Author's note: Transformers belongs to Hasbro and Takara. The end is almost here. Thanks for reading.

Chapter 68

Hard Lessons


"This is it," said Megatron, grandly. He stood, hands on hips and legs apart, like a conquering hero in the center of an elevated area that looked like a stage for theatre in the round. Rings of seats surrounded it in ascending levels visible through the debris that littered the area. They were somewhere beneath Kaon. To Stormvolt, the city looked like it was a dump even before the destruction wrought by Unicron. It was tightly packed and run down and somehow seedy looking, like a city in a dystopian anime.

"What's all this?" She asked.

"This is the arena where I fought in my first match. It was how I survived before the inception of our faction."

He seemed almost (dare she even think it)…sentimental. "Do you miss it?"

"Generally speaking, no, however there is something to be said for the unambiguous nature of it all. No political nuance, no second guessing, only kill or be killed."

"It seems kind of small for fighting."

"It is your seeker programming causing that misconception. There is more than enough space for close quarters combat. Trust me."

Great. She hated being in small, closed in areas. It kind of reminded her of the inside of Unicron's head. Darkmount had large rooms with high ceilings and many access points to the outside. But this was the opposite in every way.

"And you need to get over whatever your issues are with being in confined spaces. Undoubtedly you will not find your quarry out in the open," Megatron continued upon noticing Stormvolt glancing around with a mildly tense expression.

"So what are we doing?"

"Come up here."

Stormvolt did as she was told. Megatron immediately whipped his entire body around before stopping just an inch shy of delivering a devastating kick.

"I want you to do that."

"Okay." She paused a moment to get the specifics from her memory and then repeated the motion.

"Very good. Now, repeat it one thousand times."

"What?"

"It needs to be a natural movement executed without analysis. Now get going."

"Yes, sir."

XxXxXxXxX

The entire day passed in that fashion. Upon the one-thousandth execution of a move, Megatron would show her another strike and then she would repeat that one, one thousand times. The entire week was no different. After about two weeks of that, he began to have her combine them in a series of moves. Then he would conduct drills, barking out the names of the various moves while Stormvolt performed them. It got to the point where she thought she could hear it while she recharged, but it was better than waking up in the repair bay all the time. And eventually the environment didn't bother her so much. She was concentrating much too hard to notice it. Later, they began to meet back in the original location in Darkmount where she would fight drones. Sometimes it was one on one and other times there would be two or three of them after her.

The repetition worked as intended. She didn't even really have to think about what she was doing most of the time. Her processors could access the right combination of moves and the rest of her systems enacted them without a hitch. She wondered who had to fix the drones after she finished destroying them. It wasn't her problem. Come to think of it, once they returned to Cybertron from Chaar after the hate plague, she had done very little in the medical or engineering fields.

The smoke was still rising from the latest batch of wrecked machinery when Megatron entered the room.

"Well done. That was a new best time for three on one. I think you are ready for the final tests."

Stormvolt said nothing but watched him closely as he observed the destruction, absently kicking at the wreckage here and there. He would not distract her into not seeing his attack coming.

"The cycle after tomorrow you will fight a swarm of drones. If you are successful you will then face a single, more skilled opponent. And if you are successful in that, you will fight the last opponent."

"How many is a swarm?"

"I'd say twenty is a nice, round number. Sharkticons work in groups. We want to be authentic."

"I see."

"And by success, I mean that you do not become offlined at any point and they do not gain the advantage to where you would be deactivated in an actual fight. Should that happen you will start over at the beginning back in Kaon. Any questions?"

"I guess not. What time should I be here?"

"The usual. Now go see that Thrust hasn't made a mess of your command. You may also want to check on your prisoner. I have given the order that it lives only as you permit it."

"You have?"

"That is part of singularity. That disgusting creature belongs to you now."

"Oh. I haven't seen him since Rumble and Frenzy took him away." Shit, how long had it been since then? A month, maybe more?

"Yes, definitely check on it. That is our only prisoner at the moment and no doubt the guards are bored. Anything could happen."

"Yes, sir. I'll do that."

"Very well. Dismissed."

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX

It was hard for the Skuxxoid to dodge the low powered laser fire that came his way. He was weak and his arm and hand still hurt. The clumsy splints helped a little, but they weren't executed with much care or knowledge. He'd lost a lot of weight, too. They fed him once a day. He didn't know what it was, but it was obvious that none of these guys knew how to cook. Daily, he cursed the decision to go to the asteroid.

"What's the matter? You gettin' tired already?" A big mech asked.

There was only silence. The Skuxxoid had long since given up on begging.

"Aw, I think he doesn't want to play anymore," said the other guard, a slightly smaller, but no less meaner 'bot.

"Too bad. I'm just getting started."

"Just what the frag do the two of you think you're doing, hmmmm?" Asked a new voice as a hand softly landed on each's shoulder from behind. They were so absorbed in tormenting the prisoner they hadn't noticed Stormvolt's silent entry into the room.

"What do you care? We were just having some fun," said the larger of the two mechs after a sideways glance to see who interrupted.

The other stayed quiet. He was one of the ones present when the prisoner was first brought in and he dreaded what that hand on his shoulder might mean.

"I care because that prisoner belongs to me and I'm not finished with him." She was appalled at the state he was in. "What I do not care about is your 'fun.' "

The mech turned to face her, looking down with an unimpressed expression. He, like most of his ground based brethren, did not care one bit for seekers. He especially didn't care for seekers who thought they were his boss.

"In case you haven't noticed, we don't have any wings on our backs, so why don't you quit trying to order us around and clear out of h—…" He said with a sweep of his arm for emphasis on the "clear out". The additional gesture was unwise but particularly so when he object of his remark had spent the last two hours fighting multiple drones. Stormvolt reacted without even thinking about it.

The words were only partially out when mech found his arm grabbed, and the next thing he knew he was flat on his back with several tons of seeker crouched on his torso. Two small cannons were pointed at his head. How was she that fast?

"Hey! Take it easy," said the other mech, holding his hands out in a placating gesture.

"Stay out of my way and we're fine," said Stormvolt before turning her attention back to the original problem "You, on the other hand…." Honestly, she hadn't been thinking about laying him out, but that swing near her head tripped some kind of trigger and she went after him without thinking. It was probably the exact reaction Megatron was trying to get out of her.

They stayed in their positions for what felt like a long time before Stormvolt removed herself, while keeping her weapons aimed until she was far enough back that he couldn't try anything.

"Don't think just because you got me that one time that it'll happen that way again," said the mech as he got to his feet.

"Don't be so sure it won't. But that's up to you, isn't it? So are we going to be civilized or are we continuing?" It was fun to watch the confused look flash across his face when confronted with reasonableness.

"What are you talking about?"

"Civilized means you two walk away and don't give me any more trouble. Continuing should be obvious."

"C'mon, lets go," said the smaller of the two.

"You don't think the two of us can handle one seeker, and a small one at that?"

"It's an awful lot of bother for nothing. I don't feel like getting into it over a Skuxxoid of all things. And then there's explaining to Barricade no matter how it goes, and you know what he said about-"

"All right, all right." the larger interrupted before his companion could finish the sentence. "Fine. You got lucky. Might not happen next time," he said to Stormvolt.

Stormvolt shrugged noncommittally. It was for the best, but a sneaking part of her wanted to continue just to see what happened. "If you'll excuse us, please."

The larger mech grunted in reply but they were moving toward the door. She watched until they were gone before turning to face the prisoner. He was huddled in a corner watching her closely.

"What are they feeding you?" She asked. Whatever it was, he wasn't getting enough of it from the looks of him.

"Huh?" It was an unexpected question.

"Rations. What are they giving you?"

"I don't know what it is." He pointed at a small bucket with a lid in the back corner of his cell.

"Well, go get it and bring it here. I don't have all day."

He fetched the container and gently poked it through the bars, yanking his hand back as soon as he finished. A quick scan showed the contents were a mix of nutrients from artificial sources and a sludge also made from something kind of like digestible paper. Its gray, unappetizing appearance made her think of chunky drywall joint compound. No wonder he looked like crap. This would keep him alive but barely.

"What do you eat ordinarily?"

"Nalorags would be nice," he said carefully.

"The fuck is that?"

"It's a plant, a vine. It grows pods and you get them out of the pod when it dries out. There are a lot of different kinds of them."

"Like what?"

"Some are big, some are small and they come in different colors and shapes."

"How are they prepared?"

"You cook 'em in water until they get soft. You can put other stuff in with them."

"Like some sort of animal flesh?"

"Yeah!"

"And does one soak them in water before cooking them?"

"How did you know?"

Because you're talking about something that sounds an awful lot like beans, she thought. "Never mind."

The cell was totally empty except for a large container and the covered buckets. There was no bunk of any kind.

"I presume that container is for sanitation?" She asked, pointing at a large rectangular box with a heavily sealed door on the top of one end.

The skuxxoid nodded.

"How are your injuries?"

"It still hurts. A lot," he said, reproachfully.

"Don't give me any attitude. Actions have consequences, buddy. You were warned and you chose to lie. And I'm not finished talking to you, so keep it in mind."

He didn't have anything to say to that. She stood there a while, staring at him while she internally contacted Thrust then Microntis. Soon a pair of seekers arrived and received their orders to guard the prisoner, and if they valued their metallic skins, to not abuse him in any way. Microntis was asked to contact Sunstorm, who was still stuck on Earth in Autobot City, and have him procure a few random items and send them back with Astrotrain who was there to resupply him.

Later that cycle, the alien would almost burst into tears when Microntis arrived and wordlessly presented him with a steaming pot of pinto beans and a quantity of straw and a couple of scratchy wool blankets to use as bedding. Feeding the alien was now his job, no one else could be trusted to do it correctly, but he didn't mind. He knew why the alien was wearing the splints and wrapping on his hand and arm and wondered if perhaps this new development was done out of guilt. He had a difficult time reconciling the idea of the femme terrorizing someone after showing such care to he and his mate. Perhaps she regretted her actions on some level and was trying to make up for it now. That's what he chose to believe but it was far from the actuality.

XxXxXxXxXxX

She didn't really care about the skuxxoid's comfort but he needed to stay alive for her plan to work and he probably wasn't going to do it surviving on some weird looking slop and sleeping on a cold, metal floor. But then maybe she was getting way, way ahead of herself. If she failed any of the next few tests, it would be a long time before she got to enact that plan.

First there was the swarm, whatever was after that, and then the final fight. She had a pretty good idea the last would be Megatron himself. Who else was more difficult? He was showing her a lot of his moves, but given all she knew about him, he had to be holding back a few. It was like that story where a master teaches his student 99 ways to kill someone but he actually knows 100. With Megatron, she estimated that it was probably more like he showed her 75 out of 100. She needed a few secret moves of her own. Fortunately, she had a potential source that she'd been saving for a long time with the intent of trying it on Cyclonus during one of their sparring sessions but it hadn't come to pass. Hopefully the download files were still in her memory banks and not beaten out of her head. She'd taken a lot of it since Cyclonus went to Earth to cause trouble and wound up having to chase down Scourge after he went rogue and stole the Autobot Matrix of Leadership.

A quick search showed two video files. One labeled Enter the Dragon and another titled Police Story. There had to be something in those she could steal and then modify into moves no one had seen before. She would go to the no-name planet and practice them where there was no chance of being seen and then she would save them for the last fight. All she had to do was some math, figuring out what level of force was needed to propel her body through the motions accurately and then fine tuning it and then repeating it to cement the knowledge. First though, just to keep the peace, she would go explain to Barricade why her guys were guarding the prisoner from now on. Probably those two she sent out made something up, and it was hard to tell what he was thinking. She was warned that he was manipulative and a liar so everything he said was taken with a large grain of salt. Still, though, she would make the effort.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX

The drones were made to look like Sharkticons and Allicons and they came in waves. No sooner had Stormvolt taken a group out when another would appear. Each group was more difficult than the last. The longer the fight went, the better they worked together. In fact, it seemed to her that they were functioning with more intelligence than the actual Sharkticon she'd fought previously. She'd lost track of how many of them she'd destroyed but it was more than twenty.

For the most part, she was unharmed. She'd taken some hits, but nothing too bad. The thing was, smarter than the real thing or not, they were still slow and awkward. She dodged them and then picked them off one or two at a time, avoiding getting surrounded. It was weird, but none of this was that difficult.

That was when a series of openings appeared at the edges of the ceiling and water began to flood the room. Oh, shit. If the room totally flooded, there wasn't a lot of hope for her. These things were awkward on land but just the opposite in water. She began to fight in a frenzied manner, kicking and punching and beating her opponents with torn off parts of their comrades. The water was still coming and she intended to kill as many as she could before it got deep enough for them to swim in. Eventually the water got waist high and the two remaining Sharkticons and one Allicon transformed in anticipation. Time was running out. What was she going to do? They were so fast under water that she couldn't avoid them forever and when they ganged up on her that would be it. She glanced around and then zeroed in on the spikes on the shoulders of a fallen Allicon drone that had yet to be cleared from the room. She had beaten it in the head with the tail of a Sharkticon. It was all dented but wasn't leaking anything. Across the room was a dead Sharkticon drone which had been kicked into the wall. The remaining carcasses had been removed via panels in the floor that opened up and dumped them out of sight. That had stopped once the water got a little depth. There was spilled energon on the floor mixed with hydraulic fluid and oil from some of the others. The water would dilute the energon so maybe that wouldn't set them off. But what about a fresh batch? If this didn't work, she was in a world of hurt. The femme set to removing the largest spike she could see. It was hard to do anyway and the water was making the job more difficult. The spike finally snapped off and she promptly dropped it into the now chest deep water.

"Damn it!" she said, switching her vision to the closest thing she had to sonar. The spike was nearby and she quickly retrieved it. The water was almost deep enough to swim in, and the drones were already trying but not quite making it. She gripped the spike in both hands, waiting for just the right second.

At last the water reached the depth required and just as the drones began to move, Stormvolt leapt from the water, activating antigravity and firing both engines, which propelled her toward the lone allicon. She was just to one side of it and managed to drive the spike into a gap between the point where its head met its shoulder. This jammed the motion of both parts, causing it to thrash around in confusion, startling the sharkticons back. It bought enough time for her to reverse direction and return to the allicon to grip one of its small spindly arms and rip it off, spraying energon and other fluids out into the water.

As hoped, the sharkticons suddenly turned on their injured teammate and attacked it. Knowing that they would quickly destroy the allicon and then come looking for more, she maintained her position above the water, which was still rising, and held the allicon's arm waiting for the chance to use it. It wasn't much of a weapon but it would have to do. Eventually the frenzied activity died down. There was an oil slick on the water and a few bits of lightweight components floating on the surface. The sharkticons were nowhere to be seen. Stormvolt drifted toward the center of the room, well above the surface of the water. Where were they? She'd meant to get the next one as soon as they stopped attacking the allicon but by then the water was too deep and they simply swam away. Shit, now what? If she didn't come up with something fast, the water was going to fill the room and she would be unable to stay out of it, then it was lots of pain and starting over back in Kaon.

As she frantically tried to think of something, the sharkticons decided to help by leaping out of the water and snapping at her. The first one came scarily close to clamping down on her midsection. She rose higher until her back was against the ceiling, watching the sharkticons continue leaping up. There was a way to get rid of at least one of them.

She quickly removed the claws at the end of the arm and then squeezed the remaining stump and pressed it against the ceiling to make a very rough point at the end. The sharkticons were getting closer with each jump. It was time to move. She watched them closely. They came out of the water one after the other but never together. They didn't seem to change direction, either. One came from the right and then the other came from the left over and over. She timed them and although the intervals weren't exact they were very close. Okay, there would be once shot at this. She watched and little by little, lowered herself closer to the snapping metal teeth. They didn't jump any higher but they started making their attempts faster. She grabbed the arm tightly and then struck when the sharkticon made his jump from the left. The mangled arm stabbed into the optic and deep into the cranial chamber. Fluids gushed out and the water appeared to suddenly boil where the injured drone landed as the one remaining attacked it. While it was distracted she looked around for another weapon. There was nothing. Any object floating on the surface of the filthy water was too small and light to use that way.

Usually Megatron explicitly said the she could not use regular weapons, such as her cannons or tasers. But this time, he didn't. She'd gotten used to fighting hand to hand or with improvised weapons and hated to break the streak. Too bad. There was no other way out. She moved away from the ceiling so that she touched nothing and then delivered a two-second lightning bolt to the water. The heat actually ignited one of the oil slicks.

Ha! That ought to fix him. She thought smugly and then saw a slight motion in the corner of her vision and instinctively moved, avoiding the sharkticon by mere inches as it jumped at her though the flames. The oil sticking to its face from the water continued to burn, rendering its appearance demonic.

No! How was it still alive? She only had a half charge left on the voltage discharge meter, so it was clearly a powerful blast. How, then? Water was a conductor, so wouldn't lightning go everywhere? But wait, if that were true then wouldn't lightning strikes on lakes and smaller bodies of water result in massive fish kills? You never ever heard about that happening. Fuck! The sharkticon had gone back to jumping at her. The flames had been smothered in its dive and now it looked normal again. She thought about just shooting him with lasers, but that didn't have a whole lot of effect unless there was a lot of it or it was a pretty big blaster. She could think of one last thing to try. If she couldn't be a storm, she'd be an eel.

Timing her movements to the leaps that were going to be unavoidable in about another minute, she grabbed the tail as the sharkticon flashed by and was immediately yanked down into the water. She held on with both hands as the drone tried to shake her loose. Its body was too rotund and its tail too short for it to be able to reach around and get her that way. It was all over in a matter of seconds. The tasered it until its systems failed and it became motionless. Immediately multiple openings appeared in the floor, quickly draining the water.

But for some minor damage and a lot of filth, she was fine. She crouched on the floor, running systems checks and making sure there wasn't some hidden problem about to make itself known. Megatron's voice came to her via internal communicator.

"Well done. I was wondering when you would remember that you were permitted to use weaponry."

"No Kaon for me. Not yet." she replied, standing and trying to shake off the water where she could.

" 'Yet', the operative word. I wouldn't get too comfortable. Now you must eliminate the next challenger and this time, no weapons."

"Wait, don't I get a break?"

The nasty laugh was her response.

"I guess that's a no." A heavy hand landed on her shoulder. She immediately sprung forward, and then turned to face whatever it was with an aggressive posture. She stopped, dumbfounded for a second or two.

"Aren't you happy to see me?"

"How are…This doesn't make any…" she fumbled for the right words and took a step forward before stopping. No. Something was very wrong, but she didn't want it to be.

"This was not the sort of welcome I expected."

"I don't know what to say."

"How about 'Greetings' or 'Where have you been' or 'How did you escape?' " said Cyclonus.

In her state of astonishment, Stormvolt didn't notice how he got a little closer to her with each remark. It looked like him and sounded like him but something was way off and she couldn't put her finger on it at first then it became clearer. Underneath his wiseass remarks he seemed very angry, like he came home and caught her in the act with someone else. And how could she have missed the reaction of her spark? There was none. It felt only the emptiness that had taken over since he deactivated.

"Is it really you?" She asked, senses on red alert now as she stared into his dead, flat optics.

"What do you think?" He said, holding out both arms and stepping forward as though to embrace her.

Stormvolt immediately spun and delivered a kick to his chest plate, sending him stumbling backward but not quite down.

"I think you've got a lot of fucking nerve," she said, as much to Megatron as the imposter. How dare he try to use her emotions to trick her with this fake. That was some cruel bullshit, even for him.

"Sharp as ever I see," he said, not giving up the charade. "I've always liked that about you."

"Drop dead," said Stormvolt, crouching down into a fighting stance and waiting to see what he would do.

"Again?" He said, walking slowly toward her.

"Yes, you cheap imposter…or better yet, I'll help you."

"If that's the way you want it," he said and then charged.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX

It was only a fake, but it fought with just as much ferocity as the real Cyclonus had. Ferocity but not strategy. She was dented, scraped, had a bent wing, was missing part of one arm and one leg would no longer fully support her weight because it was bending backward at the knee joint, but Stormvolt was victorious in the end. The drone had similar injuries but it was the removal of its head that ended things. The femme took out all her rage and frustrations on it. This piece of garbage wasn't fit to change the bulbs in Cyclonus's landing lights and yet it came in here daring to try to look and act like him. Nah, bitch, we're not doing that.

She sat down on a Sharkticon carcass and waited. She'd lost quite a bit of energon and everything hurt, especially the wing and arm. Eventually Megatron entered the room. His smug demeanor would have pissed her off if she wasn't in such rough shape. As it was, she was merely resigned. She would say what she thought and so what. What was he going to do, tear off her other arm?

"That was pretty low," she said.

"Yes, I thought you might feel that way if you weren't immobilized by emotion and then defeated."

"But I wasn't."

"No."

"Insulting to his memory, though, using his likeness as a training aid."

"Perhaps, but I can assure you the Quintessons will stoop to those kind of tactics and worse. I want you to be prepared for any possibility."

"So that leaves one more match and then I'm out."

"If you are successful."

"Fair enough. It's you isn't it?"

"Of course."

"Yeah. Thought so."

"We will meet in one week. Until then, prepare yourself accordingly."

"Right." She hefted herself up to a semi standing position, staggered to the side and collapsed, offlined.

Megatron made certain of her condition and then contacted the repair bay. Offlining took longer than he thought it would, given the nature of her injuries.

"Bonesaw, your patient is ready. And this time, enact all the improvements we discussed."