Author's note: Sorry for taking so long with this installment. I've been snowed under with college and work, but now I'm back and ready to rock!!! (Or something like that…)

Chapter 3: Face-to-Face

Meanwhile, at Decepticon HQ…

Megatron was in a foul mood.

The first news he had received when he woken this morning was that the war on Cybertron had swung in favor of the Autobots. Apparently the arrival of Superion and Defensor along with a host of non – gestalt Autobots had done the trick, leading Shockwave to send a frantic request for reinforcements to Earth. This meant sending Bruticus, Menasor and Predaking to Cybertron, which would surely stall the Terran Decepticons campaign.

As if this wasn't enough, Megatron then learned that half of his six man Air Force had been beaten into submission five hours ago on a training mission.

A blasted training mission!, the enraged commander snarled in his mind, only barely resisting the urge to blow another hole in the wall with his fusion cannon.

Just as he had decided to give into the urge anyway, Soundwave entered the control room.

"Report!" Megatron barked in a voice that would have caused hyper-dense armor to shatter.

As befitted the emotionless Decepticon, Soundwave didn't flinch. "The Constructicons report that Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp can be repaired, but they will be required to spend three months in stasis pods in order for them to regain maximum efficiency." He then added, in some small way to placate Megatron's rage, "They were quite severely damaged."

"Any ideas which Autobot did this?"

"None so far. However, my studies on the energy discharge on their bodies have allowed me to identify the weapon used. It is…an extremely rare one."

"And that is?"

Soundwave paused, unsure of how to break the news. After a second of debate he said:

"A fusion cannon."

*****

Back at the Ark…

He couldn't believe it.

Despite the evidence of his eyes, part of Ratchet refused to give credit to the thing that stood awkwardly in front of him.

Because if he did believe his eyes, that would mean he was looking at a bizarre fusion of himself and Megatron.

And that's impossible.

Isn't it?

It had to be.

As he stared at the freak of nature Ratchet began to feel ill. It was comprised of Megatron's right half and the psuedo-Ratchet's left and looked as if it had been put together by a blind surgeon with Alzheimer's. He was desperately trying to avoid looking the creature in the faces. He couldn't stomach looking at partially fused countenances, their mouths permanently opened wide in a silent scream of pain, their eyes relentlessly staring at him, looking for all the world like a creature who wanted nothing more than oblivion.

In an instant, however, that changed.

While the face of the psuedo-Ratchet remained the same, Megatron's face suddenly went from pained to a look of slow recognition. To Ratchet's horror, this quickly became an expression of extreme anger.  

"RRRAAAATCCHHUUUTTT!" the creature screamed pulling back the arm adorned with a fusion cannon.

That was the wake up call Ratchet needed. Realizing where that fist was going to be inserted, he dived to his right, barely a second before the creature punched a fair sized hole in the wall.

That could have been my head…

That though kept swirling in his head as he watched the creature wrench itself free. It swung itself round to face Ratchet, splattering him with a mixture of energon and oil as it did so, and lowered its fusion cannon to his head as he desperately tried to get up from the floor.

Just as he thought that he was going to die, Ratchet heard the words that, just this once, sounded like music to his audio sensors.

"Me Grimlock munch metal!" shouted the Dinobot commander, ramming his snout into the monster and smashing it into the ceiling in one easy motion.

Turing his head, Ratchet saw Swoop, Snarl, Slag and Sludge come charging into the Medbay in their dinosaur modes, eager to jump into the fray.

A roar from the monster brought Ratchet's attention back to it. To his horror, it smashed both right fists into the side of Grimlock's head, forcing him to drop it. Once it was back on the ground it toppled the T-Rex with an almighty kick. Unfortunately for it, this gave Slag the chance to ram into it at an incredible velocity. The impact sent the creature hurtling into a bank of terminals, causing a few power cables to come loose. The cables then made contact with its body, allowing huge amounts of electricity to surge through it. 

Ratchet was treated to the sight of seeing himself, or rather an extremely twisted copy of himself, being fried by an overload of energy.

A few seconds later the cables stopped surging. The creature stood there for a moment, smoke coming from its scorched armor and its four eyes staring at Ratchet intensely, before finally falling to the ground face first.

"No fair!" cried Swoop, transforming into his robot form. "Battle over too quickly!"

Ignoring him, Ratchet crept up to the monster cautiously. The surge wouldn't have been enough to kill it and he wanted to have enough leverage to run should the monster revive. He decided to drop the caution when the Dinobots clustered around the body. If he didn't stop them chances were they would rip the monster to pieces. Ratchet couldn't allow that, at least not until he could figure out what the hell it was.

Pushing past Sludge and Snarl, Ratchet looked down at the creature. He tried to ignore the other Ratchet's arm jutting out of Megatron's cylinder.

As the six Autobots stared down at the monstrosity Grimlock, with one sentence, managed to speak what was on everyone's mind.

"Why big freak look like puny doc and creep Megatron?"

TBC…