Disclaimer: Hasbro owns Transformers, I own the story. Any and all additional recognizable culture references, locations, songs, et cet, belong to their rightful owners.

Chapter 34: Moriguchi's Good Day

After leading him through what felt like miles of hidden tunnels and elevators, Hornet had finally brought Benjamin to a room that appeared to have a use as a surveillance room and energon laboratory. To the far right were six enormous tanks of interchanging light green preservatives and glowing purple energon being checked over by six people. To the left was a raised platform on which a large counsel was stationed, facing the tanks and a team of five attended. Behind the counsel, on the left wall, was a large wall of screens currently be surveyed and controlled by numerous people sitting at the computers at the foot of the wall. Benjamin didn't know it, but this room was identical to the room that had, a long time ago, held the prone forms of the surviving Decepticon Elites in stasis for scientific study.

"Why are we here, Max?" Benjamin asked Hornet.

"Hornet shows Ben-boy something," Hornet replied. "Wait here."

Hornet strode away from Benjamin, using a peculiar lunging-forward gait that reminded Benjamin of a peacock. Hornet spoke briefly with one of the scientists at the control counsel.

"Benjamin, it's so lovely to see you again!"

Benjamin spun around, his heart jumping into his heart. Behind him, Dr. Moriguchi had appeared, flashing a grin that, while attempting to look friendly, it reflected out as one of the creepiest smiles ever.

"Moriguchi," Benjamin snarled.

"Yes, yes, I am aware that we know each other," Moriguchi said. "How do you like Hornet's upgrade?"

"What have you done to Max?" Benjamin demanded.

"Oh, I didn't do anything," Moriguchi scoffed, "He was broken when he got to me. His friends ignored him, his superiors blew him off, and he was nothing more than the idiotic comedy relief to those around him. I just fixed him."

"He's destroyed!" Benjamin argued, "He doesn't speak well and attacked me!"

"He doesn't speak well?" Moriguchi asked. "He doesn't speak well? Is that how you measure your friends, Benjamin; whether they are grammatically correct or not? Gracious, Benjamin, don't fall off your pedestal; you might hit your head!"

A knock came to Benjamin's head from behind, but not so hard as to knock him out. He fell forward onto his stomach.

"Max," Benjamin asked, getting to his knees, "What are you--?"

Hornet struck out, slapping Benjamin hard enough to knock him onto his back. Benjamin touched his stinging cheek and looked up at Hornet with wide, confused eyes.

"What Hornet and I would like to show you is your old friend's new choice of careers," Moriguchi said, clapping his hand on Hornet's yellow shoulder.

Hornet gave no outward signal that he acknowledged the touch.

"You see, we here at Breaker Labs have found that with emotional manipulation to the human form and digital reprogramming to the robot form, we can make any Effort do whatever we want. Now all we have to do is perfect our Effort serum and… ta-daa! Breaker Laboratories Office of Domination, better known as BLOOD, will have the perfect army for world domination!"

"You know, you're making Bad Guy Mistake #1," Benjamin said as he regained his feet, still rubbing his cheek.

"Telling the 'good guys' the 'secret, evil plan of world domination' before it's done, yes, yes, I know, I've watched cartoons before, too," Moriguchi said, waving a hand dismissively.

He propped an elbow on Hornet's shoulder as he spoke.

"But, you know, I'm counting on the fact that you're not making it out of here alive."

"Then why don't you just kill me before I find a way to stop you?" Benjamin asked, clenching his fists.

"Because I know that manipulating you into my control would be a fate worse than death," Moriguchi said with a cheery grin. To the people at the security counsel, he called, "Show him!"

All the images on the security camera screens blanked out, revealing one large image split up over numerous screens. The image was of Optimus bound to the wall, emitting engine roars of pain as electricity and laser beams were shot at him from people off screen.

"Father!" Benjamin yelled.

"Surrender to me and he will be allowed to live," Moriguchi said. "He will be unable to transform from his truck mode when we're done with him, but he will be able to move, speak, and live. It is an even trade, do you accept?"

Benjamin looked from Moriguchi to the screen and back again. He looked to Max-now-Hornet, seeking some sort of help. But the large black optics merely stared out listlessly.

"Can I at least try rescuing him?" Benjamin asked.

"What do you think?" Moriguchi snarled as Hornet struck a battle pose, preparing for a duel. "You either surrender and your father lives, or you continue this fight, die eventually, and your father will die before you are out of this room. Those lasers," he said, pointing to the screens, "Can cut through the toughest Transformer armor and will dice up his Spark Chamber into so many metal dice to play a board game with in six seconds! Do you really want to take the gamble at your father's life in the name of silly comic book-style heroism and rescue? Answer me, Benjamin, what is your answer!?"

Benjamin closed his eyes, trying to figure out a plan.

"I can… no… steal one of the blade fragments… hold his life… or talk to Max…" he muttered.

Moriguchi made a motion to one of the scientists, who spoke into a communicator. A moment later, a long, low howl of pain came from Optimus as a laser zoned in on a particular nerve point. Tears stung Benjamin's eyes as he reared his head up.

"Stop!" he yelled, "Stop, I'll do it! I'll do what ever you want, but leave my father alone!"

"I knew you would see it my way," Moriguchi chuckled as a couple of scientists came up on either side of Benjamin, taking him by his arms. "Just do what these nice people say and your deal will be honored."

Five minutes later, Benjamin had followed the scientists up a ladder to the top of one of the purple energon tanks and removed his belt, shoes, and socks. Looking down from the platform at the top of the enormous tank, he saw that the onslaught of lasers and electricity had been called off and Optimus hung limply in his holdings. Hornet stood by Moriguchi, staring up at Benjamin as the scientists hooked a hard plastic bracelet of letters and numbers around his left ankle and wrist and took his vital signs. Moriguchi leaned over and whispered something to Hornet. Hornet opened his mouth and spoke in a surprisingly humane, older male voice.

"Don't worry, it stops hurting after the first hour," he called up.

Some how, Benjamin knew that this was the voice of an older Max, being manipulated out of Hornet's core in some perverse display of power. His eyes widened as he opened his mouth to ask something. But at that moment, as they turned away, one of the scientists effortlessly and apathetically shoved him off the platform and into the enormous energon tank, performing the maneuver like a jock would to a nerd into a mud puddle.

For a moment, Benjamin sailed through the air, falling upside down. As he cleared the edge of the tank, a metal lid slid over the top with the speed and sound of a falling guillotine. Benjamin managed to take a final breath before making a splash landing into the airy liquid energon. He sank deep and for a moment, a tingly cool feeling spread over him. Then a pain unlike anything he had felt before ripped across him, burning his skin and ripping at his muscles. He reflexively opened his mouth to scream, but energon only rushed in. He swam upwards, trying to escape the pain like a rat trying to escape some water-bound predator. But more energon had been poured into the tank, filling it up to the lid and not even leaving an inch of clearance between the energon and lid. Benjamin pounded at the underside of the lid, panic filling him as the energon filled his lungs.

Optimus, in his prison, twitched in his sleep as he sensed his Sparkling in trouble, but was unable to act as Benjamin became numb and limp. The energon began to glow about him as it began to change him forcefully, one burning molecule by one burning molecule.

Moriguchi smirked, chuckling, "Heroes; they believe anything."

"Sir!" one of the surveillance people called, "More intruders in the salt mines: It's—It's Megatron, sir! And he appears to have the two youngest Efforts with him!"

"And I spot a Lost Effort and someone entering the place through our vents," another reported.

"'Someone?' What, we have the most advanced scanning technology ever and we can't tell what species a single 'someone' is?" Moriguchi demanded.

"They're emitting some sort of electric field that's messing with our scanners, sir."

"Let them come on in," Moriguchi ordered. "They can add for a bit of interesting with the other experiment subjects. Put me in direct contact with Megatron."

The lights dimmed in the room as a hologram communication device was set in the floor in front of Moriguchi by the scientists. Hornet stepped aside as the surveillance people activated a sort of calling beep to Megatron from the camera they were seeing him from. Megatron, curious about the beep, came over to the camera and a 3-D image of Moriguchi appeared floating in the air in front of him while his own image was projected up for Moriguchi.

"Humph, thought you were behind this, Dr. Moriguchi," Megatron grunted. "I may have been comatose much of the time while I was your prisoner, but I remember that you liked dramatics and classics, like an underground base. What happened to the parties that came down here earlier?"

"All have been captured and are in numerous rooms in our laboratories beneath the ground you stand on undergoing experiments," Moriguchi replied. "Care to join them?"

"No. I want to make a deal," Megatron said, holding the little Decepticon Efforts tightly in one massive fist. Shadowleap and Cartwheel wiggled fearfully in his hand, but were unable to escape.

"Speak it, I am in a bartering mood," was Moriguchi's joke of an answer.

"Ever since you created that infection I have been forced to call a son," Megatron snarled, "I have been forced to watch over him and his brats and play along with the charade of accepting half-human hybrids into my army. This is disgusting and I want it to be fixed."

"But didn't you have a non-Transformer robot in your ranks before, a lady called Night Bird?"

"That was a special case. This time," he growled, glaring at the frightened little ones in his hands. "The hybrids are embarrassing children, rude, insubordinate, and young. I hate kids. Hence, I have brought these two test subjects as a peace gift that way you may severe the cursed Spark bond between Mextron and myself. With the bond gone, I will be free to kill him without consequence."

"My, your own child, Megatron," Moriguchi exclaimed mockingly, "I didn't think that even you were so harsh!"

"Then people have come to deeply underestimate and misjudge me," Megatron grunted. "So, I give you these kids and you get to experiment and I'll have this connection broken. Do you accept?"

"Oh, I do!" Moriguchi laughed, clapping his hands together eagerly. "Just follow the light bulb trails and you'll come straight to the entrance!"

Shadowleap yelled something incoherently and disappeared in a puff of purple smoke.

"Oh, darn, blasted worm," Megatron grunted, turning as Shadowleap reappeared a distance behind him.

"The claws will get him," Moriguchi assured, even as the security system's appendages leaped from the darkness and made a grab for Shadowleap.

Shadowleap teleported out of the way of the claws several times, but two appeared on either side of the boy and a force field appeared between them, encasing Shadowleap in a clear-colored bubble. When he attempted to teleport away, he merely bounced back with a loud pop. Cartwheel began to cry, but Megatron ignored her as he smirked at Moriguchi.

"Nice," he complimented. "I will see you soon."

He walked away from the camera and the communication link was broken. The lights brightened back up and Moriguchi straightened the collar of his shirt, humming a cheery tune to him self.

"Ah, what a wonderful day!" he sighed. "Come along. Hornet, we have other matters to attend to."

- - - -

The reprogramming process is a quick an easy matter when the Effort is under extreme pain, as Benjamin was in now, and is very similar to Spark splitting: Both are excruciatingly painful, but relatively quick in occurrence.

Reprogramming is done while the targeted Effort is in superb pain and undergoing a slow change into a Transformer, just like Benjamin as he soaked in energon. Miniature ray guns inside the tank carefully aimed themselves at Benjamin and the tank attendants waited. Sure enough, it was not long before Benjamin began to grow and his skin scaled and hardened into metal. We'll skip the unpleasant details and assure the reader that Transforming by energon is a far longer, more painful, and less pretty process than Spark chamber-piercing. Scanners kept an eye on his internals.

"Brain is at fifty percent transfer," someone announced.

Instantly the rays were fired up and programmers began to type at their computers.

In order to properly reprogram an Effort, the data must be written directly into the developing processor-brain via laser rays that would contain the data. Typing in the data fresh minimizes its aging in the cyber world, for the longer the data is in the cyber world, the less likely chance the processor will absorb the data permanently, similar to teaching a puppy new tricks. Shooting data into a developing processor further makes the chances of the data being permanent even higher, so that even if the data is, by some miracle, reversed, the Effort will never ever be fully free of the programming.

"Ugh, look at that: He's getting energon stains."

"I knew we should have cleaned him off before dunking him in."

"There's no time! We'll buff the stains out later. Moriguchi ordered us to have this thing ready for fighting with in the hour and that's what he'll get. Or do you want to be his next Effort serum experiment?"

Silence.

"How soon until he's complete?"

"Loyalty programming: Complete."

"Behavior programming: Complete."

"Internal changes: Complete."

"Battle programming: Complete."

"External changes… there, done."

"Hey, are we gonna get this guy a transforming sequence or what?"

"Negative; he won't need it."

"Well, okay, how about a name?"

"Ooh! How about we call him Hades?"

"With that color scheme?"

"We'll be painting over the energon stains, anyway."

"Enough!" the leader shouted. "Is he complete?"

"Yes."

"Good. Drain the tank, dry him off, and get him ready for the fight. Too bad we don't have time to make sure that he doesn't have bugs. This guy is our last line of defense and if he doesn't win, we're screwed to high heaven and low hell."