If all the world looks away,

It is time to blaze a path into history that can never be forgotten!

The two mechs stood outside one of Chopper's energon vaults, a sturdy-looking fortified cylinder built into one wall of the warehouse.

"How do we get in?" The red mech inquired, looking around for some kind of latch or access panel.

"We need the remote first. Chopper's storehouses are nearly indestructible."

"You only tell me about the remote now?!" The red mech glared.

"I said so before! Weren't you listening?"

"...Not really. I wanted a servo."

"Hmph. At least now we know the guards won't be bothering us." The green medic cast a glance back to the entrance, where an unfamiliar mech was offering cubes of cloudy energon to the apparently under-fueled guards. "Yes, we should definitely be safe for a while."

"Hey, I recognize that mech." The red mech faintly remembered a similar encounter with the dealer. "Er, anyway... there's no such thing as 'safe'. Not here, not anywhere. How else can we get in?"

"We could try to cut through the walls, I suppose, but I doubt we'd get much progress. My torch's power cells are empty, and this alloy looks laser-proof."

"What about my new servo? You did say it's a prototype, so what extra features does it have?"

"How should I know? Just because I can read doesn't mean I know everything, does it?" The medic crossed his arms. "You were a medic, weren't you? Scan it or something!"

"Fine. Make sure nobody notices me."

Scanning right servo.

"Anything useful?"

"Hang on, it's not done yet."

Completing in 3… 2… 1…

Complete.

"It's more energon efficient than my old one. And… oh, what's this? A built-in sonic knife!" The dark red mech gave a rare grin, taking his old sonic knife out of an arm compartment. He then transformed his servo into its knife configuration, happily noting its longer blade and almost inaudibly high-pitched hum of activation.

"Wow. Must be for major surgery—but is there anything useful? We can't cut through the wall with a sonic knife!"

The mech paid him no heed, too busy comparing the knife with his servo's sonic blade. "I guess I won't be needing this much longer. Power's almost dead anyway."

The sonic knife activated with a soft hum as he tossed it backwards.

The medic screeched, jumping out of the way. "Watch where you throw things! That almost hit me!"

"Someone say sumthin'?" One guard staggered in, red optics overbright. The sonic blade was lodged in his thick helm armor, but he appeared oblivious.

Both mechs froze, exchanging a glance.

The guard promptly fell flat upon his faceplates.

The two mechs remained silent, utterly stunned.

The sonic blade in the guard's helm ran out of power and dropped to the floor, creating a small clatter as it hit the hard ground.

"Uhm." The dark red mech was the first to break the silence. "I think he had that cloudy energon..."

"Huh." After another, shorter pause, the green medic turned back toward the energon vault. "There must be some way in, some weakness… I just need to find it."

"We've been here for over half an orn," the mech grumbled. "The more time we waste, the more fuel we burn. Are you even getting any progress?"

"Of course I am," the medic insisted, scanning the same patch of wall for the tenth time. "It's just a matter of finding a weakness in the lock."

"I'm sure." The mech sounded utterly disbelieving.

The medic turned around and grumbled, "it would be most helpful if you just stopped bothering me..."

"Yes, yes." The mech walked over to the prone guard. As he inspected the frame, a brilliant idea struck him. "My fuel levels are getting low. I wonder if he's already burned through all the cloudy… energon… in his system."

He transformed his servo into the new sonic blade, preparing to cut into the guard's fuel lines.

"NO!" The green medic ran over and shoved the mech's servo away from the guard's neck. "That is unsafe at best and could get you offlined at worst! I don't know what's in that… that stuff, and don't even think about drinking pre-processed, cloudy energon!"

The dark red mech frowned. "It was an idea."

"A dangerous one! Whatever made you want to try that?"

"The guard is just laying there. Even if the dealer's cloudy energon is toxic, my internal filters will probably handle it. I've survived worse before, and we need fuel."

"Just go recharge or something! I'm trying to get us clean energon, remember?"

"Clean, pre-processed, what does it matter? Energon is energon. You're not Chopper's apprentice anymore. We can't afford to be picky about what we get."

"You have medical knowledge, don't you? Pre-processed energon could make you go into stasis, and you don't know what else has been added to make it cloudy."

"If you don't get through the vault soon, we'll be lucky if we get any fuel. I've survived for vorns on pre-processed energon." Granted, the mech had spent a large part of those vorns curled up in agony, waiting for barely functional self-repair to clear his energon filters, but he had survived. That was more than other mechs could say for themselves. "Believe me, it's not so bad once you get used to it."

"No! Absolutely not!" The medic looked back at the wall and gave a resigned sigh. "You're right—we do need energon soon, and I'm not getting any progress here. We need to get the remote."

Anyone who did not know Chopper's terrifying reputation would not have glanced twice at the entrance to his office. The small, nondescript door in the side of a rusty, scraplet-chewed wall was nearly invisible to the amateur optic. However, the mech and the medic—both having served Chopper for megavorns—were anything but inexperienced.

When the two mechs peered around the corner, they found the usual guard staring suspiciously at a faintly greenish cube of energon. The same dealer who had offered Chopper's other guards cloudy energon was futilely attempting to assure him of its potency, but the guard remained unconvinced. As the mechs watched, the guard smashed the cube upon the ground and made a threatening shooing motion towards the dealer.

"Ready?" The dark red mech crouched behind the medic, prepared to run if his plan went wrong.

"Er, ready for what?" The medic sounded understandably confused. "I thought we were just watching and—"

"Go!" The mech shoved his companion into the open. The guard predictably cried out with alarm, but was quickly silenced by a laser blast from the dark red mech.

"I knew him," the medic muttered softly, watching the guard collapse to the ground. "He wasn't a bad mech, not compared to some of the other guards."

"Yeah, yeah. Help me with his subspace, alright?" The red mech searched for the guard's manual subspace controls. His claws caught on a small latch. "Ah, here it is."

A pile of empty energon cubes tumbled across the ground. After digging for a short time, the red mech spotted the key-card. The two mechs quietly rolled the guard's frame into a nearby rubbish heap and entered the tunnel.

The office itself provided a sharp contrast to the dull, unassuming grey exterior. Sterile white walls almost glowed under powerful floodlights. Piles of gleaming scrap decorated the corners of the office, while polished rows of empty spark chambers were arranged in a geometric pattern over a shimmering crystal desk. It was a room designed to intimidate any customer with Chopper's wealth and power. Wanted ads offering huge prices for Chopper's helm were arrayed across the walls, but no underworld bounty hunter had ever bested Chopper. He knew this well, as each and every poster represented the successful elimination of each organization that had made the fatal mistake of threatening him.

The two mechs crept through the hall apprehensively. Though they could fight off the guards reasonably well, neither wanted to meet Chopper himself. However, the Boss was surprisingly absent when the mechs dared to venture into his office.

"We're lucky," the medic mused, digits hovering over a nearby datapad. "He must have just left. The screen is still warm."

"Where's the remote?"

The green medic pointed a digit toward the right corner of the desk. "He normally keeps it in the top drawer. I'm not sure when he'll be back, though. We should hurry."

Four guards huddled together in a dark alley, clustered desperately around an old datapad. After much staring at the datapad, the guard who had, by all outward appearances, barely staved off a near-fatal bout of cosmic rust in his youth, spoke up.

"We gotta get someone to read this for us. Sharpspike's tournament is only two orns away! Anyone here know a mech that can read?"

"Remember that medic, the nice one Chopper had for an apprentice? The one who always fixed us when we got hurt? I think he could read, ya know? Boss always gave him these things," the vaguely navy-blue one reasoned, poking the datapad.

"Well, what happened to him, then?"

"I heard Chopper tried to scrap him. Repaired too many mechs for free or somethin'," the rusted one said.

"Great. Now who are we supposed to ask?"

"I dunno, but we gotta find someone soon!"

After quickly discussing how they were going to find a mech that could read, they decided to just ask around. "No one could scratch us anyhow, right?"

"Right." The rust-colored guard nodded in agreement. "We just gotta stick together and find someone smart."

The four guards looked around, scanning the surroundings for an intelligent-looking mech.

"Look!" The scratched-up guard who had barely escaped with his spark from offline scraplets noticed a one-wheeler with faintly shiny black paint driving down the street. "Let's start with that mech. If he's shiny, he's gotta know how to read."

"I'll go ask. You three are as good at being nice as Chopper is at giving us fuel." The dark blue-ish guard rose to his pedes and approached the unicycle.

"Don't come any closer! I know how to use this energon knife!" The unicycle transformed into a small mech with a blade for a servo.

"Woah! Don't worry, we just want someone that can read! Won't hurt you!" Raising his servos, the blue-ish mech stepped backwards slightly.

"Eh, alright. But it'll cost you! One cube for the read, two for me tellin' you what it says."

"Wha—Why the first, why would ya want to read it and not tell us?"

"Extra energon. You bots better have the two cubes, or you're not getting that read!"

The dark blue mech frowned, but went back to his companions.

"The mech says he needs two cubes or he's not gonna read it for us. Any ideas?"

"We do… uh… have that cloudy greenish 'merch' that guy gave us, remember?" The fourth spoke up.

"Ey, I got one too!" The rust-covered mech pulled a cube out of subspace. "Wasn't desperate enough to drink it."

"You sure he'll accept them cubes? They don't look right to me..."

"Just gimme that and I'll ask." Snatching the datapad and the cloudy, greenish cubes, the blue mech stood and walked over to the black one.

"I saw you and your buddies had some energon, hmm?"

"Yeah, yeah. Just read this, alright?"

"Gimme that." The black mech took the datapad and the cubes of cloudy energon, read through the contents of the datapad a few times, and burst out laughing.

"What?"

"Hahaha… haha… I assume you just wasted most of your rations in getting me to read this, because I know most mechs of your frametype can't read. Seeing as I'm getting so much free energon out of this deal, and I'm such a generous citizen, I probably ought to let you know that the instructions are on the next page in pictures. Even a drone could understand. If you didn't know, the way to see the next page is the arrow on the bottom right corner." The black mech looked up. "Wow, you mechs are stupid. Thanks for the energon though, AHAHA!" He dropped the datapad and took off with his new cloudy greenish energon.

"Well, I can understand this fine! Why did we give away energon to figure it out?" The third guard muttered.

"I don't think the energon was safe. It wouldn't feel right, drinking any cube that's cloudy and green."

"Yea, yea… we better get ready to get out of here. No way is this plan gonna work!"

Some units:
orn - day
decaorn - 10 orns / 1 week
vorn - year
megavorn - 1,000,000 years

A quick word to everyone - VoidStarFire will be on vacation for the next few weeks. Updates during that time, if any, will be sporadic. We make no promises.
Thank you for reading our story this far.
~The Voids