!...!.! !..!. !..!..!. !..!. !..!.!. !.!.!.!
Before he could set down the communicator, another call came in. It was the U.S. Armed Forces. Rodimus tuned in the communication channel.
"Autobots. Come in. Do you read?" Rodimus recognized Marissa Faireborn's voice.
"Yes, Captain."
"We received your transmission. We're sending a squadron of five eagles to neutralize the target."
"I appreciate it, Captain, but they won't be able to do much against Trypticon's fortified hide. Pull them back and attack his ground support instead."
"No can do, Rodimus. The order has already been patched through."
"Pull, them back, Captain. It's suicide!"
Five raptor jets approached Trypticon from the mountainside. When their cross hairs lined up, they deployed their air missiles and launched them at the titan.
The turrets on Trypticon's body sensed the incoming barrage and returned fire. The missiles were intercepted by Trypticon's defense artillery and detonated out of range.
The fighter pilots cursed. One of the jets then felt a blast from below. "We've received return fire from anti-aircraft weapons."
"Turn around and head back to—" The signal didn't finish. The fighter plane burst into a fiery cloud of rubble.
The pilots swooped to turn back. Out of the cockpit window, one of the pilots saw the ground support Trypticon was being protected with. A large artillery cannon on treaded wheels fired massive volleys at the fighters. As the fighter planes flew off to avoid the fire, Brunt transformed from his tank mode. His laid his purple hand on Trypticon's foot, tapping it for sport. His cyclopian red eye, ringed around his head, scanned the skies for more trouble.
On a hill of earth between shattered rooftops and overturned buses, Full-Tilt discovered Octane waiting for him. They stared at each other across a crumbled road. At Octane's left stood Necro, his small hands bound in manacles behind his back. Full-Tilt stared at the small bot the way a lioness laid low in the reeds waiting for the gazelle to race past.
Octane's mind made several calculations. He gripped tightly at Necro wondering if he was worth a few more bargaining chips than just his life. In the end, he relented, setting the little bot free to scamper to Full-Tilt. The two Decepticons traded one last look. Octane knew it was the last time he would see him. The exchange was worth his life, but the cost was dear and now he had little time; he had to go into hiding again… and it would be a place where'd he'd never have to see Full-Tilt's face again.
As Octane walked into the shadows, he thought perhaps he had made a mistake in severing his ties so quickly, but then he shook his head to empty his mind of doubt. Whatever the two were planning, Octane sensed that those two were unlikely to come out of it alive. Wherever devastation lurked, opportunity presented itself, and where there's opportunity, there would be Octane.
Full-Tilt gazed at Necro—liberated at last. The moment was frozen in an eternity, like a blizzard trapped in a snowglobe. A vision often imagined, but less impressive in real life. Necro bore the marks of rust, of age, of a relic.
"What took so long?" Necro said.
"…I was held back."
Full-Tilt looked him over. "Undamaged?"
Necro nodded.
Full-Tilt heaved himself onto one knee. His oscillators groaned as he shifted his weight. One could imagine a giant tractor had been lifted off of Full-Tilt's shoulders. "I was afraid you were gone for good."
Necro laid a hand on Full-Tilt's shoulder. "You should have more faith. The cycle will always continue."
Full-Tilt couldn't believe his optics or his receptors. But there he was in person.
"Once this is over," Necro said, "you'll find peace. Quiet stars float past slowly when seen from the deck, but they're without the sound or the violence."
"I'll make sure," Full-Tilt said, "The four of us make it no matter what."
"Four?"
Full-Tilt nodded. His red visor gleamed. "Loyalty deserves to be rewarded. He guards the body."
Brunt, on his fifth cycle of patrol, spotted the two figures approach the stationed Trypticon. He lowered his cannon and aligned his reticle, then paused when he recognized the purple helmet.
"You! What are you doing here?" He waved his club-like arms wildly.
"Easy there. I think we're on the same side."
"Full-Tilt?" Brunt eased his cannon. Brunt hadn't seen him since he had been imprisoned. His memory files ran rapidly. Full-Tilt had been the only one to publicly disobey Megatron when their leader had ordered Trypticon's fate. He'd been captured, tried and put in prison for insubordination. It was later reported as treason. Most had disregarded it. Brunt had learned the truth. Years ago, Trypticon had been a space station orbiting Cybertron. Trypticon had been ordered to attack the Autobots before they could leave Cybertron for Earth. Trypticon had failed to prevent Optimus Prime and the Autobots from escaping Cybertron. If the Titan had succeeded… history would have played out differently. As punishment for his failure, Megatron ordered Trypticon's battered body to become repurposed as the space ship for the Decepticons to chase the Autobots to Earth. Trypticon had been damaged beyond repair due to the war. Being forced to become a space battleship meant Trypticon would be unable to change back. The titan would be forced to become a vessel for the Decepticons forever. And Full-Tilt fought to defend Trypticon. In the end, Full-Tilt watched as the Titan was made into an immobile weapon. His sentience disappeared. Brunt had two main objectives. He had his loyalty to the Decepticons. And the other… defend Trypticon at all costs.
Brunt saw that Full-Tilt was not alone. At his side was a small Nebulon. "Why have you come?"
Full-Tilt cocked his head to the side. "To make sure the four of us make it."
Squeezeplay slammed their shuttle's door aside. The three Decepticons and their three Nebulon partners lumbered broodingly into the bay area of the shuttle. There was no sign of the chicken anywhere. Good riddance.
They sat in the cockpit, staring blankly at charts and maps but they weren't looking for any place in particular. Fangry leaned on the back of the pilot chair. Squeezeplay had thrown himself on the floor, his back against the wall, while Horri-Bull turned his back on everyone as he sat on a crate, staring at the floor between his legs. Kreb looked around the room at the listless faces. The console light was flashing. It meant a message had been received. It was the intercepted message they had found on Magnon. A display read that the message it had finally been decrypted and was ready for viewing. Without a word to the others he pressed play to view the footage on their screen. The monitor's light fell on his comrade's shoulders and they turned their eyes upward.
The Decepticons, Horri-Bull, Fangry and Squeezeplay leaned towards the teal light of the monitor. The video was from a surveillance camera. It depicted a time-lapse of a Nebulon-styled city, its city lights, road signals and denizens all blurring rapidly across the camera. The sped footage came from a high vantage point, the camera had been mounted on a steel radio tower. Nebulon symbols displayed the time in the corner reading a date 25,000 years ago. Someone had wanted this footage found. Then the horizon, the clouds, the city footage cut out and the time stamp disappeared. A piece of different captured recording overlapped the initial footage. It was a ground view, looking upwards at a skyline buzzing with moving air vehicles. The camera followed a passing starship, it was a miniscule vehicle, one passenger-sized, with a twin set of propellant engines. The starship landed near the outskirts. The footage cut here, this time, taped over by a shoulder-mounted camera, like the recordings found on security officers' body cameras. It was becoming clear someone had spliced this surveillance together with the objective of exposing something—like watching evidence being made ready for an indictment. One piece of footage following another with the intent to show a courtroom how separate events lead to a conclusion. The shoulder-mounted footage showed a crowd of Nebulons gathered near the docked starship. They were walking back and forth in front of the camera and talking rapidly like they were nervous. On a raised terrace, the starship's ramp had been lowered. Obscured between the passing bodies from the crowd of observers, the viewer saw a small bot had exited the starship and was being interrogated by an armed official. The camera zoomed in. The fuzzy features of the bot focused. The three Decepticons watching the video jilted back in alarm when they recognized the bot in the grainy footage.
The very next shots were quickly cut. These were less-than-a-minute-reels showing city tower cam surveillance across several different days. In the background rose the skeleton of a communication tower, halfway through its construction. The first showed Necro outside the cross-linked fence of an electric plant inserting his right limb into a conduit coil. The camera panned left to get a better view of the narrowing horizon line of the evening highway. A couple micro-cycles later, the darkened street's overhead lights lit up row after row into the distance. Necro removed his hand from the conduit, and a standing workman made a gasp and a gesture to congratulate him. It suggested Necro's power had done it all. One following length of surveillance exhibited Necro helping the Nebulons weld their corroded pipes. Another was of Necro rewiring broken electric lines. The next was of Necro driving a small dune car to the outer crops and helping claim the harvested oil. It made matters so much worse after the Decepticons saw how the video ended.
The next footage bore no time code, but it was clear the events happened after the tower had been built. A huge gathering of the city's residents stood in a crowded street pointing up at something above the frame of the camera. Necro was visible at the apex of the crowd, looking back at the others facing his way. He was standing next to a tall black building. The person recording zoomed out to get a better shot of the structure Necro stood next to. The details might have been missed because of the rugged edges in the shadows which gave the suggestion of a black temple or a stone building with carved reliefs. The sight was horrific. Necro did not stand next to a black temple, a stone building, or any sort of living structure as one would put it, instead he was parallel to an immense metallic foot. A giant block of plated metal towered over him. The camera roamed up the black ridge—the plated armor was like a mountain crag. Before the camera finished scaling, the footage cut. The sudden cease of the playing footage felt more prolonged, like staring into an empty black void.
Another spliced reel was spliced in, it was a handheld video. A worm's eye view captured Necro standing on the shoulder of a colossal machine. He was pointing down as if giving instruction. Flashes of fire and smoke obscured the lens. The shadows of eruptions from the city, passed over Necro's body like waves. They lit Necro's frame from below. Then Necro turned toward the camera and stared at the viewers and another smoldering flame passed over the camera lens and the footage ended.
Only now it dawned on the Decepticons, the identity of their former captive. Lokos' optics widened. He, Kreb and Brisko knew exactly where Necro would be.
The two ascended to the highest chamber. At the elevator's edge was a set of stairs facing a vault that covered the north wall. Necro slid his hand into an aperture in the wall and twisted his wrist. The flexing unlocked several gears which discharged pent-up sparks then they moved the vault's doors out of the way. At the top of a second climb of stairs was another room full of monitors. The floor of this chamber was obscured by multiple coils of thick electric cable like optic-fiber pythons. The chamber narrowed into a small area which reminded Necro of a single-pilot cockpit, only shadowed with violet pipes. Underneath, the helm's console displayed many readouts. Trypticon's neural pulse was weak. The line barely registered activity.
Necro and Full-Tilt stared at the raised part of the console. Like a pinnacle rock, it protruded like the stem of a galleon's ship wheel from a deck. An intricate array of wires webbed around a titanium lock—a portent which yawed open once Necro activated certain switches—everything as it should be in memory.
"You seem surprised," Necro said to Full-Tilt.
"I didn't know if… you had survived."
"You say that every time." Necro folded and transformed into a small, cube-like plug.
Full-Tilt, in jackal-headed tradition, raised the folded body of Necro and inserted him into the space. The connections discharged an arc of electricity. The read-out displaying Trypticon's brain waves flew off the charts. Trypticon's eyes lit up. The behemoth roared. This echoing soundwave shattered the windows of buildings close by. Trypticon swung his head from side to side. He grinded his claws together, then with one motion, he lifted his heavy legs and took several ground-shaking steps forward.
The roaring traveled far, even to the outskirts of the city limits, where Leinad heard the rumbling voice carry, far as she was, still traveling in Arcee's arms. The words shook her chest. They sounded like grinding metal dragged over harsh asphalt. It reminded her of what Lucy said crossly to Ricky once. "Better late… than never."
They had brought to life one for whom forever meant nothing.
Kreb looked out the window. "Well… there goes the neighborhood."
