I AM UPLOADING THIS CHAPTER ON MY OWN PERSONAL COMUTER! No more sharing with two parents and a sibling! WH00T!!
Thanks to those people who read chapter 1. My plot bunnies appreciate it. :-) Now, response to my reviewers:
Pivot: Glad you enjoyed it so much. Unfortunately, not all the chapters will be as humorous. But, with Cyclonus, there's gotta be at least a little humor, right? I think I like his version of Hot Shot's name better! Hex, don't threaten me with Trig, you release him on me and I'll just challenge him to Super Smash Bros Melee. Watch ckret meet a fanchar Minicon. Watch ckret play against Trig on GameCube. Watch Trig kick ckret/Samus' tushie. Run, ckret, run! Go, Trig, go!
SaphireStars: I think Megs wants to revive Unicron because he thinks if he does it himself, he'll be able to control Unicron. Think Galvatron in TF: The Movie. But I don't know if I'll go that far forward in the timeline. I was just going to go up to the beginning of Energon, but if this fic is popular enough I may have to do a sequel. ((winkwinknudgenudgesaynomore))
Sirene: Glad you like, and here's more!
Haley Macrae: Don't worry, you'll see what happened with Prime soon enough. Remember, I'm trying to fill in ALL the plot holes here, including the disappearing characters (human and Cybertronian alike), Optimus Prime's mysterious reappearance, the discovery of Energon, how the humans began interacting with Cybertronians, why the Autobots are the supreme rulers of Cybertron despite the fact that they and the Cons were going to rule Cybertron equally according to the end of Armada, when they got the new paint jobs, why Demolisher is so reluctant to go back to the Decepticons, why Cyclonus says in Energon Eppie 4 that "Scorpinok has been revived" or something like that, despite the fact that we previously knew of no one named Scorpinok, why no one powerlinxes with M-cons anymore, why the white head on Alpha Q sounds suspiciously like a whiny Thrust with a slightly higher voice than usual... the list goes on and on!! If anyone has any AE-Gap questions they'd like answered, ask me to answer it in a review. Odds are, I've already got it covered, but you never know, I might leave something out unless you remind me. Thankee for the plushie. Is it Starscream? Seeing as I received it via review, I can't really tell... I hope it's Starscream.
Norma Lee Insane: I like you name... "Abby who?" "Abby Normal" Sorry, I had to throw that quote in... it's from one of the Frankenstein movies. Don't know which one. Anyway, thanks for the review!
Right, then, on to chapter 2. As I said before, this is gonna be mainly a serious fic. But there will be some humor in, mainly because I'm not the best drama writer and usually end up throwing a plethora of jokes worthy of the Cyclonus Award of Tackiness right in the middle of my dramatic death scenes.
Please note that I don't know exactly what a datapad is, so I'm kinda turning it into a cross between a laptop and a PDA. (Just what the American consumer needs, more overrated tech stuff, eh?)
Anyways, with that done with, onward to the fic!
Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers, "One," "Mega Tokyo," or "Neverwinter Nights." Diddlysquat, Seek Destroy and this fic are owned by me.
.....
Sanctified By Oppression
Chapter 2
.....
Cyclonus looked up as Demolisher, Wheeljack, and Tidal Wave filed out of the room. Demolisher looked dismal.
"How'd it go?" Cyclonus asked, putting his game down. The Elite 4 could wait. This was the fate of all Decepti-kind! Wait... "Decepti-kind?"
"Is Decepti-kind a word?" Cyclonus asked before Demolisher could answer his first question.
"Uuuuh..." Demolisher said, taken aback.
"It went fairly well," Wheeljack said. "Demolisher still gets to be in command, and we get to expand our Empire. I'd think we basically got what we wanted."
"What do you mean?!" Demolisher said angrily, forgetting all about Cyclonus' nonsense word. "The Decepticons and Autobots are officially the same faction now, the Minicons can't be owned, and I have to share rule with Hot Shot! I think your name for him was pretty accurate, Cyclonus."
"What, Shotimus?" Cyclonus asked, trying to figure out whether he'd just been complimented or not.
"No, the second one."
"Oh." Cyclonus had no clue what Demolisher was talking about. However, he did get what Demolisher was saying about the treaty. "You mean we have to live with Autobots?"
"Yeah. Which also means that anything we do has to be done at least partially the Autobot way." Demolisher glared at the door he'd just come out of. Cyclonus guessed Hot Shot was still in there. Maybe he went out another door or something. Maybe he could teleport. Now that was a disturbing thought.
"Well, we still get some say in the government, right?" Wheeljack argued. "And we get to expand our Empire, as long as we don't bother Earth..."
"Yes, except it isn't our Empire, it's our and theirs!" Demolisher yelled, whirling on Wheeljack. "Of course, you'd be happy with anything that happens! You may wear the Decepticon insignia, but you've still got Autobot fuel running in your veins. If Decepticons were made slaves for the Autobots, you'd happily work for anyone you got auctioned off to, wouldn't you?"
Wheeljack took a step back, stunned. "What? Never! I hate the Autobots as much as you do. I used to be an Autobot, but I'm not one anymore. You know that!"
Demolisher sighed. His whole structure sagged. "Yeah, I know. It's just... I'm the leader of an army I never wanted, and I'm not very good at it. I can't even get a few little things for the Decepticons, and I was debating against a punk who wouldn't know how to shoot the ground if someone didn't tell him how."
There were a few moments of silence, before Cyclonus decided he had to relieve a little of the tension. "Hey, if you don't want to lead the Cons, can I take over?" Cyclonus smiled eagerly.
"No way! We're in enough trouble as it is! We don't need you messing things up too." Even as he spoke, Demolisher cracked a small smile.
Cyclonus was very pleased with himself. It was the first time he'd gotten any sort of positive reaction from one of his jokes in months.
...
((Back on Cybertron, several months later...))
Demolisher sighed as he sat down behind his desk. He'd never suspected leading the Decepticons would require so much paperwork. Of course, most of these were Autobot formalities. If Decepticons had remained separate, they wouldn't need to fill out this much stuff. Autobots might say Decepticons were disorganized. Not true at all. They were just more efficient. If you want to build a ship, you don't get your boss to sign a permission slip, you tell him as he's walking around the base and making sure everyone's working, and wait for him to say yes or no. Things got done a lot quicker in the Decepticon army.
It seemed things were getting done reasonably quick at Hot Shot's desk, too. Hot Shot and Demolisher shared an office (the leaders of Cybertron working in an OFFICE!!), so Demolisher could see him quickly scribble a signature on every datapad handed to him, just so he could get out of there. And hang out with his "brother," Demolisher guessed. That's all he'd seen Hot Shot do in his spare time.
"I'm done with my work. Se ya later, Con!" Hot Shot declared, leaving his desk and racing for the door.
Getting a quick idea, Demolisher pulled out a blank datapad and typed on it:
My name is Shotimus Prime. I am the leader of the Autobozos, not the Decepticons. I think Optimus is stupid, and wish I were more like Demolisher and Megatron. I also like wearing pink tutus and dancing ballet to Weird Al songs.
Signed,
X
"Oh, Hot Shot! You missed a datapad!" Demolisher called out, waving the datapad's stylus at him. Groaning to himself, Hot Shot ran back and signed the datapad Demolisher held up without even looking at it. "There. I'm outta here!" Hot Shot transformed into his car alt-mode and was gone in two seconds.
Demolisher chuckled to himself and got back to work. The first thing he'd do when he got done would be make copies of that and give them to everyone he ran into.
Demolisher started reading another datapad. Someone wanted to do something to something else. What? He reread it, but it just didn't process. He really couldn't concentrate.
'I need a break' Demolisher thought. 'I've been sitting at this stupid desk...' he checked his internal chronometer '... over five hours! I'll bet my leg joints can't even move by now!'
Demolisher stood up, and his knees squeaked. 'That can't be good.'
He needed to take a walk. But... all the datapads he needed to sign! He refused to sign them without reading them, unlike Hot Shot. Demolisher smirked to himself when he thought of the nasty surprise the young Autobot was in for.
Right, they weren't supposed to call each other Autobots and Decepticons anymore. No factions... yeah right.
"What's the point of all this deskwork? A real leader should be out with the others, doing actual work!" Demolisher glared at the desk, then stared longingly at the door. 'What would Megatron do if he was in my position?'
'Shoot Hot Shot?' something in his subconscious suggested, then apparently got serious. 'Megatron wouldn't do all this junk. He'd be around his soldiers, watching what they were doing, giving them approval directly, making sure they weren't messing anything up. He wouldn't be signing datapads day-in and day-out, that's for sure.'
"And I won't either," Demolisher said. Grabbing one of the unsigned datapads, Demolisher erased all text on it and typed on it in the largest font it would allow: "If you want approval for something, ask me directly! I won't be giving signed permission anymore."
Propping that up on the desk where it was easily visible, Demolisher left the room, not planning on taking a break anymore, but on checking out what everyone was doing.
And maybe distributing a few datapad copies.
...
"Hey bro! What're you doing?" Side Swipe said cheerfully, running up to Hot Shot. Hot Shot sighed inwardly. He'd have to find some way to tell that Side Swipe to stop bugging him...
Until then, he'd be nice.
"Hey Side Swipe," Hot Shot said, forcing a smile. "You done with your work?"
"Diddlysquat took over for me. So, I'm on break for the rest of the day!"
"Oh, great," Hot Shot said, less than enthusiastic. That mean that every break he had for the rest of the day would be spent with Side Swipe.
Hot Shot tried to remember what Side Swipe's job was. He knew Diddlysquat was a former Decepticon. How did Side Swipe get him to take his place?
((Outside the base...))
"I can't believe Side Swipe told me he'd take over my duty tomorrow if I take over his today!" Diddlysquat said, standing guard outside the building. Read as: stood in front of the door and gossiped with passer-bys. "Too bad he doesn't know my job is to watch after EVERY Minicon in the base... Wonder if I should warn him about Seek Destroy's dedication to killing Minicon baby-sitters... nah."
((Back with Hot Shot and Side Swipe))
"So, what're you doing, bro?" Side Swipe repeated, smiling way too eagerly.
Hot Shot ground his teeth, but managed to talk normally. "Well, I think I've finally got enough time to contact the humans and see how they're doing."
"Aw, cool!" Side Swipe said. "Hey, can I come too? I'd like to talk to them!"
"Sorry, Side Swipe, but you won't be able to talk, I'm going to use this text communication called 'email,'" Hot Shot said, then decided he needed to elaborate so that it wouldn't sound like he was just brushing Side Swipe off. "I haven't tried to contact Earth before, and I need to concentrate so I'll be able to tell if I did something wrong."
"Oh. I see," Side Swipe said, his smile dropping. He was instantly about ninety percent less annoying than he had been three seconds ago. "Um, okay then. If you wanna hang out later, I'll be in one of the rec centers..."
Ah, the wonders of post-war! You could afford to put rec centers and break rooms in the capital!
"Okay, see ya later, Side Swipe," Hot shot said, then to sound apologetic, he said, "Maybe we can hang out tomorrow, right?
"Nah, I've got work all day..." Side Swipe said, walking away slowly.
A few seconds later, Demolisher can up to him and handed him a datapad. After reading it, Side Swipe was in a much, much better mood.
Well, he was after he had glared at Demolisher a bit for dissing Autobots.
...
((on Earth, with the Autobrats))
"Man, school's so boring!" Carlos whined. "I wish the Autobots were still here. We could go kick some Deceptibutt!"
Alexis wisely chose to ignore her friend's griping. It wasn't like she could stop him from complaining. Besides, she was bored out of her skull, too. Which was why they weren't in class. Rad, Carlos, and Alexis were sitting on top of the school, directly above the principal's office, reading comic books. Except for Alexis, who had brought her laptop and was online through a wireless connection. Getting on the Internet was infinitely more intellectual than reading comic books.
She was reading the online comic "Mega Tokyo."
"Things are pretty quiet, aren't they?" Alexis mumbled, still reading and wondering if Neverwinter Nights really was a mind-control device. She didn't really need to listen to her friends to know what they were talking about. If they looked happy, they were remembering the Transformers. If they were sad, they were wishing the Transformers were there.
Except that fat dude. Billy or Fred, Alexis didn't know or care which was which. He looked sad when he was hungry.
"Hey Alexis," Rad said.
'Uh-oh,' Alexis thought. 'He addressed my directly. I'd better pay attention.'
"Yes Rad?" Alexis said.
"Don't the Autobots have your email address? So, shouldn't they email you sometime?"
Alexis resisted the urge to sigh. "Yes, Rad, for the fifth time this week, they have my email address."
"Then how come we can't talk to them?" Carlos asked.
"Because they haven't emailed us yet and I don't know their email address. If Cybertronians even have email addresses."
Rad and Carlos stared at Alexis blankly. "Cyber-whats?"
Alexis stared back, shocked. "What do you MEAN, 'Cyber-whats'?? CYBERTRONIANS! As in they live on Cybertron! Transformers!"
"Oh," Rad said blankly. "I didn't know they were called Cybertronians."
Alexis rolled her eyes. "Some day I won't have to deal with these two fools, and then people will actually listen to me! I could change the world, maybe, if these morons weren't holding me down from reaching my true potential..." Alexis continued muttering to herself. She'd spent a little too much time with Starscream.
Since she knew what the next question would be, Alexis opened her inbox, so she could show the others that yes, indeed, it was still empty. Except it wasn't.
Alexis blinked. There was a single message, titled, "Finally got the hang of this email thing..." It was from someone named htshtce.gov.
'"Ce"?' Alexis thought. 'What does that stand for? And who's "htsht"?'
She opened the email.
"Hey everyone! It's me, Hot Shot! I had enough time to figure out how email works, so I decided to see how you guys are doing.
"Things on Cybertron are pretty good. I'm co-ruling with Demolisher. He's just like Megatron, determined to make sure the Decepticons are completely isolated from everyone, keep the Minicons as slaves, and of course take over the universe. And he wastes all this time going over every little detail of anything he signs, like he still has reason to be suspicious of us. I think he's a little different from Megatron, though. When we were discussing the treaty, I was able to talk a little reason into him. Who knows? With a little luck, we may be able to get him to trust us.
"The Decepticons are working with us now, and the Minicons are free. We're going to be colonizing some uninhabited planets nearby. Maybe sometime in the future, we could start building Transformer/human colonies, and have our races work together.
"So, that's what's going on here. Things are pretty hectic. We haven't had an official government on Cybertron in eons. Literally. But, when things are a little more organized, maybe you can come to Cybertron for a while. We're trying to terra-form parts of it so biological beings can visit. It'll take awhile for things to stabilize though. Maybe twenty years. All the paperwork and stuff that we need to go through comes in slow, and signing it all only moves things along a little. So I'll let you know when things get better. Um, humans live more than twenty years, right?
"Hot Shot, Co-Commander of the Cybertronian Empire"
'Ce. Cybertronian Empire! I get it!' Alexis grinned, and replied.
"Hot Shot, great to hear from you! Hope things don't take that long to straighten out on your end. And I hope Demolisher can learn to get along with the Autobots better. Don't worry. Humans live a lot longer than twenty years. Most of us live to be a hundred, give or take, and we're only 16 years old. 36 isn't that long away. Reply soon, getting an email from you is the most interesting thing that's happened in half a year!!
"Alexis
"PS: You might want to reconsider calling yourself a Co-Commander. It sounds like you're stuttering."
Alexis sent the email, just as Carlos asked, "So, man, is your inbox still empty?"
Alexis ground her teeth and restrained herself from yelling at Carlos for referring to her as "man." "Yes, Carlos, it's still empty," she lied. She didn't want to have to deal with their ridiculous excitement over the email.
She'd tell them eventually.
...
Notice that the Autobots don't get along quite as well as we thought they did. Remember Hot Shot's real opinion of Side Swipe. It'll be important later on. But don't worry, you'll hear more about it from time to time. You won't be expected to remember it ALL BY YOURSELF... I'll keep reminding you in the stories of important facts until you get sick an' tired of hearing about them.
Till chapter 3! Till all are one! Till the pizza man gets here! (Half-hour guarantee my foot.)
ckret2