Fate Calls

by Sci-Fifan95

In life, the only certain thing that applies to us is death. We cannot escape it. We cannot outrun it. It is a fate that finds us all. However, He plays chess. And you don't find out until too late that He's been playing with two queens all along.

41. Cloudy Horizions

This one carried on longer than I thought, and I am honestly surprised I was able to finish it almost a month quicker than my last one - writing has been slower than a snail on ice.

... I'm not sure that made sense.

Fate Calls is three years old. Holy crap. I don't... I don't even know what to say. This story has been such a huge part of my writing life, and I can see a massive difference in my writing just by going back a dozen or so chapters. It's incredible to me. Thank you all who have favorited, followed, reviewed, or done all the above. Seeing feedback has been helping me push myself to find inspiration, and makes me want to make sure everything I write - even things that make no sense and won't ever see the light of day *see random stories I've started in the last two months just to write on something* - would be enjoyable to read. So thank you all, and especially those who've been here since the very beginning. It's touching to me to see how many people keep coming back. :)

Guest (Chapter 40) - I make almost all of it up. Calk it up to creativity.

Thanks for the review, but can I ask that if you leave more feedback, you keep that particular word out of it? I may use cursing in my stories, but I do set limits for myself on the usage.

Again, thank you.

smeeagain - I just try to do my best; I know - and occasionally talk to - several writers in this fandom alone that are far more skilled than I am. But I hope you keep enjoying this story, and that this update is as good or better than the last.

Thanks for the words and the review.

Guest (Chapter 37) - Not entirely; I like to think the Insecticons were all saying that at the same time.

Thanks for reviewing.

Guest (Chapter 38) - I know my own story, and i know how Shadowstreaker is processing things. The mind is a strange thing; it twists truths and presents logical lies. That is all I will say on that matter.

Secret - Well, not exactly. The bond between Rider and Dragon weakens the further they are away from one another; the bond between sparkmates never lessens. The bond of sparkmates is also a bond of romance, while Rider Dragon are bound in a very deep friendship.

... What? Did you think you're the only one who read the Inheritance Cycle? Haha.

Thanks for the review, and I hope you enjoy if you're still reading.

Guest (Chapter 32) - Sedative, actually. And as I asked of another reviewer, I would like it if that word was not used in reviews. I can't stop you from saying most things, but that is a word I will no longer tolerate in the review section.

Thank you for expressing your thought. Hope you're still reading to this point.

Thanks go to Crystal Prime for beta reading.

Disclaimer: Transformers belongs to Hasbro. I only take credit for this story and my OCs.

---

August 9, 4:45 A.M 2013 P.M

Autobot base, outside Jasper, Nevada

I sat at my workbench, examining the major parts of my disassembled Ion Displacer.

In the last twelve solar-cycles, most of my fellow Autobots had recovered from the ambush that crippled them and were now cleared for active duty, but Ratchet, Bumblebee, and Flareup were still in the med-bay for at least another mega-cycle. Optimus had yet to decide whether to build a starship or not, but I had seen him examine the base's blueprints several times. He also was busying himself by exploring the possibility of building an energy shield around the base, and mapping out an upgrade to the base's main reactor—a highly efficient generator that produced twice the amount of power a similarly-sized fusion reactor would generate—that would be needed to support the shield generator.

There had been only a few skirmishes in the last mega-cycle, and nothing serious. Out of them all, the only mission that had been out of the ordinary had been a scouting mission Arcee and Jazz conducted on Luna after we detected traces of energon on its surface. The source of the reading ended up being a lone neutral passing through the system in a beat-up personal starship, and he didn't stick around after Arcee and Jazz told him there was a large Decepticon presence in the system.

It also appeared that what I experienced in the hallway was a one-time event, as there had been nothing like it since that night; however, I was still disturbed by it. Had it even been real, or was it the product of the mental weariness of my earlier conversations, the regrets I had of what I did on the Hammer, both combined with a tired CPU? The processor tended to play tricks on you when you were tired—I had been tired that night—and was focusing heavily on on a certain topic at the time, but something about it still didn't feel right.

Either way, it had definitely felt real. And that made me unable to decide what to think about it, but I hadn't told anyone about that night. There was no point in making it a big deal, especially since a mega-cycle had past without anything similar happening to me.

A quiet scraping sound came from behind me, on or near my desk. It sounded like metal grating against metal.

In the time it took to blink, I stood up and snapped around, optics cold, Path Blaster deployed and aimed at the source of the noise, standing with my side facing out to make myself a smaller target.

A data pad on my desk I had placed upright against a stack of other data pads was several inches further forward than it had been before. A moment passed before a small Kangaroo Mouse came walking out from behind the data pad, clearly the reason why the it had slid forward. It squeaked once, as if happy to be alive. With good reason, too—the data pad would have crushed it like a bug.

I sighed in mild annoyance. Of all the things I had expected that sound to be, I hadn't considered a Kangaroo Mouse to be one to be the source of it. I didn't even know how it got in here. Or why it was in here, since there was nothing in my quarters it could eat. The most logical conclusion was that it wandered into the base from the entrance tunnel and couldn't get out, and entered my quarters when I opened them when I went to recharge breems ago.

But no matter its reasons for being here or how it got in my quarters, I had still just deployed a weapon against a mammal that was smaller than the tip of my digit. More than a little overkill.

Scoffing at the same time the Kangaroo Mouse suddenly made its way off my desk and scurried to a corner of the room, I returned my servo to normal and sat back down at my workbench. This was the third time I had deployed a weapon in my quarters since my experience right outside the door, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

The first time I reacted like I just had was when my energon dispenser broke and shut itself down to prevent energon from being wasted, and I had deployed my swords as soon as I heard it break. The second reaction was caused by a souvenir from one of my shelves falling over because I hadn't balanced it correctly, causing me to deploy my missile launchers. And now a Kangaroo Mouse shifting a data pad made me deploy my Path Blaster. It seemed like I was becoming jumpy, paranoid about things when I was alone. Too jumpy.

Still, not enough to warrant sharing with anyone just yet. People usually experienced a high amount of stress and agitation after going through an event that affected them and left them feeling more fearful and paranoid than normal. I went through something similar after my human mother was killed; I would be fine.

Probably.

I picked up the power converter of my Ion Displacer, examining it on a closer level than the other parts laid out before me.

For being one of the most important parts of a very large and powerful weapon, the tubular power converter was remarkably small at only two feet long, with a diameter of eight inches. As its name suggested, it provided power to the Ion Displacer and converted my energon into the weapon's ammunition. It accomplished this task very efficiently—every milliliter of my energon allowed the Ion Displacer to fire a two micro-klick burst; however, it lacked… Something. Each round it produced was undoubtedly powerful, but the Ion Displacer had been such a deadly weapon during the war on Cybertron that both sides developed countermeasures designed specifically to make bullets fired from an Ion Displacer less effective and powerful. Such materials were rare and difficult to produce, but I had encountered them before, and my battle with the Paraions who captured me in Maine showed their own armor was even more resistant to my Ion Displacer.

What I wanted to do was find a way to upgrade my Ion Displacer, and preferably also my Nucleon and missile launchers. I had been wanting to upgrade them for a while, but never seemed to have the time away from my duties—or the motivation—to do so. But now, my suspension gave me a short list of duties, and my experience almost two mega-cycles ago was making me recharge uneasily and online earlier than normal. I had yet to succeed in returning to recharge after onlining early, so why not spend the extra time on something productive and upgrade my arsenal?

The problem was, I had no idea how I was going to do that.

The power converter of the Ion Displacer was already about as efficient and powerful as our current Tier of technology allowed, and my other weapons were already modified and improved from normal, factory models. To get even more performance out of my weapons, I was going to do more than modify a few parts and adjust a few settings—I was going to have to essentially rebuild them from the inside out.

With any of other weapons I had in my possession, I would have gotten straight into the process of rebuilding, but with weapons like these—in particular my Nucleon—such a task could leave the weapon less effective, efficient, or could even turn it into a time bomb waiting to go off in my servo when I used them. By trying to upgrade something without knowing what it did, I could end up blowing myself up. Before I could even get to the stage of planning out how I could improve my heavy weapons, I needed to know the role of every last part inside them.

A very long, boring task, when my Nucleon alone was made up of more than fifty-thousand individual parts. No wonder I never could work up the motivation to work on my weapons.

Checking my internal clock and seeing what time it was, I placed the power converter of my back down on my desk, and started to reassemble my Ion Displacer. It was already almost time for me to take up the next shift at the space bridge, and I didn't want to leave my Ion Displacer in parts on my desk.

By the time I reassembled my Ion Displacer, I knew I was going to be late for my shift. Not very late, but still late. I placed the rotary cannon on my backplates, stood up, filled two cubes of energon—one for whoever had the last space bridge shift, as a small apology for being late, and one for myself—and walked into the hallway after unlocking my door as the cubes filled; the Kangaroo Mouse ran out of my quarters once the door opened, then scurried down the hallway in the opposite direction of the ops center.

I reached the ops center a short time later and looked at the workstation to see who had been given space bridge duty before my shift.

It was Jetfire. He was sitting a chair he must have taken from his quarters, servos crossed as he stared up at the mainscreen. His posture was a bit more relaxed and slouched than it usually was. He was likely tired.

The seeker looked at me as I approached, and from looking at his optics I knew I was right in assuming he was tired; his optics were dimmer than usual, and the look in them was one of exhaustion. "You're late, youngling."

"One klick and seven micro-klicks late, to be exact. Sorry, took a bit longer to reassemble my Ion Displacer than I accounted for." I stepped up next to his chair and offered him one of the cubes I was carrying. "This work as a proper apology?"

Jetfire took the offered cube from my servo with a look of indifference, but I could tell he was grateful for the cube. "Hm. Be a breem late next time. Maybe then I can get some high-grade for waiting on you." He took a long drink from the cube before lowering it and continuing to gaze at the screen, clearly content to keep sitting at least until his cube was empty. "So, why exactly did you need to reassemble your Ion Displacer?"

"I want to upgrade it, and to do that I need to know how everything works on the inside. I started with its main parts, but didn't make a lot of progress before I had to come here."

"You want to upgrade your Ion Displacer? Hm. That's a good idea, given how often we're outnumbered and going against enemies with thick armor. But it's going to be a lengthy project for you; you need to study thousands of parts before you can modify any of them."

"Believe me, I know. I'm not even sure where to start with my missile launchers, let alone my Ion Displacer But, at least I will have some experience dealing with small parts by the time I get around to my Nucleon—it has twice as many parts as my Ion Displacer."

Jetfire raised an optic ridge. "You want to upgrade your Nucleon and missile launchers, too? Why?"

"If I'm going to spend a lot of time upgrading my Ion Displacer, why not do the same for my Nucleon and missiles?" I asked rhetorically, taking a drink from my own cube. "Besides, I've wanted to upgrade all of them for a while, now—I just haven't gotten around to making time for it. But, now I have… Time to spare, so I figured I would use it for something."

The seeker's optics narrowed suspiciously for a reason I didn't know, but he quickly returned his gaze to normal. Odd. "Since I'm of the opinion that you can't modify your weapons enough, I think that's a good use some of your free time. But, it also isn't necessary."

Now it was my turn to raise an optic ridge. "What do you mean?"

Jetfire wordlessly reached down to his side—the side I couldn't see due to him facing in the same direction as me—and pulled out one of the sleek pistols we recovered from the station and held it out to me. It was a pistol we had taken to calling an Arrow. It was the smallest and lightest of the three types of pistols we found on the station, and had the fewest parts rotating around its main body, but it was also the most accurate and fired the most rounds to a single power crystal. It fit perfectly with Jetfire's fighting style.

I took the pistol from Jetfire's servo and examined it. "You've started using the weapons we recovered," I observed.

"Not just me—we all are. After the disaster of our rescue mission in the Indian Ocean, Optimus wants us to carry at least one Paraion weapon along with our personal ones."

"When did he tell you that?" I asked, returning Jetfire's Arrow to him.

"Last night, once most of us were up and around and could go out on patrols."

"And he had everyone chose their own Paraion weapons to use?"

"Everyone who wasn't still confined to the med-bay and wanted to use them."

That was… Strange. I hadn't been told we were going to start using the Paraion weapons; it was the logical thing to do, considering how many of them we had and the fact Optimus knew how to create more ammo with my carrier's Forge, but he never mentioned that he wanted to finally make them standard issue.

"Optimus didn't tell me he wanted us to start using Paraion weapons," I said, pushing aside my thoughts of Arcee not talking to me about something as small as a new weapon.

Jetfire shrugged. "Probably because you're suspended; there isn't much of a point in having you pick out a weapon when you're not going to use it."

Hmm. That made sense. Until I was back to active duty, I had virtually no use for a Paraion weapon—or any weapon, really. Optimus knew that, so why bother telling me to pick a Paraion weapon when I wouldn't be using it for the foreseeable future? "Who picked out Paraion weapons and what did they choose?"

The seeker paused for a moment, sipping from his cube, then replied, "Well, the Dinobots refrained from taking any weapons they didn't already have, and Optimus didn't want to force anyone to do that; Bulkhead and Ironhide now carry Vaporizers with them in the field; Springer, Ultra Magnus, and Optimus are using some of those over-sized rifles—Miko insists we call them, 'Thunder Heavy Rifles,' because of how loud they are. Stupid name, in my opinion. Anyway, Chromia took a Vortex Rotary Cannon—crazy femme; Smokescreen has a Manipulator Combat SMG; Override and Air Raid picked out Nova Auto Shotguns; Elita, Silverbolt, and Jazz picked some simple, light assault rifles we can't find a name for, so we decided to name them, 'LARs,' since their basic classification forms an equally basic name; M—"

"Rapiers."

"What?"

"Call them Rapiers," I repeated. "They're a type of human sword that originally was commonly used on the battlefield, but slowly shifted to civilian use. It's a thin, sharp blade primarily made for thrusting and fast attacks, but it can hold its own against a heavier weapon if need be. Those light assault rifles seem to be made for bots who want to have firepower, but also don't want to sacrifice their own maneuverability. The name seems to fit."

"It does. I'll run that by everyone else, see what they think." Jetfire sipped from his cube again, which already was close to being empty. "As I was saying before you interrupted, Moonracer chose a new sniper rifle, a Titan, I believe—thing could put a hole the size of my chestplates in a gunship, when fully charged; and finally, the twins and I took Arrows."

I waited for him to say what Arcee chose as her Paraion weapon, but even after several micro-klicks of silence, he didn't. I asked, "What about Arcee's choice? There's no way she wouldn't have picked one out."

Jetfire shrugged again. "She didn't pick one. She said she wanted time to consider each option, but in my opinion, I think she wants you to help her choose."

I let out a quiet chuckle, low enough to only barely be audible. Arcee needing help picking a weapon, there's something I've never seen or heard of.

"Don't laugh—I'm serious. Wanting your help is the only reason I can think of why she hasn't taken a weapon yet."

"She doesn't need my help to just pick out a weapon," I said.

"No, but she wants your help," said Jetfire. "There is a big difference between needing help and wanting help. Needing help is when you encounter something you can't understand or accomplish on your own; wanting is desiring help from someone to make a task easier, or to just enjoy someone's company. You two are courted. Do the math, youngling."

That's… Huh. When Jetfire puts it like that, Arcee wanting my help was actually logical. She could choose a weapon on her own, of course—she was far from being ignorant like Override when it came to choosing an alt mode from human vehicles, or the twins' flirting—but she wanted my help because I was her courted, and she wanted to spend that little extra time with me. A lot like how Moonracer wanted Ratchet to help her pick an alt mode when she arrived on Earth. Jetfire's quite insightful.

"I see your point," I said, sipping from my cube. "Wouldn't make sense, coming from Arcee a few jours ago, but it does now."

"Thought you would agree." The seeker finished off his cube and stood up from his chair. "Well, I have patrol in a few breems, so I'm going to get some recharge before then. Have a good shift, youngling." He set the cube down, grabbed his chair, and started for the hallway.

"Recharge well, Jetfire," I said as he walked by me, then turned to the workstation to start my shift at the space bridge.

The steady beat of Jetfire's pedes hitting the floor slowed down, then halted entirely.

For a moment, I continued looking at the workstation, keeping an audio receptor out for Jetfire continuing on his journey to his quarters, but he never did—he remained standing in place.

Curiously, I turned my helm to look over at the motionless seeker.

He was standing only a few feet from the hallway, half turned toward me with his chair still gripped in his left servo. His faceplate was uncertain, optics narrowed, but also not looking at anything around him. One of his digits quietly tapped the chair he held in a metallic, hollow beat.

"Something wrong?" I asked when he continued to stand there silently. It seemed like he was having an internal debate, but I didn't know what it was about.

My words seemed to end whatever debate Jetfire was having, since he turned fully toward me after I spoke. His faceplate was determined now, the tapping of his digit had ceased, and in his optics was the same suspicion they briefly held when I explained why I was trying to upgrade my heavy weapons. "Why were you working on your Ion Displacer, when you were already onlining earlier than your usual time?"

So, he knew I wouldn't even normally be up this early in the cycle, let alone get up even earlier to work on my Ion Displacer; he suspected there was another reason why I was online so early. Observant, and even more so than usual for him.

I kept looking at the workstation. "I'm fine."

"That's not what I asked."

"No, but you were getting around to asking how I was."

Jetfire ignored my observation approached me, soon appearing in my peripheral vision. "I known you long enough to know when there's something bothering you—you're good hiding it, but I know. And whatever it is that's bothering you, I get the feeling is more than you think it is. More serious. I feel that sooner or later—preferably sooner—you're going to need to share it with someone."

I pretended to busy myself with checking the patrol route of Silverbolt and Air Raid, who currently were flying high above South Africa.

The seeker sighed slowly at my silence. "I also know when you're set on not talking about something. But you should think about talking to someone, Shadowstreaker. Arcee would be your best choice, for obvious reasons. Keep me in the dark about whatever is bothering you for as long as you like, but don't keep secrets from your courted—it won't end well."

I stopped myself from showing any guilt. I knew I should have told Arcee immediately after my experience in the hallway, but I didn't want to give her any unnecessary stress; it was my issue to deal with, not hers. "I'm fine."

A single, humorless chuckle came from Jetfire. "You're not a good liar, youngling." He turned and walked away with that short statement, quickly disappearing into the hallway.

After Jetfire left, I let myself relax a little bit, loosened my guard. I didn't like being so cold around friends, especially one I got along with as well as Jetfire, but I couldn't—wouldn't—discuss it unless absolutely necessary. Never before had something made me so tense, so jumpy; talking about it was only going to make me relive it again and again and again, and that would only make my experience seem worse than it was.

No, what I really needed was what helped me the most through my human mother's death: time. Time to relax; time to process the event; time to recover; time to get over it. Talking about my human mother's shooting never helped me, never helped get rid of the anger and sadness that had settled in my organic heart. Time had. And time would help me again with this; I didn't need to tell anyone unless I experienced another similar event, and even then talking was only an option.

A rustle came from behind me, so faint I almost didn't hear it.

My helm snapped around in an instant, optics rapidly scanning the darkness for a potential source of the sound, fists clenched and ready to hit whatever was approaching.

The Kangaroo Mouse that had been in my quarters wiped dirt from its face with its front paws, whiskers twitching as it cleaned itself.

… Maybe talking to someone wasn't such a bad idea, after all.

---

(Human calendar) August 9, 2013 10:10 A.M

(Cybertronian date) 1103432 (Centi-vorns since the end of the Golden Age)

Decepticon War Cruiser Nemesis, low Earth orbit, somewhere above Brazil

"You dare to keep secrets from me? Me?!" Megatron yelled, his voice booming inside the bridge of the Nemesis. "I am Megatron, Lord of the Decepticons! And I do not tolerate my underlings withholding information!" He slammed the side of his Fusion into Shockwave's helm, and the scientist spun and fell to a knee-joint from the blow.

Megatron, Starscream, and Soundwave returned to Earth from their visit to Project:Overlord only a few breems ago. They would have returned a mega-cycle ago, but one of the space bridges in their route was damaged by a comet; in order to return to Earth, they had to travel to another space bridge a mega-cycle's journey away by standard FTL. And when they returned, Shockwave had taken it upon himself to update Megatron on all the developments that occurred while he was away.

The Decepticon leader had not been pleased.

And now, he and Megatron stood on the platform in the center of the bridge, surrounded by the Nemesis' officers—along with a smug-looking Starscream—as Megatron publicly berated and punished Shockwave. Off to the side, Soundwave captured everything he saw and sent it system-wide and beyond through a link his processor had to the Nemesis' computer system.

Calmly and orderly, Shockwave stood back up on both pedes. Unlike Starscream, who usually was the one being punished by Megatron for something he had done, the scientist knew better than to cower, ask for a pardon, fight back, or even flinch when struck. All of this—the public setting, the officers all gathered together, the live feed—was a game, a stage show Megatron used to send a message to other Decepticons. It made him look powerful, fierce, and willing to dish out pain to even his highest lieutenants. That particular part usually created one thought in the Decepticon ranks: if he treats his lieutenants like that, what will he do to us, if we fail him?

But Megatron was not the only one who knew how to play on the stage.

If Shockwave appeared unfazed and unintimidated by Megatron, it would show other Decepticons that Megatron was not quite as powerful as he made himself out to be. And if he intelligently explained his actions and offered a logical counter argument when Megatron questioned him, those same Decepticons may just begin to question their loyalty.

And when a mech's conviction weakened, he was more susceptible to changing his loyalties.

No, Megatron was not the only one who knew how to play on the stage.

Megatron knocked Shockwave back to the floor with a punch to the tank, followed quickly by a dropped elbow-joint to the scientist's backplates when he purposefully doubled over from the first blow. "Not only have you intentionally kept information from me, Commander Shockwave—you also have allowed the Autobots to sabotage one of our backup data banks, and learn valuable information that have crippled or compromised many of our operations! All under your watch!" He kicked Shockwave's tank while he was still on the ground. "Do you not understand the importance of secrecy?! Of making sure our sworn enemies do not learn of our troop movements, the way our armor is made, and the locations of valuable energon mines? Do you seek to actually aid them, instead?!"

As before, Shockwave stood up calmly. Megatron was using the data theft to paint Shockwave's actions in a negative light. He had also not lied about what data had been compromised—he had simply not mentioned the fact more than ninety-five percent of the data was logistics for operations already known to the Autobots. Interesting. "Of course not, Lord Megatron. Never once have I purposefully or inadvertently assisted the Autobots."

Megatron grabbed onto Shockwave's optic and faceplate. Then he threw the scientist across the elevated platform in the center of the bridge and into a console, which broke as soon as Shockwave made contact with it. The gladiator yelled furiously after he tossed Shockwave, like an enraged Lion. "Then explain yourself! Justify your failures! Show me your that your life is still valuable to me!"

"I did not inform you I had recaptured the Dinobots because I did not have them under control." Shockwave picked himself up again, brushing tiny pieces of the destroyed console off his armor. "They are among the most dangerous of our enemies, and I wished to minimize their threat to you and your forces by keeping them in isolation until they were permanently subdued. If I had accomplished my goal of bending their CPUs to the Decepticon cause, I would have gladly brought them to you to command as you saw fit, Lord Megatron. But, unfortunately, I did not succeed; the Dinobots have proven themselves too wild and unpredictable be tamed with such methods."

"I am aware of this. I was aware of it the moment you listed the casualties of your failed attempt to stop them from escaping! But your sins are greater than simply not giving a full account of your prisoners. You had a highly-valuable commander in your prison—Ultra Magnus himself—and you did give any indication that you had captured him. All commanders are required—by order of me—to report the capture of a high value target immediately! You had one of our most influential enemies, in chains, and you said nothing of it through any communications channel!"

"And that is precisely why I did not send word to you, Lord Megatron. Communications can be hacked, spies can leak, and bots can talk under interrogation. Ultra Magnus was too great a foe to let his capture become common knowledge. If I sent a message informing you of Ultra Magnus' capture, the likelihood of it being intercepted would have been very high—Autobots search for keywords in our communications. They would have sent an army to recover him, perhaps several. I had to be certain he was secure before I came to you with his capture. And, evidently, he was not secure."

Megatron's optics flashed in rage. "If you had told me you were holding them prisoner, this situation would have been avoided!"

"On the contrary, Lord Megatron—the situation would have been much more devastating."

"Make your point, Commander Shockwave."

"Why, we would have lost you, Lord Megatron. The Dinobots are not some of our most dangerous enemies because of their strength; their power comes from a fanatical hatred of our cause, and in particular, you. Ultra Magnus shares this hatred. They waited until I believed the Dinobots were held securely to escape from my confinement. If they had seen you at any point, they would have moved their plans ahead and attacked you. Their attack would have been suicidal, but why would that matter to them, if they offlined you before we returned the favor? It would have been illogical of me to present them to you before they were already under control—they were a threat to your safety."

Megatron snarled and crossed the distance between them. His fists—first the left, then the right—connected with Shockwave's helm and chestplates. Then he grabbed the scientist's cannon and twisted it around so far, Megatron could have snapped the weapon off by applying just a little more pressure to where the Pulse Cannon met what remained of Shockwave's servo. "You do not decide what is a threat to me, Shockwave! I decide what is a threat, I decide who is a threat, and I decide how that threat is obliterated!" He slammed a knee-joint into Shockwave's faceplate, then spun around and tossed Shockwave off and center platform and down into a bank of computer monitors, causing a few technicians who still needed to work during Megatron's broadcast to scatter away from their stations.

Starscream chuckled lowly with genuine glee, and—as he happened to be standing one level above and not far from where Shockwave fell—said down to the scientist, "Don't worry—it'll only get worse."

Shockwave paid no attention to Starscream and slowly moved onto his backplates, looking up at Megatron above him, careful to appear as if he had actually been hurt by the assault. The Decepticon leader was dropping Shockwave's official rank. Careless on Megatron's part; now it appeared Shockwave was not only being beaten for a failure, but also a victim of a personal vendetta of Megatron's. And there was an audience. Excellent. "I had only the most pure intentions for the Decepticon cause, Lord Megatron."

"I do not care what your intentions were! You kept information from me! Such an act of disobedience is unacceptable!" Megatron powered up his Fusion Cannon.

Shockwave braced himself in the nano-klick he had before Megatron's Cannon reached full power.

The following explosion deafened every unsuspecting bot in the room, and only bots who braced themselves besides Megatron were Soundwave and Shockwave. It tore through Shockwave's armor as if it had been made of paper, showered his faceplate in molten metal and heat, created a hole in his shoulder-joint that was larger than his fist, and cut off power to his Pulse Cannon. Energon began pouring from the wound at a rapid rate; a major vein had been severed.

Most bots would screamed, bursting into tears in mere moments from the searing pain of having a literal hole being created in their shoulder-joint—with still-molten metal on their faceplate and optic, no less.

Shockwave merely stood up, brushed the hot metal on his optic and faceplate before it cooled, and pinched his severed vein shut to allow his nanites more time to stop the leaking.

He briefly activated his jets, propelling him up to the platform to stand next to Megatron once again. The Decepticon leader stared at Shockwave as if he wanted to toss the scientist back down off the platform. "Lord Megatron, I believe that was unnecessary and illogical, on your part."

Megatron wrapped his servo around Shockwave's neck, optics blazing furiously. "I was punishing a mech who has failed our cause—my cause! What punishment I decide to inflict is never illogical when it comes to failures."

"Failures, Lord Megatron? You speak as if I have been a burden on the Decepticon cause, even from the start. I have not. I have created dozens of weapons, alloys, and materials that have given us the ability to destroy a city and rebuild it within cycles. I have made scientific discoveries no one else has come close to achieving. I found how to unlock the space bridges around Cybertron, and unlocked the secrets of recreating the technology. I have conquered cities, regions, planets, and entire star clusters in your name. Without me, the Decepticon cause—your cause—would not have succeeded as it has."

"You kept information from me!"

"For logical reasons."

"Reasons that led to you failing me!"

"A mistake I have payed for in time and resources, and do not plan on repeating."

The grip on Shockwave's neck tightened, and the look in Megatron's optics became deathly calm. "If you do not wish to fail me again, answer this: are you keeping the existence of other prisoners from me?"

Shockwave replied, "There are no prisoners in my captivity that you are unaware of."

Megatron searched Shockwave's optic for a moment, then growled and shoved Shockwave backwards, releasing his grip on the scientist's neck. "See to it that you do not fail me again, Commander Shockwave." He gestured to Soundwave to cut the transmission.

A micro-klick past, then Soundwave lowered his helm half an inch to show it had been done.

Megatron turned and walked toward the front of the bridge. "Knockout." The red and white Decepticon medic jumped at his sudden use of his name. "Make sure Commander Shockwave does not lose his servo." His helm turned halfway over his shoulder-joint. "Again."

Knockout moved toward Shockwave, but the larger mech released his hold on his ruptured vein and waved the medic off. "I do not require medical attention; I will treat the injury on my own." He walked toward the bridge door without waiting for Knockout to acknowledge him.

The door opened, and the two Insecticon guards who accompanied Shockwave saluted and hailed his name.

Shockwave ignored them and kept walking.

He kept walking until he reached his HAC-177 and was standing behind the pilot. And after the heavy gunship detached from the Nemesis and returned to Shockwave's base on Earth, he released the Insecticons from guard detail and continued walking.

Eventually, he reached his official lab, entered his secret lab, and approached a lone chair off to the side. It was only there, in front of the chair, that Shockwave stopped walking.

He sat down, and instantly a collection of mechanical arms and tools lowered from the ceiling and circled around Shockwave. One began removing damaged sections of Shockwave's armor, one examined the areas of his optics that had been covered in molten metal, and offered a cube of energon, and three started to treat the wound in his shoulder-joint. "Computer—reroute to medical station."

His computer terminal folded down into floor, going into sleep mode. A narrow hole appeared near the medical station, and a smaller version of the terminal slid up next to Shockwave. It was powered up by the time it appeared at Shockwave's side, its screen displaying a number of messages that were sent to his computer while he was being punished by Megatron.

The displayed items were reports from minor experiments and notifications from various Decepticons under his command, primarily: results from a new formula of explosive; a notification that his new type of power generator ended with the destruction of the prototype; an update on final repairs to the base; a request from Skycharger to add an additional cannon to Shockwave's HAC-177; a report listing the names of a group of new soldiers arriving later in the cycle along with a delivery of supplies. Nothing that warranted his immediate attention.

He was about to turn off the terminal, when a new notification appeared on the screen. This one contained the results of a scan he began to run just before he left for the Nemesis. A scan he was eager to know the result of.

A scan of a distant Drop he had been viewing of the Multiverse.

Analysis of Drop 7J1B9O, designation—Coeptum: Complete.

Barrier strength: Moderate.

Number of Impression remnants detected: 78,243.

Realities contained within: Innumerable.

Dominant race: Unknown.

Potential for reality selection: High.

As Shockwave read the scan results, a feeling of satisfaction creeped into Shockwave before he crushed it. This was good news—very good news, as the other Drops he had scanned were unfit for travel—but any emotion he felt could hamper the work he now needed to do. Emotion was illogical; Shockwave would not allow it to affect him.

Shockwave finally powered down the terminal and patiently waited for the medical station to finish repairing his shoulder-joint. When it had, the scientist stood from the chair and moved to another part of his secret lab. He came to a door a short time later, entered the password for it to open, and stepped inside once the door unlocked.

The duraglass container holding the Star Saber sat on a raised platform with a number of scientific instruments gathered around it. The Universal Bridge was not far away from the Star Saber, powered down as it always was; cages made from high-strength alloy were near the Universal Bridge.

When Shockwave began to study the Star Saber, he found that the blade was not only multiple times older than any planet or star Shockwave had ever seen, but the material it was forged of—an alloy of more pure Primax than Shockwave believed was possible—had properties he could not explain, and those he could explain he did not understand: the ability to change any form of known energy into the type of energy the wielder of the Star Saber desired; could not only change energy, but store and even multiply the energy it was given by a thousandfold; and it was so hard, it should have been brittle enough to be shattered by a breath of wind, but remained intact no matter what Shockwave did to it through hyper-accurate computer simulations. The scientist could not explain how the material could even be in existence.

But, during that time of study, Shockwave also discovered that the Star Saber indeed held the secret to making his Universal Bridge work; however, the answer was not what he expected: literally cutting a hole into the Multiverse.

The Star Saber was so sharp, it could cut a door out of one reality and into another, allowing its wielder to travel inter-universally at will if they knew what they were doing and how to return. The action of cutting into the very fabric of reality broke every law of science Shockwave knew, even more so than the laws the space bridges broke, but he could not argue with the effectiveness of it. It was the easiest method of traveling through the Multiverse, from what he had found, but it was not the only way; he knew from the rare datapad detailing the exploits of the Thirteen that they could open pathways to other realities at will, without any weapon or tool. That particular form of travel was far beyond Shockwave.

That being said, a stable, wormhole-type portal—like any ground bridge, space bridge, or his Universal Bridge—would also allow entry to other realities. But, the wormhole needed precise coordinates to work, which was why Shockwave needed to scan Drops within the Multiverse to find potential realities he could travel to.

Unfortunately, no wormhole was stable enough for inter-universal travel; it required a very particular stabilizing element—an element Shockwave had no knowledge of how to create, and suspected he never would. But fortunately for him, the residential energy the Star Saber was constantly giving off—a phenomena associated with the combination of the Thirteen and the nearly pure Primax. Shockwave suspected—could be harnessed by keeping power collectors within a thirty foot radius of the Star Saber and used to stabilize the Universal Bridge. All he needed to do was power the Bridge up, and use the Star Saber's energy to stabilize the portal to another reality.

A simple task, for one of his skill in science.

Shockwave moved to the Universal Bridge's control console. On the computer program he used to display a simplified version of the Multiverse for him to interact with, he searched through the Drops he knew of, each represented by a tiny, blue droplet of water above a black ocean. He finally found the water droplet that represented the Drop Coeptum, and selected it A countless amount of new droplets—so many that a thousand of them could fit within a square millimeter of the screen—appeared in place of the original droplet. Each new droplet represented another reality.

Shockwave randomly selected one of the droplets—there were too many to even single out. Then he activated the Universal Bridge.

A deep hum filled the room as the device powered up, and a large portal quickly formed in the center of the Bridge. Unlike a ground bridge and most space bridges, the portal in front of him was yellow and almost blindingly bright, crackling with energy. It appeared cloudy to his optic, the other side impossible to see.

Then the collectors gathering the Star Saber's residential energy activated.

The portal became dimmer and stopped crackling with energy. The cloudiness of the portal subsided. And Shockwave saw that a transparent, yellow bridge had formed from his side of the Universal Bridge, crossed a short tunnel of black space, and ended at another portal that led into a very dense jungle of blue, organic trees.

The sight of the working Bridge almost made Shockwave want to laugh with joy.

Almost.

Attaching a remote control he created for the Universal Bridge—a control that would allow him to open the Bridge from across realities—Shockwave stepped away from the control console and took his first step into the Universal Bridge.

It seemed the first phase of Project: Predacon was free to begin.

He just needed to find its first unsuspecting participant.

---

"I hate this show, Miko."

"What?! How can you hate it?! It's great!"

"Every episode ends on some kind of cliffhanger, some sort of situation that complicates everything or presents more questions. There's only so many of those I can take before it gets old and I want answers."

"Not one for suspenseful writing, Bulkhead?" Asked Springer from his chair, chuckling lightly at how the broader Wrecker was sulking at the screen in the rec room.

"Shut up, Springer. You've practically started dressing up as the main character."

"What? For a human, he's a badaft! I love badaft characters."

"He uses a bow and arrow—he's an idiot," said Broadside, taking up an entire couch on his own due to his massive size. "No matter what kind of technology you add to them, bows are vastly inferior to cannons. Show me this 'Oliver' carrying around an anti-tank cannon, and then you can start calling him a badaft."

"He can throw knives and use hand-to-hand combat, too," Springer said. "With or without his bow, he can still kill everyone in a room without using a modern weapon."

"So can Jazz and Arcee, but they still carry some form of cannon. A bow is a bow, and a cannon is a cannon. In real life, you won't last a klick on the battlefield carrying a bow."

"A cannon may be a cannon, but there are advantages to a bow that a cannon can't match," Ironhide added in, sitting on the same couch as Bulkhead, although on the opposite side.

"Pile of slag, there are. You can't blow up a building with a bow."

"You know, I've known a few Cybertronians who'd disagree with ya."

"That doesn't make them smart."

"And it doesn't make you right," Ironhide pointed out.

"How can you get tired of this show?" Miko asked Bulkhead, ignoring the other argument taking place in the room. "Name one show that's better than this."

"Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."

Miko gasped and narrowed her eyes dangerously. "You dare."

I smiled from where I leaned against the wall, watching and listening as the Wreckers—plus one human—argued back and forth over different topics: a cannon versus a bow, and who would come out on top if each respective weapon was wielded by a master; whether Arrow—the show we had been watching—could get boring or more exciting; and, as a result of the continued debate between Bulkhead and Miko, who was better—DC or Marvel.

It was exactly what I needed after a long, uneventful shift of space bridge duty; and the surprising, irritating news that Jack was going to be working a double shift today at KO Burger. Meaning no Arcee until next cycle, when Jack was off of work.

Meaning I had to wait longer than I expected to finally just talk about what attacked me—it wouldn't be right to talk to someone about it before I told my courted.

I guess I was lucky this cycle had been quiet so far, allowing the Wreckers more time on base than they usually had. They always were entertaining to watch, and I needed a laugh or two after learning Arcee wasn't able to return to base for the entire cycle.

Springer looked at me as the debates continued to rage on. "What's your stance on all this, Shadowstreaker?" The others also turned after Springer asked the question, looking at me expectantly.

I thought for a moment, considering each side to each argument. "Personally, I'm a cannon type of mech. B—"

"Thank you!" Broadside interrupted.

"But," I stressed. "I haven't seen or used a Cybertronian bow, let alone witness one in action. I prefer cannons and am admittedly a bit sceptical of a bow being used by a Cybertronian, but I can't judge without seeing one. So, I can't say with certainty that one is better than the other. That being said, Oliver is very skilled, and unless I was prepared, I wouldn't want to face him in combat if he was a Cybertronian." I looked at Miko and Bulkhead. "I find the 'War' between DC and Marvel to be pointless; I like both, and which one I prefer depends on what I feel like reading or watching at the moment. And Bulkhead? Just stop—this is a great show."

"Ha!" Miko pointed at Bulkhead triumphantly. "Told you!"

Bulkhead grumbled. "That's his opinion, not a fact."

"And that opinion is supported by me. You're now outnumbered, Bulky!"

Miko's guardian gave his fellow Wreckers a look. "Back up?"

"You're on your own, Bulkhead," Ironhide said. "I happen to like it. It's entertaining, for a human show. Good characters. That bodyguard, Diggle, practical man, I like him."

"I don't; he's a bodyguard who can't keep track of the person he was hired to protect," Bulkhead said before looking at Broadside.

The massive mech crossed his servos, numerous weapons across his frame clanking as his movement made them shift. "I might have—just might have—supported you a few moments ago, but not now. Now, you'll have no pity from me, Diggle-hater. Enjoy the femme's anger."

"I know I will," Springer added, giving Bulkhead a smug smile and making a show of leaning back in his chair.

Quietly chuckling again at the conversation Miko and the Wreckers were having, I decided I had been given enough laughs for the moment and walked out of the rec room as Miko started to lay out every good thing about Arrow—in a very loud way, I had to admit; the girl had a fast tongue and a large set of lungs. Not a good combination.

Not long after I left the rec room, Prowl opened a comm-link with me. "Shadowstreaker, what is your location?"

"I just left the rec room, heading in the general direction of the washracks. Why?"

"Turn around and move toward the reactor room. I have reviewed Optimus' proposal to the upgrade to the main reactors, and have found that Storage Hanger Kilo-9 current location would prevent such a project from succeeding. As a result, I have scheduled for Kilo-9 to be decommissioned and relocated seventy meters west. For now, the Paraion weapons stored in Kilo-9 must be moved to Storage Hanger Golf-5."

"And you want me to move them there."

"Yes. I already have tasks in line for the Wreckers when they leave the rec room, and all other Autobots are either on scouting missions or in direct conflict with Decepticons."

"You mean everyone besides Grimlock," I pointed out, knowing I was right. The Dinobot leader had still not been on a combat mission since he arrived with the other Dinobots, despite the fact his auto-repair systems had healed his injuries—an impressive feat, given how extensive his wounds had been. He didn't talk to me on the very rare times I even saw him, but I was able to get a vague statement from Swoop when I had asked the flier why Grimlock had yet to go on a mission. He had said, "He Grimlock no go on mission without Kronis." I had no idea what that meant.

"Yes, and he is too proud to conduct a repetitive physical task unless it involves battle."

"Which leaves me."

"Yes."

I turned around, now moving to the reactor room. "I'm heading to the storage hanger now."

"Good. Prowl out." The SIC cut the link from his end.

I walked down the hallway, moving further away from the ops center than I usually did, then at last reached the end of the portion of the hallway I was in. In front of me, about a hundred feet away, was the door to the reactor room. The door to Kilo-9 was directly to my right.

Unlocking the door to Kilo-9 by pressing the door control, I stepped into the storage hanger.

Crates filled with Paraion weapons were stacked three high on both sides of the room, with the weapons that couldn't fit in crates were racks that lined the walls above the crates. The largest weapons—all of which were too large to fit in crates in the first place—were sitting their own, specially made racks in the back of the hanger.

I didn't waste any time in getting to work. I started with the crates on the left side of the room, carrying three at a time as I left Kilo-9, walked through the hallway, and placed the crates in Golf-5 before returning to Kilo-9. When there were no more crates on the left side of Kilo-9, I started transferring the crates on the right side of the room until they were all in the other storage hanger.

After that, all I had left to take over to Golf-5 were the weapons hanging on the racks on Kilo-9's walls.

I stood in the middle of the storage hanger, optics roaming the room, considering which side weapons racks to clear first.

Both sides of the room had over a hundred weapons hanging on the walls, and both sides were ordered in the same way—there was no pattern to their placement beyond keeping weapons of the same model together. It appeared that there were more assault rifles on the right side of the room than on the left.

My gaze shifted to the back wall, and the larger weapons that sat on the racks. They were fewer in number than the ones on either of the other walls, but they were also all very large and bulky; I wouldn't be able to carry more than two of them at a time, just because of how awkward it was to carry a large object. And after a quick calculation, I estimated that clearing out the heavy weapons would take almost as long as the combined time I would spend transferring the weapons from the right and left walls. That was a bit depressing.

May as well get the largest obstacles out of the way.

I walked up to the back wall and lifted a Vortex Rotary Cannon from a rack. For a heavy weapon, it was very streamlined and light, although its large, fixed size made it difficult to store. Its main body was grey and shaped like a cylinder, and had a servo grip and trigger floating at the back—the floating grip acted as if it was attached to the weapon, even though you could wave a servo through empty space between the actual weapon and the grip and feel nothing impeding your movement. It had four identical barrels that rotated as the weapon fired. Each barrel fired five times a second, which gave the Vortex a rate of fire of eighteen-hundred rounds per klick. It was a mean weapon.

"And Chromia picked one out," I said to myself, a bit amused at the thought of Chromia—the smallest femme on base—wielding a weapon that was nearly as long as my Ion Displacer.

I looked back at the weapons on the wall, and used my other servo to grab a deactivated Titan Sniper Rifle. Like the Vortex, it was light, at least for me, and was almost seamless in its construction. At the moment, it was about fifteen feet long, but it doubled in length when it was activated; its duel-pronged 'Barrel'—which was more like a rail that appeared to guide the Hard-Light round while allowing the weapon to vent heat—would make up more than half the weapon's length when it was powered. Besides the high-powered, round-tracking scope that formed together and floated above the Titan's main body when it was active, it had only one moving part—its rotating ammunition chamber.

Due to the massive amount of energy used for each shot, power crystals could only power three shots before being emptied. To compensate this, the Titan's ammo chamber had five slots for power crystals. After a power crystal was emptied, its chamber rotated to allow a new power crystal to be used without having to reload. It was similar to how the Hydra Cannon reloaded itself.

I rested the Titan against my shoulder-joint, and walked out of the storage hanger to take the large weapons to Golf-5. After I had reached the other hanger, I placed the heavy weapons on top of one of the crates I had moved earlier, and started walking back to Kilo-9.

Just after I walked by the rec room on my way to Kilo-9, I started to feel… Off. Not in an emotional or physical sense, but the air just felt wrong. Heavy. Oppressing. Notably colder. I could feel that something else was nearby.

And it wasn't friendly.

The lights above me suddenly started to flicker; and after I turned to look back where I just came from, I saw that the lights all the way down the hallway were also flickering, as if they were all close to going out.

Or something was interfering with their power source.

I turned back in the direction of Kilo-9 and quickly walked through the last section of hallway before the turn leading to Kilo-9 and the reactor room, then I rounded the corner.

The door to the reactor room was wide open, the encrypted door control evidently useless. The blue light from the energon reactor inside was flickering in synchronization with the lights.

Slag.

My Path Blaster and one of my swords were deployed in an instant, and I was already halfway to the reactor room door. There was no time to comm-link anyone and get them here; if the reactor was compromised, there was nothing to keep the base up and running, nothing to power the cloaking field. I had to go in now, before whoever—or whatever—was in the reactor room took out the power entirely.

The lights in the reactor room were in a worse state than the ones in the hallway—many of them were even completely burned out. Most of the light inside the room came from the flickering reactor. It casted shadows behind stone columns that supported an overhang of that ran around two thirds of the room, the only sign the area had once been a naturally occurring cavern in the mountain.

I made my way through the room cautiously, aware that the constant humming from the reactor was going to impede my hearing. Visibility wouldn't be a problem, since the light from the flickering reactor was still enough to brighten the entire room, but I could be ambushed easily if I didn't make sure the room was clear before checking in on the reactor itself.

The main room appeared to be clear, so I started making my way to the column nearest to the door, keeping my sword pointed out to my left, my Path Blaster aimed ahead.

When I reached the column, I quickly checked behind me to make sure it was clear.

Nothing.

With my backplates covered, I jumped around the corner and pointed my Path Blaster out in front of me, ready to fire at anyone behind the column.

Nothing there, either.

I quickly double-checked the area, then turned to return to the main room.

I found a shadow with black steam standing on front of me, crimson optics not two inches from my own.

That was when the light went out entirely, the reactor following suit a moment later.

Well, frag.

An unbelievably cold servo grabbed my neck. It felt like my spine froze as soon as it touched me.

This mech again.

I was thrown through the air half a micro-klick later, before I could try to fire my Path Blaster or stab the air with my sword. My path through the air was pitch dark. When I landed, it was chestplates and faceplate first, and it came as a surprise since my optics had no time to adjust to the darkness. My helm started spinning as soon as I landed, a common sign of being temporarily disoriented.

I shook my helm and jumped to my pedes. I aimed my Path Blaster out and waited for my optics to adjust to the darkness. After a moment, they adjusted, and the darkness turned to light.

The energon reactor sat in front of me.

Then the reactor pulsed, and all I could see was a bright, white light, even after I turned the sensitivity of my optics to their normal setting.

A cold fist hit me in the side of the helm so hard, I felt the first layer of my armor crack and fall from my helm.

I hit the floor like I had been pushed down, just from the impact of the punch. An extreme processor ache was forming even as I laid on the floor. My vision slowly returned after being blinded, gradually changing from a bright light to a dim, irregular flickering. I couldn't tell if the flickering was from the reactor or my own vision. Probably both.

I stood up as quickly as I could, but between my processor and the flickering of the reactor and my own vision, it took longer to find my pedes than before. When I had, I held my Path Blaster at the ready and looked around for my attacker.

I was still standing in the same place as before, right next to the reactor. It was pulsing every now and then, but it gave off very little light—I couldn't see when it didn't pulse, and my visibility was limited to a hundred feet when it did. It wasn't enough to operate effectively inside a room this large, but it was enough to make it impossible for me to adjust my optics to the dark. Or optic; my vision from my right optic—the side of my helm that had been punched—was flickering more than the reactor.

Out of my peripheral vision, I saw a shape so dark it stuck out in the black. But by the time I had turned my helm, the shape had disappeared.

He was toying with me.

I hated that.

"Oh, I know you hate it. And that's what makes it fun."

A pede that felt like ice kicked me squarely in the backplates, right between my wings. But, the kick had lacked the mech's full power. So when I landed on my chestplates, I was able to roll onto my pedes in a crouch. I whipped myself around and was offered my first full view of my attacker as he stood in front of the reactor.

He looked almost exactly like me. He had my height, my build, my wings, my wheels, my posture. His armor was even darker than mine was, and it reflected no light from the pulsing reactor. Steam blacker than a moonless night rose from his frame and disappeared after rising about a foot into the air. His optics were crimson and held a twisted glee to them, as if he was living for this moment. He was so dark and absorbed so much light, I couldn't even tell if he had a mouth, even though he was looking right at me.

I wasted no time in sending four shots from my Path Blaster straight toward his chestplates.

He made no move to dodge the shots or take cover from any other shots I could send his way. He just stood there.

All four shots found their marks, impacting him with what should have been enough kinetic energy to make a mech larger than either one of us take two steps back. But he just kept standing there, unfazed, unharmed, unmoved. A fizzling sound reached my audio receptors.

Did my shots just… Evaporate?

The mech's chilling, distorted laughter echoed throughout the room, his optics never leaving mine. "Yes…" The reactor went dark for nano-klick. When it pulsed again with light, the mech was standing right in front of me, as if he'd been there the entire time. "They did."

The knee-joint slammed into my faceplate before I could react, and it sent me onto my backplates and had me seeing stars. When I cleared my helm, the mech was standing over me, pinning my Path Blaster under a pede that was no cold that it numbed my entire servo and left me thinking my Path Blaster's power had been cut.

"That's what happens when fire meets the cold—there's a clash of... Opposites. And fire always fades, while the cold endures. Do you know why that is?"

My only response was to stab my sword upward, but the mech's servo flashed like lightning, and caught it between his index and thumb digits, as if it was a second thought.

"It is because fire is limited, finite. It is predictable, expends its energy as quickly as possible and moves on; it needs fuel in order to survive, or it dies. Now cold… Cold keeps going. It seeps down inside you, no matter who or what you are. It surrounds us all, even within the influence of stars and the largest of fires. No matter what, it always creeps in. That is why fire always fades, and the cold endures."

Starting from the mech's digits, crystals of ice started to form down the length of my sword. I widened my optics at the sight, every instinct in my CPU and frame yelling at me to not let the ice touch the rest of my servo.

"Now, when the cold touches metal, bad things start to happen…"

I tried pulling my servo back from his grip, but he held onto my sword like I wasn't even trying to get it away from him.

"The metal bends and twists, warping from the strain of fighting the cold…"

The crystals grew along my sword, forming tiny cracks in the super-dense alloy. Despite my best efforts to get away, the crystals continued growing down my sword and came into contact with my servo. That servo went numb instantly, and the crystals started growing up toward my shoulder-joint.

"The metal starts cracking, losing its strength. It does its best to retain its form, but eventually it reaches a critical point that it can't come back from... Do you know what happens after that?"

I just kept trying to pull away from his grip.

"The metal BREAKS!"

He wrapped his servo around my sword, heedless of its sharp edges, and pulled to the side. There was a sound like shattering glass, and both my sword and my servo halfway to my elbow-joint came breaking off. No energon came from the broken part of my servo, and I felt no pain.

I let out a soundless scream, gaping at the wound I couldn't feel. A small part of my processor was calmly telling me that this wasn't real, that the last time the mech attacked me, nothing had actually happened.

That little voice was drowned out and ignored as I stared at my injury in mute horror. My servo was gone. My servo was gone. My servo was gone. My servo was gone.

The mech above me tossed my frozen sword and snapped servo off to the side; they shattered when they hit the floor. "Fire fades. Metal breaks. The cold endures. You are made of metal, and that little spark of yours can count as fire. I am the Cold. You will break and fade, and I will be the one who breaks you. Like a little toy."

"Why? Why me?"

He stomped on my chestplates, cracking my armor and bonding his pede to my chestplates by forming crystals of ice under his heel. It felt like my spark had been frozen. "Because you need to learn. You need to see that there are terrible things out in the Cosmos, even on this ball of dirt you call a planet—things far worse than me."

His pede raised up and kicked out sideways, and I was sent sliding across the floor by his casual movement, stopping about a hundred feet away.

"Things like you, Xel'Tor."

A faint breath of cold wind passed over my frame, chilling any part of me that hadn't already been frozen by the mech.

I was so distracted by my snapped off servo and injuries, I barely felt the wind touch me. But that didn't stop the small voice of reason from again trying to make me think logically—that my servo wasn't gone, that I had to prepare myself for an attack unlike any I faced before.

I didn't pay attention to it, and kept staring at the stump of my servo.

I should have listened to the little voice in the back of my CPU.

The biting wind carried an equally cool voice, carrying from out in the dark, "... Why? Why offline me?"

I turned my helm toward the voice, but saw nothing until the reactor pulsed, illuminating the room. The dull silver form of the Hammer's navigator was standing no more than twenty feet from me. His optics were dim and carried an accusing look in them. There were two bullet holes in his chestplates that were faintly glowing orange.

The small voice in my head told me not to respond, that what I was seeing was a hallucination, but I didn't listen. "Because you were a Paraion, and I was a rampaging prisoner. You would have shot at me sooner or later, so I shot first."

"I was a navigator. I piloted ships, made sure it was safe for my crewmates and I to make a jump. That's all I ever wanted to do. I was never in combat. I wasn't trained for it, didn't like to shoot. I was no threat to you; I never would have been. But you still gunned me down without hesitating, without any thought of how you were ending my life. Why? What did I do to you?"

"I was your prisoner."

"I was the navigator—I never came in contact with you. You were Extremis' prisoner, not mine. Does me being a follower of Extremis excuse offlining me, when I was too scared of you to even hide?"

I was silent.

"And what about me?" A new voice asked, belonging to a femme.

I turned my helm again. An orange and blue femme was standing on the opposite side of me, optics accusing just like the navigator's were. An Autobot insignia was displayed proudly on her chestplates, but had been charred black by what could only have been a fire of great heat. There was no other damage to her short, slender frame.

"What about you?" I asked.

"Hmph. You need to ask? Is the fact I'm an Autobot not enough reason for you to care? You weren't the only 'Bot on that ship, you know. I had been there for half a vorn by the time you arrived, been through just as much as you had. No, I went through more than you. Know why? Unlike you, I had a family counting me to get out and come back to them. I could feel how much they missed me through my mate. My everything. Want to know what his name was?"

"I… I don—"

"His name was Highshift. He was the gentlest, sweetest, most selfless mech I ever knew. We had sparklings together—sweet, innocent sparlings. Want to know their names?"

"I—"

"Our firstborn—Kiorra, who we named her after our closest friend at the time of her birth, an organic we met on the planet my battalion had been protecting for the last fifty vorns protecting. Our second eldest—Battlemade, who had been born while Highshift was out fighting Decepticons. Our middle sparkling—Solarseer, who we could never get her to stop studying the stars at the night-cycle, even when she fell into recharge looking up at them. Our second youngest—Airwave, who loved music even before he opened his optics. And our youngest—Seaflight, who always, always, always wanted us to take him to see the oceans. My mate was a dozen times the mech you are. But our sparklings—my little miracles? They had worth beyond comparison. And you took me from them."

"No, I—"

"You took both my mate and I from our family! My sparklings are alone now, scared and confused and lost, and you didn't even care! What kind of mech doesn't care about the lives he changes, about those he ruins?!"

"But… But I do care," I said quietly, untrusting of my own voice after her tirade. "Not a breem goes by when I don't think about what happened to Autobots like you."

"But you don't care enough!" The femme roared. "You never will! You're incapable of caring about anyone except yourself!"

"I love Arcee, though."

"If you loved her, you would have made sure she stayed away from you," a new voice said, belonging to another mech who stepped into my field of vision. He was dark in color, and had a Decepticon symbol on his shoulder-joints. "That's what I did when pair of Decepticon enforcers knocked on my front door, slapped a draft notice in my serov, and told me to come with them. She said she loved me and wanted to go with me, and asked if she could volunteer. But I knew what would happen to her if she went into a Decepticon camp, untrained and unarmed. I couldn't let that happen to her. So I lied, told her I never loved her and never would—that I had been seeing other femmes since we had started courting. I even yelled and slapped her when she said I was lying. She said she hated me and left, and the enforcers let her go. I hated myself for hurting her so much, but she was safe; that was enough for me. Arcee's far from safe being near you, that much is clear—you're worse than half the scum I was forced to work with. So what's your excuse, huh? Loving Arcee too much to keep your distance? Give me a break."

I couldn't even hear the voice of reason yelling at me now to just ignore the mech. "Arcee loves me, too…"

"Oh, please. She thinks she loves you. She's been through so much pain in her life that she's never encountered someone that she clicked with quickly. Now she's misinterpreting your friendship as love, and you—you selfish afthole—are just going along with it. Makes me sick."

"But… Imprinting."

"Imprinting is lie. There are no seconds halfs to our sparks, only pain in the end."

But… But…

"Imprinting is a lie."

… That made sense…

Countless other voices and bots soon appeared, raining down scorn and hatred down on me in a constant stream of words and curses.

"You're incapable of caring about anyone but yourself!"

I did have that problem.

"You're worth less than dirt!"

I was. I really was…

"You enjoyed offlining everyone in front of you!

… Had I?

"We were following orders just like you would have, and you slaughtered us for it!"

… Why had I done that?

"You murdered us! You murdered all of us! You're a sparkless monster!"

I was a monster…

"You took my family from me! You took everything from me!"

I…

It was all too much for my CPU to handle. I tried focusing on facts, random numbers, anything to keep my CPU occupied.

The shouts kept coming, increasing in volume with each one.

"Worthless!"

The density of Iridium is twenty-two point five six grams per cubic centimeter.

"Monster!"

The average size of a neutron star is twenty-eight kilometers in diameter.

"Merciless liar!"

Cybertron's energon production once reached fifteen-quadrillion storage containers per jour.

"Emotionless beast!"

The… deepest ocean on Cybertron... Is…

"Traitor!"

The… I...

"MURDERER!"

… Murderer.

Above the voices, I could hear deep, distorted, and sickly twisted laughter echoing around the room.

"Shadowstreaker."

My optics snapped open. I was standing in the middle of the reactor room, facing the wall away from the door. My helm was pounding faintly, like I was recovering from a bad processor ache I hadn't noticed I was having. My chestplates and servo were both unusually warm, as if the air had suddenly risen drastically in temperature. The reactor itself hummed quietly, lighting up the room.

How did I get in here?

I turned around and saw Prowl standing in the doorway, one of his Rifles deployed from his servo and aimed at the floor. "Yeah? What are you doing here, Prowl?"

Prowl made no move to return his servo to normal. "A security notification appeared on the computer. It said the reactor room door had been opened. I am here investigating the report. How did you get inside this room?"

I looked around and shrugged, unconsciously flexing the digits of my left servo—it felt odd and almost foreign, like I stopped feeling it for a klick. "I don't know. I must have spaced out while I was clearing out Kilo-9, wandered in here by mistake."

"And you wandered into one of the most secure areas of the base? I find that conclusion illogical."

"I know, but repetitive manual labor requires remarkably little thought in order to complete—it's possible."

"The door panel is heavily encrypted, and only Optimus and I have a code to unlock it."

I shrugged again, cooling fans humming quietly as they worked to cool a small part of my chestplates above my spark; it felt like they had just been freezing cold and hadn't adapted to warm temperatures. I found that a bit strange. "Maybe the door panel has a glitch or short circuit, then. How else could I have gotten in here?"

Prowl continued staring at me for a micro-klick, then glanced to his side to look at the door panel. "It does not appear to be damaged."

"Then it would have to be a glitch." I walked out of the reactor room and stood next to Prowl. "Try closing the door."

The stoic mech glanced at me, the pressed the button to close the door. It slid shut quickly and smoothly, but the light signaling that the door had locked remained green instead of turning red. The door reopened a moment later, as if it had never closed.

"See? A glitch. It must have been open when I came near it, allowed me to wander inside when I was spacing out," I said casually, certain that was how I ended up in the reactor room. Although, that did leave the question of how I ended up spacing out without realizing it. One thing at a time, I guess.

Prowl's optics scanned the open door in front of us, examining it closely as he finally returned his servo to normal. "It appears so."

With the mystery of how I was able to enter the reactor room solved, I looked back toward Kilo-9. "Well, I should get back to work. Then if you don't mind me doing so, I'm going to relax in my quarters for a while—I have a processor ache." I lightly rubbed the side of my helm, where my processor ache was focused. It was a strange place for me to get a processor ache, but evidently not impossible since it was pounding away; however, I didn't have it a few klicks ago. Wierd.

The SIC kept examining the doorway. "That would be wise. I will be returning to the ops center momentarily; first I will need to make sure the door is not suffering from other malfunctions. Once you have finished unloading Kilo-9, take the rest of the cycle off, Shadowstreaker—processor aches can cause confusion, and confusion can be dangerous when conducting manual labor."

"Understood, Prowl. I'll get back to it." I turned and started walking to Kilo-9, shaking my helm as it kept pounding painfully. Damn processor ache.

I didn't sense or have any idea that Prowl turned around as soon as I had, and was watching me walk away with suspicious optics.

---

Prowl watched Shadowstreaker walk away, processor analyzing their conversation.

Shadowstreaker's apparent lack of concern for why he could not remember how he entered the reactor room was highly unusual for him—Prowl thought the mech had some logic in his CPU.

Cybertronians did not 'Space out,' not on the level the Triple-Changer claimed he must have done. A processor recorded everything, deleted nothing. Even if he had fallen into repetitive motions, he would have memory files detailing every moment he spent working on his tasks. Shadowstreaker knew how Cybertronian CPUs worked, had previous experience when he was a human with a photographic memory, and still dismissed his gap in his memory like it was a commonplace event.

Normally, Prowl would have pressed the Triple-Changer on the topic, but he sensed there was more going on than he knew—more that Prowl needed to find out before he confronted Shadowstreaker on the subject.

And Prowl's logic-centered CPU was telling him there was something very wrong about the entire situation.

The SIC turned and looked back at the door panel. Its software could not be corrupted or have an error in its coding—Ratchet and Moonracer were the ones who programmed it, and they did not make mistakes with code. Even on the off chance there was an error, the bonded medics installed failsafes that would have appeared in the security alert sent to the workstation. There was no logical reason why it should not work correctly.

With that thought on his processor, he again pressed the button to close the door. It slid shut, and the light on the panel turned red. The door remained closed even after several micro-klicks.

Prowl blinked, CPU whirling audibly as it tried to find logic in what just happened—to find logic in the fact the door only malfunctioned when Shadowstreaker was in its immediate proximity. But no matter how hard he thought, what information stored in his CPU he searched, he could find no logical explanation for what he just witnessed. Logic could not explain it.

This… Complicated matters. It complicated matters extensively.

---

August 10, 2013 6:59 P.M

Shílì Tower, Central, Hong Kong

Shílì Tower lived up to its name—meaning strength, in Simplified Chinese. Towering over all other buildings in the city, the Tower sat on a hundred acre plot of land just south of Victoria Harbor. It was made up of four cylinder-shaped towers that were attached—from the bottom floor to the roof— to a much larger fifth tower. Each of the four smaller towers stood at a staggering sixteen-hundred and twelve feet in height, and had more than four-million square feet of floor space spread out over one-hundred and two floors. Four helicopter landing pads were on top of each smaller tower.

The larger tower—called Central by the people who worked in the complex—made the other towers look small in comparison. It was more than a third taller than the buildings attached to it, and would have had more floor space than all the other towers combined even if it had been the same height as them. On the one-hundred and third floor, sections of Central opened up in massive, pillar-like apertures—over one-hundred and fifty feet high—that were connected to the roofs of the four smaller structures. These apertures created a giant observation deck that circled the outside of Central, expanding into larger decks when at a connection to a smaller tower—one on each corner of Central. Benches, tower viewers, an outdoor movie theater, two food courts, and even a small shopping center were located on the observation decks.

Central continued climbing into the sky for another five-hundred feet, then came to the bottom of a private, multi-floor penthouse that had Central's three-hundred foot antenna looming over it. The penthouse had its own observatory, helicopter pad, swimming pool heated to eighty-six degrees fahrenheit year-round, garden, and many other luxuries that normally would be seen in a mansion on ground level. It had a three-hundred and sixty degree view of Hong Kong far below.

Inside the penthouse, in an extravagantly-furnished living room with Macassar Ebony floors, a man in a dark suit with a blood red tie stood in front of a window, staring out at the city far below. The man's name was Michael Hsu, and he owned Shílì Tower.

Hsu was taller than most Chinese men at six feet two inches in height, and was still in very good physical shape despite being in his mid-fifties. He had black hair, dark eyes, wide cheekbones, small nose, and flatter face than people of European descent. If someone were to look past his first name, they would have no idea Hsu was only half Chinese. He had been born in Los Angeles, California, to an American mother and Chinese father—his mother had been the one to name him. He spoke perfect English and Chinese.

From an early age, Hsu showed a talent for business, technology, and economics. When he was nine, he made his first thousand dollars from taking unwanted scrap metal from around his neighborhood and selling it to scrap yards and recycling plants. He used that money to start his own little business at his Elementary school by buying things young children lusted after—candy, soda, small toys—and selling them at his school for slightly more money than he purchased them for, and other children paid the extra money so they wouldn't have to walk all the way to the store. By the time he was sixteen, he had used similar money-making tactics to turn that first thousand dollars into five-thousand dollars.

That year, he started to buy and trade Penny Stocks through an account he registered in his father's name.

Hsu invested smartly and often, and turned his five-thousand investments into over a quarter of a million dollars in assets within another year. On the day of his eighteenth birthday, he sold all of the stock belonging to the account he originally used to invest, left home, and used the money to start his first company: Beta Electronics, a company he founded to create the first computer systems and software made exclusively for stock trading companies.

Within months of installing its first systems—and the world seeing how effective computers were at giving traders accurate data, and in turn providing handsome profits—more than thirty major trading companies were in demand for Beta Electronics' services. Hsu was only too happy to oblige.

Little did the stock traders know, the software in the computers provided by Beta Electronics contained what was perhaps the world's first digital backdoor. By using the power cord of his own computers, Hsu could hack into the computers he installed and view the sensitive financial information stored within. From his own personal computer, Hsu was able to see every financial secret kept by his customers, know what the prices of stocks would be hours ahead of most traders.

He was very proud of his first money-grabbing plot. Hsu not only had to make it work without the aid of the internet, but it was the defining moment in his life—the moment he first tasted true success. His previous businesses had been to get by and make money for later in life, but Beta Electronics was the first endeavor he pursued purely to gain something more than money: power.

He quickly found he loved power, craved it, and would do anything to gather more and more.

The employees of Beta Electronics never knew the true purpose of the software he told them to code. Only he and four others knew the truth.

They met unfortunate accidents within a year of the company's founding—no one could know about the backdoor except Hsu.

Using his profits from Beta Electronics, the financial information he had at his fingertips—which only grew as the years passed on and Beta Electronics continued to grow—and his own intelligent investments, Hsu built, destroyed, and bought out dozens of companies before he even turned twenty-five. He eventually brought every company he owed—including Beta Electronics—under one name: Freedom International, the world's first megacorporation—he chose the name 'Freedom' to appeal to a greater number of potential customers.

With each passing decade, Freedom International grew, and so did Hsu's personal fortune. It was the largest or one of the largest companies in a number of industries: manufacturing; retail; internet, television, and phone providers; computer software and hardware; pharmaceuticals; banking; Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas production; construction; hydropower; Gold, Silver, Uranium, Platinum, Iron, Titanium, Copper, and Lithium mining; and even had a hand in the film, music, and video game industries. Between all of the companies under its umbrella, Freedom International employed six point one million people across the world, more than the next six largest companies combined.

For years, Hsu had no rivals, no real competition—he just saw his wealth and power grow. But he was always on the watch for ways to keep growing, to keep increasing the size of his bank accounts and his influence with nearly every major nation and scores of politicians. Sometimes he had to dig in order to find things that furthered his unending quest for wealth, like when he had to plant a group of inside men into the Roxxon Corporation in order to move in and buy its assets while it dealt with millions of people crying for justice. That had been a long operation.

But at other times, opportunities were given to him.

That was why he was even in Hong Kong today, instead of enjoying a week of vacation in Monaco—there was a business meeting he couldn't miss, in the words of one of his Board members, who oversaw operations in Eastern Europe and West Asia.

Hsu hoped he hadn't wasted his time by flying out to Hong Kong, as Tony—one of his Board members—asked him to do.

The faint thrum of a helicopter's rotors reached Hsu's ears, and he turned his head in the direction of the helipad. It seemed his meeting was about to start.

"Escort my guest in," Hsu ordered two of the eight armed bodyguards in the room, a personal entourage a man like himself needed to keep around to deter threats and carry out his own.

The bodyguards wordlessly walked out of the room. They returned a minute later, standing on both sides of another man—Hsu's guest.

The newcomer was taller than either of the bodyguards accompanying him, but was still two inches shorter than Hsu. He wore a buttoned up, navy blue suit that looked so new it was as if he had never put it on. His skin was light and clean, but there were a few faint scars on his hands and face. His hair was blonde, his face was clean-shaven, and his chocolate brown eyes that contained a look akin to warmth. He carried himself with cool confidence, as if the bodyguards around him weren't there at all.

Hsu turned from the window to study his guest, looked him from head to toe, then said in English, "You are the man Tony was telling me about."

"Unless we're thinking about a different Tony, then I must be." The way the man worded his statement made it sound like a joke, but neither his eyes nor mouth smiled.

Hsu didn't smile, either. "I am not known for my humor, Mr…?"

"Booth. Ned Booth."

"Booth. Simple name," Hsu said, searching his mind for a time he may have heard the man's name associated with a particular industry—he didn't recall hearing it before now. He walked away from the window and sat down on a couch close to where Booth and Hsu's two bodyguards entered the room. A glass coffee table and two chairs in front of the couch. "Why don't you sit down, Mr. Booth; I don't like to waste time when I have business to attend to."

Booth walked forward and stood between both chairs, making no move to sit in either. He looked down at Hsu from over the table, face unreadable. "I prefer conducting my first order of business while I'm on my feet."

Hsu arched one eyebrow half an inch. "Why?"

"Because when you sit down with someone, you are placing yourself at a disadvantage. The person standing has the advantage of height. People, no matter who they are, have a natural instinct of being intimidated when someone stands over them. Sitting also is a tactical misstep. If I were to pull a weapon, you would have no time to react, nowhere to go. All I would need is one shot."

Hsu frowned, eyes narrowing at the perceived threat in Booth's statement. Booth was not talking like a man with business in mind, not the kind of business Tony had told Hsu about. It seemed the meeting was going to end short, if there had ever been the possibility of one in the first place. "Neither would you. My guards are armed, and they would shoot you before you would be able to pull a weapon."

Booth's mouth twitched in the faintest smile Hsu had ever seen. "Would they?"

One of the bodyguards who had left the room to escort in Booth suddenly drew his FN Five-seven pistol and shot the guard next to him in the head, the high-velocity .224 caliber round creating a gunshot far louder than most people would expect from a weapon the FN's size.

The rest of Hsu's bodyguards went to draw their own weapons, but one of them joined the first in aiming his pistol at the others. He shot the guard nearest to him, downing him with a shot to the neck while the first guard killed his second man.

Hsu's remaining three guards hesitated for a split second, shocked that there were two traitors among them instead of one—their training didn't cover threats from within their unit.

The split second was all the two traitors needed. The first guard fired one more shot, and the second guard fired two. Three more bodies hit the floor.

There was a pause, a deafening silence in the air after half a dozen shots had been fired in such a short time. Then the two traitors lowered their weapons, looked at Booth, and nodded.

Booth unbuttoned his suit jacket and sat down in one of the chairs. "Now, I think I'll sit."

Hsu sat in shock, ears ringing from the gunshots. He had employed the same bodyguards for the last seven years, ran multiple background checks on all of them, saw them everyday, and made sure they each made six figures a year. He knew them better than he knew his children or ex-wives—not that he really knew those women to begin with. And two of them had turned on him, didn't offer a moment's hesitation in shooting the guards still loyal to Hsu. The billionaire didn't know how to process the situation.

A sharp whistle brought Hsu out of his shellshock, and he looked at the blank face of Booth sitting across from him. "I need you to focus, Mr. Hsu—we have business to get to."

"How?" It was the only thing Hsu could get his mouth to say at the moment. His thoughts were too jumbled and confused by the betrayal of his bodyguards and the question of why Tony insisted on Hsu coming out to Hong Kong to conduct a business meeting—Hsu knew too many of the man's dark secrets for Tony to try pulling a powerplay.

"How what? My answer's going to depend on what you're asking about."

"Tony."

"Ah. That." Booth reached into his suit jacket, pulled out a small photograph, and showed it to Hsu.

The image showed a short, middle-aged woman of Italian ethnicity—who still retained much of the stunning beauty she must have had in her youth—bound and gagged along with three children who appeared to be in their early to late teens. They were all sitting against a white wall, looking at the camera.

Tony's family, Hsu realized—his pride and joy. Booth had kidnapped them. An effective tactic of manipulation, Hsu knew. Take a man's beloved family, and he'll do whatever you say to make sure they're safe. But kill them after you get what you want, you better be prepared to contain the damage the lone man will deal out.

Hsu still regretted never being quite ready enough to face the man's wrath.

"You took his family," said Hsu.

"I've found people are likely to do what you ask them to when you have guns pointed at their family's heads," said Booth, returning the photo to his suit jacket. "Especially when all you want them to do is convince their boss to go to a surprise business meeting in your penthouse in Hong Kong."

Hsu made a mental note to make sure Tony had an unfortunate accident, if Hsu got out of this penthouse alive. "And my men?"

"Money can very convincing."

"How much?"

"One-million apiece."

The billionaire huffed, anger building at how easily his bodyguards had been bought—he offered each of them a fifty-thousand US dollar bonus for each off the books task he told them to do. And he told them to do them often. "What do you want?"

"Two things. Let's start with the most straightforward one." Booth reached into the other side of his suit jacket and pulled out a small piece of paper. He set it down in front of Hsu. There were three different sets of numbers on the paper. "Those are account numbers. You're going to transfer one-million US dollars into the first two accounts. Then you're going to transfer ten-million dollars into the third account."

Twelve-million total. Not as much as Hsu would have expected, considering his wealth. "And your second demand?"

"We'll get to that. Transfer the funds."

---

Hsu did as he was told, albeit grudgingly; he may have enough money to spend ten-million a day for the next twenty years and still be a billionaire, but he despised parting with it; if he lived, he was going to have a trace run on the account numbers, along with making sure Tony paid dearly.

After he finished the long process—mainly repeating information he told to other employees of his bank—that went along with transferring large sums of money from one bank account to another, Hsu hung up his phone and glared across the table at Booth. "It's done. You have your money." He noticed that his former bodyguards smiled slightly at the news, excitement written on their faces

Booth's face remained unreadable. "Good."

Hsu grinded his teeth at the disinterested tone from Booth. First he took him hostage, and now he's not even interested when one of his demands was met. What kind of extortionist was Booth. "Did you not hear me? I gave you your damned money. My damned money."

"You did, but it's still only half of what I need."

"Then get on with your second demand."

For the first time, Booth leaned forward in his chair, his eyes growing intense. "I want to know where your son is."

Hsu openly showed his confusion, something he didn't commonly do. "Why? What do you want with Zhang?"

"Not Zhang, Mr. Hsu. I want to know where your firstborn is."

Instantly, Hsu's face went blank, mind freezing in horror. Not from fear of harm to his eldest—from fear of his eldest. He shook his head fiercely. "He is no son of mine; he hasn't been for ten years."

"Yes, you disowned him. Very sad, that. Family should stick together."

"He was never family. He was a monster from the day he learned how to talk."

"A monster you still helped go into hiding from the authorities from a number of countries. How kind of you."

"I regret that decision everyday—I should have killed him back then."

"But you didn't. And now I need to find him."

"Why?" Hsu asked, voice carrying an incredulous tone. "What could you possibly need with that rabid dog?"

"That's my business, not yours." Booth adjusted in his chair, leaning back slightly. "Now, where is he?"

"I don't know."

"But you have a basic area, or a name to go on. You wouldn't have sent him off without giving yourself an idea of what to look for, if you wanted to search for him."

Hsu grinded his teeth, knowing he could not dissuade Booth from tracking down Hsu's only son born from a non-Chinese woman. "The passport I gave him upon his departure was listed as one 'Andrew Carmine.' I know from tracking the name that he still goes by it."

"That all?"

"I gave him the identity, not the destination. If you really want to find him, track him down yourself. But if you find him, just save yourself the trouble and shoot him in the chest."

Booth's eyes widened an eighth of an inch. It was the most genuine emotion Hsu had seen from Booth since he arrived. "Are you truly that scared of your son?"

"If you knew what I discovered what he did to his own mother when I returned home on the night he left, you would be scared, too."

Booth broke eye contact with Hsu, glanced around at the dead bodies around the room, then looked at the billionaire again. "I kill people for a living—one former student of science doesn't frighten me." He stood up and left the room, and Hsu's former bodyguard's followed him out.

---

Five minutes later, Booth was sitting in the front of the helicopter he charted for his meeting with Hsu, the two bodyguards whose loyalty he bought seated in the back. The helicopter pilot hadn't asked why he was taking on two more passengers, just as Booth had told him not to.

In all, Booth thought his meeting with Hsu had gone well: Booth got the information he came for; he gained two more allies in the form of the former bodyguards; and he gave the Russians what they wanted—proof giving him resources would give them more resources.

He hated the fact he was having to work with the Russian mafa. They were brutal, merciless, and incredibly focused when conducting their operations; Booth almost admired how well they were organized.

But he knew what they did, what kind of businesses they had. He felt a little dirty working with the Russian mob, but he also knew they were his only option for an ally. They were the most powerful, well organized, and best equipped group outside the armed forces of a developed nation. Booth needed talent like that, if he was going to have any chance of staying ahead of the S.T.F long enough to complete his plans.

Booth looked down as his phone lit up. It was displaying a text message from Dmitry, the Russian mob boss Booth had been trying to gain the support of.

I have received your money. We have a deal. What do you need to bring your plan to fruition?

Booth allowed himself a small smile. He had Dmitry on his side, now—he was one step closer to his eventual goal. Then he typed a reply out.

Two dozen good men. One fifth of the money I transferred to your account to cover expenses and investments. As much battle armor, weapons, and ammo that can be spared. And finally, vehicles and enough fuel to cover a thousand mile journey over rough terrain.

Ned sent the text and waited for a reply. It came half a minute later.

If you produce a tenth of the profits you promised, such an investment is nothing in comparison. Where does this equipment need put in place?

Booth typed out his response without hesitating.

As far south of you as you can get. We need to go to Africa.

---

(Human calendar) August 10, 2013 1:03 A.M (UTC-6:00 Mountain Standard Time)

(Cybertronian Date) 1103432 (Centi-vorns since Golden Age)

Ventqura Munitum, unknown star system in the NGC 3109 galaxy (Unofficially named)

Extremis stared down at the pedestal in front of him, servos hanging neatly at his sides.

He was in his hidden room for the second time within the jour. Unlike when he opened its door for the first time in many vorns, he did not know why it seemed that every cycle he felt compelled to return to his secret room—he had never sensed the urge to spend time in the hidden room before the Xel'Tor arrived.

He found the new urge to be a distraction. A distraction that not only was commonly able to keep him from his duties until he cleared thoughts of them from his CPU, but could actually cause him physical pain if he was not careful with how he handled his memories. And nothing within the room could hurt him as much as the objects on the pedestal he stood before.

There were only three objects on the pedestal: a shard of metal; a small and crudely-built audio recorder; and a simple carving made of stone.

Out of all the objects in the room, the ones on this pedestal were the least significant, the most unassuming. But to Extremis, they had more to them than anything else in the room. When he looked at those three odd objects, his vision narrowed until they were all he saw. He heard nothing, made no movement at all. It was like he turned into a statue when he was near the pedestal.

Yet, he still felt nothing as he looked at them—he did not let himself do so. Of all the objects in the room, these three were the only ones he refused to even think about beyond the fact there was a reason why he kept them in his hidden sanctuary. Average memories were quick to process and easy to simply not think about; any other type of memory was not.

And if just looking at other objects in the room was able to distract Extremis—who never let himself be distracted—then these three would never let him go, never let him think logically, unless he continued to keep them out of his helm.

He knew that from past experience.

Vigilance's voice suddenly came through a speaker in the wall. "Extremis—there is a matter that will require your attention."

Extremis space bridged himself out of his secret room and into his workplace without lingering another nano-klick, forcing his CPU to snap back into its normal cold and logical thinking. "What is it?"

"Second Commander Lancer is reporting a Code-7 alert at the Zuronator hatching facility. He and members of his staff have retreated to the roof of PRD Facility-10. He has sent a request for extraction to High General Praxis, and has sent a formal request through an official channel to gain an audience with you upon his rescue."

The Paraions' leader took the news of a Code-7 alert—meaning a facility was shut down and its internal containment procedures had suffered catastrophic failure—without so much as a trace of surprise, mentally or physically. With how dangerous the Zuronators were, it was only a matter of time before a Code-7 was triggered; it happened the first time Extremis ordered the eggs of the Zuronators to be hatched, and back then they only hatched three eggs.

Extremis knew that Lancer had hatched thousands of times that number in the previous mega-cycles. That could potentially lead to a new cycle starting.

Zuronators were Ventqura Munitum's deadliest land predator. They were so deadly in fact, that the species was only active on Ventqura Munitum once in every thousand centi-vorns; they would render the planet without wildlife otherwise. When they were about to enter their long cycle of hibernation, male Zuronators searched for mates, the females gathered together and laid their Diamond-hard eggs in deep underground caves, and then all the adults would die out. After the Zuronator embryos finished their incredibly long, thousand centi-vorn development period inside their eggs, they hatched, and then they went hunting. And so the cycle would continue.

Until Extremis had discovered the network of caves containing the Zuronator eggs, after his organization witnessed from orbit one of their cycles of hunting just after they arrived on Ventqura Munitum. He had PRD Facility-10 built directly over the cave network's only entrance, and placed every egg they found in a stasis field that prevented the Zuronator's from hatching, but let them reach maturity inside. It had been more than five-thousand centi-vorns since the planet experienced a cycle of Zuronator hunting.

"I will go to him. Continue to monitor operations while I am away." Extremis space bridged himself thousands of kilometers away after giving his command to Vigilance, far away from his island and to the smallest of Ventqura Munitum's continents.

He came to stand on top of a large building, a third the size of own facility at ten miles square in area. It was PRD Facility-10, commonly called the Pit's Fire by Extremis' followers.

The Pit's Fire was surrounded by dense jungle, as was nearly ninety percent of the planet's landmass. The trees were thick and averaged more than two-hundred meters in height. It had a hundred meter-tall, twenty meter-thick, octagonal perimeter wall lined with automated defense towers to keep the local wildlife—fearsome even by Ventqura Munitum's standards—away from the main building. An artificial plain three-hundred meters wide separated the wall and the jungle. Inside the wall, there was a small ship loading dock, an energon storage and processing plant, more automated defense towers, and general quarters for Facility-10's staff.

Extremis turned and saw a collection of mechs and femmes gathered near Facility-10's emergency extraction point, a landing pad near the only lift that had access to the roof. The majority of them were unarmed scientists, but Extremis saw that there were a dozen soldiers in their midst, guarding the door to the lift.

The soldiers were the first to notice that Extremis had arrived. Their sergeant barked out a quick order to his soldiers, and they all faced their leader and snapped crisp salutes before returning to guarding the doors. The scientists noticed Extremis only after the soldiers saluted; they stiffened at the sight of him standing no more than a hundred meters away.

A dark red mech with light blue trim walked out toward Extremis, but stopped more than a frame length away. He was average size for a mech, but still less than half Extremis' sixty-six foot height. "I… I wasn't expecting you to come out here yourself, sir." His voice was quiet and lacked strength, a common occurrence whenever Extremis was near him.

"This facility is important, Lancer—it is high on the list of my priorities," said Extremis, his unnaturally mechanical and low voice clashing with Lancer's like water and fire. He looked at the group of scientists and soldiers, and found there were one-hundred and forty-six including Lancer himself. "Less than one third of your staff. What happened?"

"The... Zuronators got out."

"How?"

Lancer flinched at Extremis' tone, or lack thereof; the mech never reacted to anything. "They've been acting strangely recently. One moment they're docile like they had been since we started implanting neural inhibitors, and the next they were going crazy, attacking their cages. We've been able to contain them easily enough, keep some of the larger ones sedated. But this time, there was something different. They fought more fiercely, had more strength and power in their attacks. Some even died in their escape attempts. The rest got out, and we're… We're the only ones who got away from them."

Extremis was unsurprised by that—Zuronators were unlike any creature Extremis had seen before, even Cybertronians would be hard pressed to stand against them. That was why Extremis wanted to use them. "When precisely did they begin to behave abnormally?"

"I believe it started a few solar-cycles ago, after we had finished hatching that cycle's batch of eggs."

"Did you encounter anything unusual that cycle?"

"No… Wait." Lancer paused, looking thoughtful. "There was an egg we hatched that was larger than the others, had a different coloration to it."

That started to turn the gears in Extremis' super-genius-level CPU. "Was the Zuronator it produced also unique?"

Understanding entered Lancer's optics, temporarily replacing the wariness they had held since Extremis arrived. "It was. Its horns were sharper, more pronounced when freshly hatched. It also has been growing even faster than the others, adding more armor. I had thought it was merely a male who was maturing more rapidly than normal, but I think it may have be—"

"An Alpha," Extremis finished, having reached the exact same conclusion the moment Lancer confirmed the Zuronator was different from the others. "Its presence was affecting the behavior of the others."

"Even with the neural inhibitors present? I thought you said they would prevent something like this from happening… Sir." Lancer added the last word quickly, taking a step back and avoiding Extremis' gaze in an effort to show he was not questioning his leader.

Extremis allowed the slight to go unpunished this time. "It appears Alpha Zuronators have stronger minds than I anticipated."

"If you're correct, sir—not that I'm saying you're wrong!—then what do we… Do?"

"You will do nothing; I will be entering the facility shortly."

The optics of every mech and femme in the vicinity turned to look at Extremis in horror, then turned away just as quickly when Extremis in turn glanced at them.

Lancer was the first to find his voice, albeit even quieter than it had been before. "Uh… What, sir?"

Extremis didn't bother to answer the Second Commander's question, and walked toward the soldiers guarding the door to the lift. When he reached the door, he told the sergeant, "Open it."

The sergeant remained where he was, too shocked by his leader's earlier proclamation to move.

After the sergeant failed to move after three micro-klicks, Extremis waved his servo in front of the door. The air between his servo and the door appeared to fracture and sway, like it was hot. Then with a groan and snap that hurt the audio receptors of all but Extremis, the door's lock was broken and the door forcibly slid open.

Extremis lowered his servo and stepped onto the lift beyond. He pressed the holographic button that would take the lift down, and looked at the still silent sergeant. "Your unwillingness to follow orders will be dealt with later." The door closed, and Extremis started to descend downward.

The lift took mere moments to reach the floor Extremis desired. He stepped out into the hallway beyond, noting the dim emergency lighting and energon on parts of the floor. No offlined frames were in sight, and his superior hearing picked up nothing.

He turned left from the lift and walked down the middle of the hallway. Further down the hallway that he encountered the first frame of a deceased Paraion. It was a mech, although he was unrecognizable—he had been torn into dozens of pieces.

Extremis gave the offlined mech's parts a blank look before sidestepping them and continuing on toward his destination: the central hall.

During Extremis' first attempt to hatch the Zuronators, he had discovered the creatures were naturally drawn to sources of energy and power. Back then, the three Zuronators had nested near piece of lab equipment that ran on a small energon generator. But with how many Zuronators had already been hatched, it was going to take a lot more power to get them to all come to the same location.

He already knew what he needed to do to accomplish that.

Extremis' senses detected a vibration in the super-dense metal making up the floor, a subtle change in the air, a hiss quieter than a faint whisper.

Something was behind him.

Extremis dodged to the right, and a Zuronator tumbled across the floor, unable to adjust in time to its prey moving out of its way.

The creature was built powerfully, muscles rippling under thick dark scales that shone like polished marble and could shrug off all but the most powerful infantry weapons. It stood more than thirty feet tall at the shoulder, and was nearly as wide its broadest point. Long spikes shot up from its shoulders and ran along its entire spine. A long, spiked tail trailed behind it, accounting for more than half of its two-hundred foot length. It moved on six legs, its back set of legs slightly longer than those ahead of them. Four long claws that were sharp enough to cut through most Cybertronian metals with ease were on each foot. Its head was angular, horned, and long, with dozens of long and sharp teeth set in jaws powerful enough to crush anything it could fit in its mouth. Two yellow reptilian eyes glowed in the dim lighting, vertical pupils focused on Extremis even as it slowly got back on its feet.

Extremis made no move to fall into a combat stance, staring into the Zuronator's eyes. He saw everything he expected to see in the eyes of a predator on the hunt: focus; animalistic bloodlust; hunger. But there was one thing Extremis saw that he had not expected.

Sentient intelligence. Curious.

The Zuronator roared, and the floor shook with its volume and depth. Then it leapt at Extremis.

Extremis' only reaction was to calmly raise a servo.

The Zuronator found itself floating above the floor, unable to move anything besides its eyes; they glowed in hatred, something else an animal did not have the ability to possess.

"You are intriguing, creature," Extremis said, well aware it did not even have the capability to respond to him. "You have revealed more to me about your species than I expected to discover. But that will not be enough to save your life." He closed his servo into a fist.

The sound of bones and armored scales snapping and breaking filled the hallway.

Extremis released his hold on the Zuronator, and its broken and warped body fell to the floor with a wet thud, violet blood pouring out onto the floor. Then Extremis walked forward, sidestepped the blood as he had the energon earlier, and continued down the hallway.

He encountered no more Zuronators on his way to the central hall, but he could feel they were nearby even as he reached his destination.

The central hall was a long, high-ceilinged room in the middle of Facility-10. It was one mile in length, and levels one through ten had at least a walkway that went all the way around the room.

It was the perfect location to lure all the Zuronators into one place.

Extremis stood in the exact middle of the hall, on the top part of a small staircase visible from everywhere in the room. He closed his optics and took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly—it echoed in the hall deeply. Then he let his power fully show itself.

Tendrils of white, lightning bolt-like energy appeared from his servos and started spreading. It creeped up his servos, spread across his chestplates and down to his pedes, rolled over his shoulder-joints and backplates, and flowed over his helm. He appeared like a star in that dark room.

His optics opened, and they glowed white with only a trace of their usual ruby. In a voice that was even more mechanical and deep than he normally used, he called into the darkness, "COME, ALPHA—COME PROVE YOUR WORTH AGAINST A WARRIOR OF ANGORNIX."

Roars of anger echoed around the room, and the floor started to shake from the sheer number of Zuronators sprinting toward the central hall.

It appeared his plan was working.

Extremis forced his power to return to its passive display, returning him to his normal appearance. He opened his right servo and pulled a hilt off his hip that was disguised as part of his armor.

Quickly and smoothly, pieces of a large, pure white broadsword formed from the hilt. Each piece seemed to materialize from thin air, slotting into place so completely science had no way of showing where the sword would have broken apart. Once it was complete, the pure white sword began to glow and shimmer like fire. It lit up the central hall even more than Extremis' previous display had.

The predators came flooding into the room moments later. They ranged greatly in size. Some were five foot-long individuals Extremis' Paraions must have hatched earlier that cycle, some were females—slimmer Zuronators with less spikes and longer tails—only three quarters of the size the one Extremis killed in the hallway, and a few were monsters who stood nearly fifty feet tall at the shoulder.

They were nothing in comparison to the Alpha.

He came up through the floor, from the cave network below. He was more than twice the size of any other Zuronator in the room. His spikes were longer, his teeth more jagged, horns longer than Extremis' servos and thicker than his chestplates. Massive wings stretched from its back, each longer than his entire body. The Alpha's eyes were eager and filled with lust for battle.

Briefly, Extremis wondered how the Alpha had grown so quickly. Then he considered how acidic the stomach of a Zuronator was, how it consumed anything it got in its mouth, and matched that fact with how he had seen few Cybertronian remains on his way to the central hall. Then it made sense: the Alpha could eat whatever it wished and convert it into energy to fuel its body, so it had eaten the frames and energon of the Paraions to accelerate its growth.

The Alpha roared, drowning out all roars of other members of its species, and took to the air to attack Extremis.

Extremis looked up at the creature blankly, waiting. Not yet…

The Alpha swooped in, claws extended.

Now.

Faster than any normal eye or optic could follow, Extremis jumped into the air and swung his sword at the joint of the Alpha's left wing. His blade cut through the scales, muscle, and bone as if it hadn't even been there.

The Alpha roared in pain and spun to the floor, helpless to control its flight. Its landing shook the ground like an earthquake, and the crash it produced was thunderous.

Extremis landed on his pedes easily and pointed his sword toward the fallen Alpha in challenge; the other Zuronators roared at him in outrage, but didn't move close to him.

In micro-klicks, the Alpha was back on his feet. He roared again, this time in fury. Two glands on either side of his massive head pulsed light blue, and he opened his jaws and let loose a jet of plasma.

Extremis raised his servo, and the plasma dispersed around him—it scorched the metal floor and made it glow red-hot. When the Alpha ran out of plasma, Extremis lowered his servo and started to slowly walk toward the Alpha.

The Alpha slammed its front legs down on the floor, cracking it. Then he rushed forward to meet Extremis' challenge.

Extremis casually waved his servo again and kept it raised.

The Alpha went flying into the wall, breaking its other wing and the wall itself. Still it got back up, and roared again before swiping at Extremis with its tail.

White energy surrounded Extremis' servo, and a bolt of it flew at the Alpha's tail at the speed of light and severed half of it off completely. The rest of the tail began turning to white ashes.

The Alpha roared again, but this time it was from agony and fear. It spun around in a vain attempt to stop its tail from turning to ashes. It no longer paid attention to Extremis.

Using the distraction to his advantage, Extremis threw his sword into the knee of the Alpha, causing it to roar again and fall heavily to the floor.

The Alpha tried returning to its feet, but fell over in the attempt. An almost pitiful-sounding growl escaped its throat.

Extremis summoned his sword to him again with a raised servo, walked the rest of the distance to the fallen Alpha, and cut off what remained of its tail to prevent the energy from spreading to the Alpha's main body.

This action was met with dead silence. The other Zuronators looked on, rooted in place by their Alpha's express command to stay out of the fight.

The Paraions' leader walked to the Alpha's head, and stared into its eyes. Those eyes glared at him in pure hatred and fury, but also grudging respect and even fear—the Alpha was viewing him as a worthy opponent.

Extremis raised his sword until it was aimed directly into the Alpha's eye. "I know you can understand me, beast."

The Alpha's eye narrowed in fury at the term 'Beast.'

"Listen to me carefully: this is a Shard of Oblivion."

Pure, unadulterated terror entered the Alpha's eye, and it tried to move away from the sword.

This fact was not missed by Extremis. "It seems your kind have seen swords like it before, and still know of them after all this time. And now you have tasted its wrath. You and your kind will serve me for as long as I deem, or I will wipe out your race from existence. Make your decision."

The Alpha stared at Extremis for several long moments in defiance, then he lowered his head down as low as he could, avoiding his optics—he was acknowledging Extremis as the more powerful predator.

Shuffling from behind him gained Extremis' attention, and he looked over his shoulder-joint. The other Zuronators—from the smallest to the largest—had all faced him and were lowering their heads as a sign of submission.

His plan had worked. The Zuronators were his.

No, Extremis suddenly decided, not the Zuronators—that was a term for animals, and he had discovered they were not mere animals. They needed a new name.

He considered all he knew of the reptiles: how fast they grew; how much they ate; how they fought; how many eggs females laid and how easy it was to accelerate the development of the embryos inside.

Then he had it.

Extremis looked back at the Alpha and said, "From this moment on, you will be my Swarm."

---

As I said before: plot PROGRESSION, not new ones. There's still a difference. That's the defense I've given and I'm sticking to it. Fun fact: It has been more than a year since the last time Extremis or Ned Booth were featured. Weird, huh?

I will let you all know now that I will be focusing on writing on my novel and Last of the Wyrms - at least for one chapter apiece. I've neglected both of those stories, and I feel it's time to really work on them. I'm definitely not leaving this alone for long, but I DO have other ideas I need to write down. Haha.

This chapter will contain three credit songs, because why not?

The first credit song is "Derek & Brandom Fiechter - Shadow Lands" Originally, I had a different song here; however, after listening to it again, I found it really didn't fit for Shadowstreaker's part. At least, the lyrics didn't - the sound was fine. So, I have gone with one that is a simple - yet well done - epic music track that gives one the feeling of uncertainty, and just a touch of creepiness. Perfect for how Shadowstreaker and Prowl's section ended, and a small reminder of the reactor room.

The second credit song is "Linkin Park - The Requiem" Just a short song with few real lyrics, but I think it fits with Ned Booth's scene.

The third credit song is "R. Armando Morabito & Tina Guo - Soul Fire" This one has that dark, rhythmic chill and ominous feeling to it that fits with Extremis. It fits very well with Extremis, and the note I left the chapter on. I recommend listening to this one.

And so ends my author's notes. Please take a moment or two to leave your thoughts in a review, or send me a PM.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you all have wonderful days and or nights. :)

See you soon.