and a little frightened although she would never admit to that even if she was offline for good.
The world around her was not devoid of matter, there were chucks of rock floating stationary in the gravityless environment. Thunderblast did not know if there was air here or not, she was totally without any of her hardware sensors. Still the sensation of moving was similar to space travel or moving through water only here she had only to think to change direction or stop. The area was illuminated by and unseen source with the calm and gentle light of a sunrise.
Curious about the lack of other Sparks, Thunderblast wandered about the rocks to search. For what exactly she was not sure, perhaps she was searching for answers to where she was or why she was offline. The last she remembered was that crazy Autobot pulling out her...
"Oh Primus I really am offline..." Thunderblast whispered, placing a hand her mouth. "But if I'm offline where is everyone?"
Out of the corner of her eyes Thunderblast spotted something, it wasn't colored the same as the rest of the rocks or shaped like them. Thunderblast traveled towards it to see what it was. Before her was a large flat surface, as it one of the rocks had been cut in half with a laser to show a neat clean cut. In the center was a Transformer sized version of a human device called a television set that was apparently on. Sitting in front of this device was someone Thunderblast knew very well.
Seething with rage at the sight of her apparent killer she launched her self at him, but found that no matter how loudly she called for her Cyber planet key it would not come to her, in fact her weapons did not seem to work either. She crept forward slowly, until she could see what that crazy Autobot was doing. There was the Autobot sitting on the ground watching that human device but he looked like he was literally only half there. His right wrist, parts of his chest, his left thigh, even one fourth of his head was absolutely nonexistent yet his hand and the rest of his leg seemed to function normally regardless of the lack of the rest of their respective limb. Thunderblast landed on the flat surface and approached him, expecting a hailstorm of laser fire or some other attack. She was met with no opposition. In fact the closer she got the more she could see that he two was a transparent 'spirit' around his Spark. The image in the television screen was, to Thunderblast's surprise, nothing but black and white static. How he could stare at that mess was beyond her understanding.
Without any indication that he had heard her, Thunderblast heard him say; "Help me..."
Thunderblast blinked at the sudden question. "Huh?"
"Help me..." He asked again, sounding as if he was on the verge of shutting down.
"Help you how? Why should I help you? You killed me!" She screamed, her voice echoing in the nothingness.
"No... Saved you..." The broken ghost of an Autobot rasped.
"Saved me? What in the Pit are you talking about? Look around you buddy we're dead!" She yelled, spinning around to emphasize her point.
"No... I pulled out your Spark core and integrated it into my systems..." Steelburst said, Thunderblast's proximity seemed to be affecting him somehow... "I need you... Help me..." (4)
Thunderblast let out a relived sigh, she was glad that she wasn't dead. The idea of being stuck in an Autobot's mainframe was highly unappealing but it was better than death. Besides this Autobot was pitifully asking for her help, and that presented an opportunity to bend him to her cause or better yet the Decepticon cause. "Wait, does this mean we've powerlinked or something?"
Steelburst stood and faced the femme Decepticon, a feat that could not happen in the physical realm since his thigh was missing. "No... my systems are adjusting itself so that it can support two sparks so we went into repair mode..."
"Why should I help you? You nearly slagged us both!" Thunderblast screamed, wishing that she had her rocket launcher more than ever.
"It doesn't matter... unless we are rescued we will not survive. If you do not help me then the Autobots will not bring your body with them. You may be trapped in with me for a long time." Steelburst said, acting more like he was awake and, for lack of a better word 'alive'.
Thunderblast gritted her teeth. While being a passenger for a while was tolerable as long as she would be able to vacate this Autobot's body in a short amount time. But being stuck with this insane Autobot as a room mate for rest of the "You will understand that this will be only until my body is repaired. After that I want to be back in my own hardware."
Steelburst nodded his agreement to her terms.
"So... what did you want me to do?" Thunderblast asked timidly, the situation was not what she was used to.
Steelburst simply took her hand and suddenly all was made clear.
---
The cassettes were working as hard as they could, but even their lack of size and physical strength made them more competent workers than Ransack and Crumplezone who had quickly been demoted to 'get this' 'get that' in the creation of the reality-time machine. Soundwave was heading the project while Scourge, Hun-grr, and Cutthroat watched the construction.
"Well Soundwave, what is our estimated time of completion?" Scourge asked.
"We will be ready to begin a test run of the device in a matter of ours. This ship is far more compatible with our plans than I had anticipated." Soundwave droned, immediately going back to his tasks of analyzing the ship's systems and figuring out the proper way to alter them to suit his needs.
"He could be down here helpin' ya know?" Rumble muttered quietly, knowing that while Megatron would have simply threatened him or kicked him Scourge would probably only warn him once in his stint under the Unicron-constructed Scourge.
Ransack snorted his approval of the cassette's attitude towards Scourge but remained silent. Carrying a major system power node was something that required a lot of his attention.
Scourge's outward scowl at his comrades hid the pleasant ideas of what would come once all was ready. The idea of seeing the Speed planet under attack by some old friends would be a very entertaining venture...
To be continued.
AN: I know the ending on this chapter isn't the norm, but I had to cut part of it to the next chapter. I wanted to get a new chapter up as soon as possible. And no I do not intend on turning Thunderblast into an Autobot. You'll see what's going on with her.
(1) OK, basically this is a metal sphere that protects a Transformer's spark, kinda like how our hard skull protects our puny fleshling brains.
(2) okay this was ripped directly from the beast wars episode: "Dark Voyage" where Optimus Primal radios his comrade's condition as 'code X.' I also remember Cheetor reporting another situation as 'code R' in and other episode.
(3) Seriously, we never see CR chambers in Cybertron. We saw one in Energon (or was that an Energon bath?) but I'm keeping Cybertron separate from Energon and Armada. The american version says it is (and hints at it being so with the images of the kids from the other series) but the Japanese version says it's a stand alone. Besides if it was a continuation then why didn't anyone remember the transformers from Energon and where'd all the advanced tech go? Seriously confusing... -.-;
(4) Okay... I know Optimus Primal did this in beast wars and became Optimal Optimus Primal but I didn't want this to happen to these two, the idea of this happening between a male and female transformer's sparks would be too... confusing... o.o
SpartanCommander - Right on the money on Scourge. You guessed it right. -gives you small cash prize- However in regards to the Matrix: I remember something coming up in Seibertron's forums saying that Unicron could never fight himself because he is one entity stretched across all transformers realities. If that is applied to Primus as well, could the matrix's be connected as well? Lastly the Minicons vs. the cassettes idea I think I will use. Good idea man. I remembered that I wanted that to happen in Armada so bad. Also you forgot the G1 episode where Scourge took the matrix and kicked the tar out of Galvatron (suddenly the ep of BW where Terrorsaur does the same to Megs rings true to the series). Although I have a question for you: did G2 Starscream ever become separated from Warworld?
OptimusxElita4ever- I'm not really looking for the DVDs, I'd be only interested in season 2 anyway. I've had the movie since 86. (VHS and later DVD). Nothing compares to the G1 movie even though they've tried.
GrimlockX4- Thanks for the praise dude, hope you enjoyed this chapter.