The Diego Diaries: Out There (dd8 496)
=0=In the chaos of retrieval
They sat in the command center of their ship watching as the tide of Autobots got closer and closer. They were a tight group, the fifteen of them. They were a commando squad, a Decepticon deep cover group that had tired of the chaos of the Decepticon Command and had left with others going to supply bases in a convoy. When they were close enough to break away, they did. Flying with dispatch, they made their way to free space and headed out into the Diaspora that they knew was there.
It was amazing even to them the spray of settlements that made up the dispersal of their people. The Fall was incredibly bad. They were part of the teams that were tracking and killing Autobots on world. A number of them had been involved in bitter fights but by then it was nearly impossible for either side to reach each other over the fire and destruction everywhere. The Autobots were getting civilians off world and they were brutal in their defense of that.
Their squad was stationed on world to track criminal gangs to bring them to bay. They didn't know that the femme squad and Jetta were one that they especially wanted to get. They were just the hardest and most elusive enemy out there and it was almost a religion with them to get all of them. The Autobot commandos ghosted themselves and tracked like any other criminal organization to the mechs who were looking for them. They never got even close once.
This commando group did, however, manage to help bring the fighting and fleeing to an end with everyone left behind strapped into their chains to work for the madman who had prevailed on world. It would be then that Megatron would come and go to space in his own quest for the Allspark and the helm of optimus Prime. After a while he would stop coming altogether.
The specter of his return was enough for a lot of them to obey Shockwave who was left in charge of the planet. The intensity of the fighting had made life everywhere a horror show as the focus of the 'Cons shifted from fighting to survival and the possibility of rebuilding the planet to support life again.
The possibilities of it ever happening with any luck, however, were daunting. The destruction and pollution from the fighting and war stopped energon production in the central core of the planet while that which was fed from the massive giant aquifers overall was enough to eke out a living for everyone stranded behind. Even though it was, the amount was certainly finite. Some orn it would run out. The leadership then turned their gaze to finding new sources of the fuel elsewhere.
Far and wide, groups flew and reported back every deposit found. Some barren planets had a lot and it was dug out to the finest grain. Others were less fulsome necessitating allying with aliens that either had it or would sell it. Soon it was known far and wide that the 'vile alien murderers' were vulnerable to the substance energon, something that had little use for most.
Energon was too volatile to those who didn't know how to use or store it. It was too hot when burned by those who didn't have the technology. Its only real value to anyone else was the overwhelming need the mechanicals had for it.
It even saved some groups who held it that they could supply Cybertron what they did. No one allowed the mechanicals to know where they got it and thus commando teams hunted them for the sources. Sometimes they were successful but mostly not. Unfortunately, their configuration, the size of their ships and other tells made it hard to track anyone without something giving them away. It was a terrible cat-and-mouse game they played, alien and Cybertronian.
Then things changed without explanation.
Word was that Megatron had put a death sentence on the Seekers and they began to disappear. After time, Starscream went off the radar. Shockwave ascended to the 'throne' which was his ultimate dream after all.
It would amuse the humans who loved to make him the butt of jokes just how competent, tactical, smart, courageous and dedicated Starscream was to the Cause and to the leadership role he'd been given. The problem was that he suffered from the abuse Megatron always heaped upon him and it accumulated. By the time he finally realized his dream he was too ill and debilitated to rule.
Shockwave would rule instead. It would surprise him, or not, some fine day to know that a plot was well underway to depose him with extreme prejudice before he, too, went off the radar.
Soundwave would not be denied.
By then Cybertron was relatively stable though its citizens lived in extreme misery. Without the efforts of the Network, Dai Atlas and his people as well as the femme commandos and Jetta, the death count would've been even more catastrophic than it turned out to be. The last Decepticon leader of Cybertron had inherited a mess that was almost impossible to rectify even to a slight degree without massive infusions of energon and effort by those he would never really get to command.
Soundwave was the default leader of Cybertron.
Taking steps to ensure more flow of energon, making efforts to raise the ration to the public, Soundwave began to raise the needle toward a more possible outcome for those tasked with the mission of rebuilding, the public at large, when the worst possible situation happened.
Megatron had returned and with him came the secret he held for eons. He brought his demented son, Galvatron with him.
No one knew about him, Galvatron, though Soundwave suspected that something odd was going on between Megatron and Shockwave. That it was a son was disturbing enough but that his father was preparing him to be his heir, this pyschotic maniacal murderer was untenable. It couldn't be allowed to happen. Cybertron and their people would be obliterated.
Megatron went on a spree on world, going everywhere, descimating untold numbers before taking a tour of the empire that he still held. Repeating his conduct out there, it was a shock wave that leveled disobedience and instilled a traumatic level of fear even in hardened mechs and femmes. It was something he intended in his paranoid damaged mind, one made even more so by nearly 80 years of captivity with humans on Earth after ten thousand years of stasis. He had plans and he needed to know that Cybertron would be there for him when he returned.
Soundwave listened to the ranting about that, about the horror of being scavanged while aware without being able to stop it. He felt the terror and rage of it himself. The only thing that would have made the story better for Soundwave was the announcement that Megatron had died at the end.
He hadn't. They would all pay.
He remembered, Soundwave, standing in the Residence listening to Megatron explain his mission to get allies, then come back and "MAKE THEM ALL PAY! ALL OF THEM! I WILL DESTROY THOSE INSECTS ON EARTH WITHOUT MERCY!" he'd shouted as he paced in agitation and pounded his fist on the table.
His son, Galvatron had sat by the window grinning at his father, a mech he obviously adored before their fleet took off and would never return while Soundwave was Governor-General.
Prime would disabuse Soundwave of his position.
Sitting in their barracks drinking beer and waiting with both dread and a sense of excitement, the commando team expected to be called up to go. When they weren't it was with no small relief that they began to plan their own escape. It might be interesting to go to this place, Earth and see who could make a mech like Megatron their prisoner all those years. It might be fun to take that world apart for two reasons.
First, they liked to break things. Secondly, if Megatron returned and regained power they could tell him that he was avenged.
For their calculations, it was win-win.
At the moment they were sitting on the flight deck of their ship in the middle of an almost impossibly big refugee migration after scrubbing the tells that would give them away as hardcore 'Cons. No tats, souvenirs that might give away crimes, data on the databases or contraband that would get them flagged were kept. They knew the drill. It would be interesting to see what the process here was and if they could get past it into what was an astonishing cityscape from the videos they watched.
They'd fused their guns into gun lockers. Their weapons were off line and they had gotten their story together, changing every possible data point among them including their names. Now they had to wait to see how it turned out. A pair of Autobot battle shuttles heavily armed and supported by about 25 Seekers were slowly approaching them with their guns pointed at their ship.
Soon it would be show time.
=0=Gee-Gee and Winnie
They'd come back to the prison to supervise a number of idiots beyond the 67 that had rioted. Many were the 'Cons who were fighting the inevitable. Their code demanded it of them. It would surprise the 'Cons how much they had in common with high castes in that regard. At the moment there was an unholy noise coming from the holding pens that she wanted to gauge.
Inside them were a few mechs standing silently, not partaking in the avalanche of noise that the others were making. She was marking them on a data sheet of her own design that she carried inside. It would give a point system based on affect alone which would tell her if they needed removal from their fellows. If they were possible rehab victories, she would do so. If they were merely psychotic and taking in the lay of the land, she would know that as well.
"Nasty bunch, G," Winnie commented as they walked along the road that divided 'Cons from high castes.
The high castes were mostly silent, overhwelmed by the violence of the soldiers in the pens across from them. The tension here was extreme as Gee-Gee and Winnie walked past them to the mental detention area for those who were showing signs of extreme violence, clear mental deviation or psychosis. It was a very secured area where the hospital staff were evaluating them long distance. Pausing by the runabout that was their base for the operation, Gee-Gee glanced at a doctor. "What's the picture so far, Timmy?"
"Completely mental, all of them," the doctor replied. "All of them need to be separate from each other and from the general population. They'd kill just to have something to do."
"How many would benefit from longterm medical stasis while we evaluate how to help them?" Winnie asked as she read data pads with information on them. She was a fully certified general medicine doctor who had an almost supernatural insight into prison psychosis.
"All of them, actually," the doctor said. "This group actually scares me, Warden. I don't know what to think about this. We've had bad mechs and even one or two but this group? All of them have earned nearly perfect scores on the scales for psychosis."
"Alright. I'll call Ratchet and get a Primal decree for this. I'm going to the migration to get it. Keep them contained. We're going to do everyone a favor including them and have this done," Gee-Gee said. "Win, you take over with this group until I come back with the writs and Ratchet."
"Done deal, G," Winnie said as she studied the group raging behind the bars. The mechs didn't scare her. She'd seen it all. It was the three silent femmes staring at her that did.
=0=On Camber
"What have you brought to me, Gee-Gee? I feel lucky," Ratchet said as he sat down with Gee-Gee, the prison head pyschologist, Florine as well as Prime, Prowl, Hard Drive and Jazz who was hunting Decepticons with Mirage in the migration.
"I have some doozies for you today," Gee-Gee said with a smile.
=0=TBC 8-9-2022
HUGS TO ONE AND ALL FROM ME UP HERE ON THE TOP OF THE WORLD, MA! :D
affect: the way you act and appear to others. These mental cases have very bad affects or appearances that signal their psychosis and danger. To aliens that live and read energy as a matter of course, it would be hard to hide it away.
Psychotic people are clearly visible to most people and I find them interesting.
Two major mentally deviant categories, sociopathy and psychopathy are interesting. A sociopath can't hide their rage and behaviors. They find it nearly impossible to fit in. A psychopath will be able to blend in having a better grip on their emotions and desires. One of the tells (BUT NOT THE ONLY ONE) of someone like this, a sociopath, is the lack of blinking in their stare. They can talk to you FOREVER and not blink. :D:D:D I watched a sociopath who was being interviewed who said he had to train himself to blink. LOL! Oh, lordy. What a life that must be. All the pity for them who struggle with this slag.
Just so you know, to be one you have to have most of about six to ten different characteristics and be evaluated by a pro before you can tell for sure but its an interesting tidbit. Also, someone who is trending that way MAY NOT yawn when everyone else does. (Caveat: some won't yawn when others do if they don't know them. For some, having ties to others is a help.) Given the number of nutters that are in this story, I like to hunt out the data on this sort of behavior.
Even if they are aliens.
And are probably totally different.
Maybe.
Interesting tidbits from Doctor Quack aka Arctapus :)
