(A/N: Warning warning warning: this chapter contains gratuitous jumping about in time, as well as entirely too many "Look! There's something behind you!" scenes. Thanks to Lynx Traveller (and all the other kind people who've reviewed). I took your wing suggestion to heart. Neither Transformers nor Nyarlathotep are mine. I'd really rather like to own the former, but the latter can keep his unimaginable horrors to himself.)
The Heroic Autobots'Ark™...
Ratchet finished replacing Tracks's left CV joint, and closed the access panel, stepping back and rubbing at his optics. "I've told you before, quit it with the street racing," he told the dark-blue Autobot. "Or at least quit racing on streets that have potholes dating back to the Ford administration. You're not designed for it."
Tracks shifted and got off the table, sulkily. "I can do whatever I want," he drawled.
"You know what, you're right. Next time, you can do your own front-end job." Ratchet folded his arms. "Go on, get out of here. I've got work to do."
Tracks looked around the deserted med bay. "You do?"
"Yes, I do." Ratchet wasn't about to tell him that the work in question consisted of doing an in-depth anatomical examination of the special issue of FemBot featuring Lolita-One, Cybertron's ultimate pleasure drone. Tracks gave him a sulky look and slouched off, unconsciously imitating James Dean, and Ratchet went back to his duty desk and pulled out his magazines.
He hadn't even managed to get to the centerfold when Wheeljack burst in, ears flashing red with suppressed glee. "Ratchet! Man, you have got to check out what's goin' on at the Deceptibase! It's great!"
Ratchet hurriedly tucked FemBot back into his desk drawer. "Do you mind? I was doing work here."
"You're not gonna believe what's happening," Wheeljack insisted, grabbing his arm and yanking him to his feet, down the hall, and into the command room. The rest of the Autobots were gathered there, watching events on the great main screen of Teletran One. Even Prime was trying not to look as if he was enjoying what he saw.
"We've been recording it!" Wheeljack hissed, elbowing his way through the throng and calling up another image on one of the side screens. Ratchet saw what looked like a rather accurate clone of Lolita-One in red and gold bending over Megatron, who was slumped on a recharge couch with a look of pathetic helplessness on his face, which wasn't designed for it. Ratchet couldn't help snorting.
"See, she's got him...and before that...." Wheeljack rewound the recording to show a fisheye lens view of a roomful of Decepticons beating each other over the head with whatever came to hand. Ratchet's optics widened as he noticed Megatron yank Starscream's left wing off and start whapping him over the head with it, while the jet apparently tried to take a bite out of his leader's arm. Beside them, Dirge was happily jumping up and down on Thrust. Wheeljack was laughing so hard his ears had gone purple.
"Hey," said Ratchet, trying to ignore Astrotrain knocking over Soundwave by throwing Ramjet at him, "who's that? Pause the tape a sec."
Wheeljack managed to control himself long enough to pause the recording, and they could all clearly make out the form of what looked like a female human in the golden femmebot's hand. "What the hey?"
"It's one of the Mary Sues. It has to be. Why else would there be female humans in the Decepticon base?"
"Hang on," said Prime, unpausing the tape. He scowled at the tiny figure of the human, who gave the femmebot an unmistakeable V-sign and then squiggled out of its hand in apparent suicide. There was a flash of purple and black, and something caught her as she fell, and zoomed out of frame. "That was odd."
"Did you see the look on the femmebot's face just then?" Wheeljack gasped, wheezing with hilarity. Prime was ignoring him.
"Cosmos," he said, flicking open the comm channel, "see if you can get any scans of human life inside the Decepticon base."
There was a pause, filled with further amusement at the Decepticons onscreen, who had now progressed to the mosh-pit stage of public brawling. Finally Cosmos came back to them. "Prime, I'm reading one human lifeform, the usual complement of Cybertronians, and a whole collection of bizarre warp signatures."
"Hah," said Optimus Prime. "So I was right. That," he pointed at the freeze-frame of the humanoid jumping out of the femmebot's fist, "is not a Mary Sue. That is a real, live, actual, non-imaginatory human being."
"What?"
Wheeljack said. "It can't be."
"Didn't you say that it was
theoretically possible for your Sappivator to home in on actual living beings
and transpose them into the target zone instead of Mary Sues?"
Wheeljack gave Ratchet a dirty look. "Well, theoretically, it's possible, but..."
"And you also said," Prime reminded him, "that there had been an unexplained event where your invention had flickered in and out of reality."
"Yeah, well, that might have just been a visual glitch, y'know..."
"Wheeljack," said Prime firmly, "you put a human in the Decepticon base."
Most of the laughter had stopped by now, although Bumblebee was still giggling like an idiot over the spectacle of the Aerospace Commander being beaten over the head with his own severed wing.
"And we all know how the Decepticons feel about humans," murmured Hound, from behind them.
Wheeljack's ears flashed red. "Okay, okay, okay," he said, but added "Looks to me like she's got it under control." He raised a hand to forestall protests. "I'll find some way to get her back out."
"Why don't we just go attack the base now?" asked Bluestreak. "I mean, they're not exactly in the best of shape right now."
"I can't risk that." Prime folded his arms. "We have no guarantee that this new Mary Sue won't affect us as well as the Decepticons. I can't have my warriors falling under her spell." He flicked back to the main screen, which was showing the empty command room of the Decepticon base. "Find her, Wheeljack, and get her out of there. I'm sure you can figure something out."
Wheeljack nodded and hurried off. There was silence for a moment before Bumblebee rewound the tape to the bit where they started attacking one another and began to replay it. One by one, they started to laugh again.
Meanwhile, at the Undersea DeceptiBase Home of Evil ™...
Alex, true to her word, was busily working her way through the Camels. She'd wished up a sofa and a bottle of wine, as well as the collected works of Jhonen Vasquez, and was reclining at her ease in the deserted storage room. She'd watched the Insecticons take wing, presumably for Bali and freedom (why Bali, she wondered vaguely; why not, say, Madagascar, or the Bikini Atoll? Presumably there was a reason) and forced herself not to laugh as Starscream, TC and Skywarp carried the cageful of Mary Sues out, trying all the while not to look at them or pay attention to the waves of pink mindless fluffiness coming off them like cheap perfume. In the meanwhile, she fully expected there to be a minor civil war in the offing, and she had absolutely no intention of being involved at all in any way, so she was keeping herself to herself.
She turned a page. Distantly she could hear voices raised in what might have been anger or incredulity, and then the distinctive f'tow f'tow f'tow of laser fire. She wondered how Megatron was faring with the femmebot.
We're not thinking about Megatron, remember? And we're also not thinking about Starscream or Skywarp or Thundercracker, or Kickback, or anyone else except ourselves and Mr. The Homicidal Maniac here.
Ah yes, I was forgetting.
Nor are we thinking about how much trouble we're going to be in at work, if we ever make it out of here alive. Which is a moot point, given that we've failed to hitch a ride with the Insecticons, who seemed to be the only sane individuals in the area.
Why the hell are we talking about ourselves in plural third person?
We don't know.
"Oh, bugger," said Alex and got up, flicking away the cigarette end and giving up trying not to be interested in what was happening around her. JTHM and the sofa disappeared with a faint pop as she stopped thinking about them; the bottle of wine didn't follow suit. She tucked it under her arm and headed out of the room. "If there's gonna be any explosions, I want a front-row seat."
And we want to see if Megatron's kicked Starscream's head off yet.
Shut up, interior voice.
Shutting up right now.
***
A few moments before...
Megatron's memory was a little hazy on recent events; he could be sure that he had kicked some serious afterburner in the impromptu fight in the storage room, and then things had gone a little pink and uncertain. He seemed to remember being ill, or at least feeling dreadfully weak, and then something had been there and made it all go away. Something that....felt wonderful.
He shuddered.
Replacing the fusion cannon on his forearm and feeling the locking bolts slide into place, he sat up. He wasn't at all clear how he'd got to his quarters, or why he'd been lying on the bed with one arm dangling helplessly toward the floor, but somebody was certainly going to suffer for all this. Whatever had suddenly come over him had gone away again; he, Megatron, was back in action.
His constant nasty half-smile slipped back onto his face, and he started down the corridor, fusion cannon at the ready.
Now...
Starscream peered round a corner. "It's getting worse," he said. "Superia Prime must be this way."
Thundercracker and Skywarp groaned. "You could help carry the cage," said Skywarp, who was beginning to suffer from the proximity of the Mary Sues. They had done a bit of yelling and jumping up and down when the Seekers had picked up their prison, but Thundercracker had explained to them—staying well back from the bars—that they were going to help destroy the evil robot who was endangering them all, after which they shut up and adopted poses of bellicose determination.
"I'm your leader," Starscream reminded him, "I don't have to carry anything. Come on, stop dawdling. I want this femmebot removed from my base at once."
His wingmates exchanged a look, but hefted the cage again and followed him down the corridor. Starscream's theoretical command over the Decepticons was currently slightly less of an issue than the destruction of Superia Prime.
"Oh, slag," Skywarp muttered, as they approached the control room, beginning to sway. "It's near. It's really near. I don't feel so good..."
"Aah, stop whining," said Starscream, whose wing still hurt badly enough to cut through the pink fog. "Laserbeak!"
The cassette alighted on his good shoulder and squawked. "Laserbeak, take a look in the control room." He motioned to the other two Seekers to put the cage down, and watched as the spy-bot flew off around the corner in silent mode.
"Wish we had Soundwave here," muttered Thundercracker.
"Shut up, TC. I don't need that uncharismatic oaf's help."
Skywarp rubbed at his optics. Thundercracker shot him a concerned look, ignored by all except the Mary Sues, who had clustered over at his side of the cage and were making sympathetic noises. Starscream glared at them, but was distracted by Laserbeak's return. "Well?"
"Target presence noted in control room," said Laserbeak in a monotone not unlike Soundwave's. "Central console."
"Excellent." Starscream grinned nastily. "Decepticons, release the Mary Sues."
Skywarp slid down the wall to sit in a heap on the floor, clutching his head, so it was Thundercracker who unlocked the cage and set the miniature army of buxom women free. At once, they poured out of the cage, spike heels clicking on the steel floor, and sprinted off in the direction Starscream indicated. "Destroy the enemy," he ordered them, and added for some reason "We're counting on you."
"It's getting you too, Screamer," muttered Skywarp. "What the hell was that?"
"Oh, be quiet."
Thundercracker helped Skywarp to his feet. "What's the plan now, Leader?" he inquired, with a decent imitation of the way Starscream normally referred to Megatron.
"The plan, since you ask, is to go and find the rest of our forces and get rid of that incompetent heap of scrap metal Megatron once and for all."
Starscream didn't register the look on his wingmates' faces until a little too late; they weren't looking at him at all, but at something behind him. The cold barrel of a fusion cannon clanked softly against the back of Starscream's head.
"What was that?" asked Megatron pleasantly. "I'm not sure I heard you."
Starscream stiffened. "Er," he said.
Megatron took hold of his wing-stump with a grip that left finger-dents in the torn edges and turned him around so they were face to face. "I'm sorry, you'll have to repeat yourself," he said, still sounding pleasant. "I must be getting deaf in my incompetent and obsolete old age."
"Er," said Starscream again, trying to think of something, anything, to say. Megatron's expression changed suddenly from mild curiosity to all-out rage—the shift was so rapid that it was frightening in itself. He let go of Starscream's ruined wing and picked the Seeker up by his throat. "This time you have gone too far, Starscream," he hissed. "Your insubordination reaches new heights. Give me one reason why I shouldn't crush you to pieces right now."
Starscream couldn't, mostly because his voice modulator was being slowly compressed into scrap. He clawed at Megatron's wrist, ineffectively.
"Because..." said Skywarp slowly, behind Starscream, sounding deathly ill, "...Superia Prime's right behind you...."
Megatron whirled, still holding Starscream several feet above the floor, and let the Seeker drop. Starscream crashed to the ground in a groaning heap.
The robot Mary Sue was standing with her hands on her hips, regarding all three of them with glowing golden optics. Her human counterparts were perched all over her, clinging to her shoulders, hanging from her decorative belt, sitting among the sculptured wings on her helmet. Megatron found himself thinking of a statue covered in pigeons, briefly, before most of his ability to think fell away.
"You must stop," she said, her voice low and musical and sweet. It had strange buzzing harmonics to it, seeming to resonate oddly in the Decepticons' circuits, and despite Megatron's firm resolve not to fall under her spell, he began to feel the pink fog wrap around his mind once more. Skywarp fell to his knees with a dim crash of metal on metal, but neither Megatron, Starscream or Thundercracker paid any attention to him. Superia Prime took a step forward, smiling sweetly.
"I have joined with these humans," she continued. "They are my colleagues and my sisters. We will help you. Together we will help all of you. We love you, and you will love us."
"...love..." repeated the Decepticons dully, their optics flickering.
"We will live happily ever after." The femmebot's voice was joined in chorus by the humans' voices. It wrapped around their minds, swirling, hypnotic, inescapable, compelling.
"...ever after..."
"We will be sensitive to one anothers' needs."
"...needs..."
"We will become so unbelievably saccharine that our bodies will undergo spontaneous transmogrification into marshmallow Peeps," said another voice, dryly. It cut through the pink fog like a null-ray blast. Alex stepped around the corner and stared up at the tableau. "Megatron?"
The Decepticon leader blinked and looked down at her dully. She cursed.
A few moments before...
Alex had known she was getting close; she could smell the Mary Sues, a sweet mixture of violets and vanilla that made her feel rather sick, and she'd reached the corner just in time to hear Superia Prime's declaration of her alliance with the humans. Well, bang goes that idea, she thought sourly. Now they're working together. Great. Wonderful.
And I've got absolutely nothing that might knock it out. No firepower, no nothing.
Megatron's cannon might possibly affect her, although I'd bet she's got magical girl-power shielding and all sorts of protection; her sort always do. And I sincerely doubt I can get him to fire it at her. Not point-blank, anyway.
Hell.
She paced, pulling the fur coat tighter around herself. If only I could fly. I'd be able to distract her while someone else does the actual shooting, or something...
She didn't notice for a moment that her feet were no longer touching the floor, until she made to sit down against the wall and realized she was sitting on air. "Holy shit!" she breathed.
Unlike Arthur Dent, she seemed to be able to think about the fact that she was flying without disturbing her ability to do so. She jumped up and down experimentally in midair, and found that with a little bit of willpower she was able to zoom around the massive corridor like a slightly drunken yellowjacket. For a moment she almost forgot the dire situation just round the corner with the sudden exhilaration of flight; then she happened to catch a glimpse of gold and red, and nearly hit the wall as she banked and turned, dropping down to the floor. Never paid to show off your new magical powers to the enemy until you were ready to use them.
Now (again) (in case you didn't know)...
"Damn," said Alex, and looked from Megatron to the Mary Sues. Superia Prime's lovely eyes narrowed, and the scent of violets and vanilla in the hall grew suddenly stronger. Alex winced as the Decepticons' heads turned back to Superia Prime as if drawn by tractor beams. Some kind of pheromone?
She considered briefly, then raised a dramatic hand to her brow and pointed the other one at Superia Prime. "—Look out behind you! It is the dread Nyarlathotep!"
Superia Prime tilted her head. "The crawling chaos? The sightless vortex of the unimaginable? The dark king who shall come in the night from the east and you shall not know him?"
"That's the bunny. He's right behind you! Use your special independent female powers! We are in danger!"
Superia Prime turned around. The moment her back was turned, Alex leapt into the air, soaring up to Megatron's shoulder, and administered a healthy kick to the side of his helmet. He staggered a bit. "Your cannon!" she hissed. "Now! While she's not looking at you!"
Megatron stared at her, and then shook his head, seeming to snap out of it. She jumped up and down on his shoulder, pointing at the Mary Sue, who was still regarding the corridor with a puzzled golden glare. "Now!"
The Decepticon leader stretched out his arm, his hand still limp, and Alex leapt on top of the cannon. She had seen something that looked like a firing stud, and she had no time to wonder if this was as stupid an idea as it must look; Superia Prime was turning back around, not having found Nyarlathotep despite a comprehensive examination of the corridor. She landed, and skidded down the barrel, reaching out and bringing down a fist on the firing stud.
The world went pinkish-white.
(A/N: Heh heh, cliffhanger. All will be revealed in the next and final excitingly stupid chapter of A Plague of Mary Sues.)