Chapter 9
The year 2318, universe 0
The small group of Decepticons was still on board of the space station run by their Autobot allies. They were here as part of the temporally alliance between their two factions.
In this time the great war was long over.
Cybertron was in this age populated by their descendants, two races called Maximals and Predacons, while both Autobots and Decepticons had left into space a long time ago.
For over 300 years they lived in peace by now and the two Transformer races had for the most parts gone their separate ways.
But now the reappearance of two old enemies, The Fallen and the entity that was once known as Cabal, had brought them back together.
Because of this they were here on personal invitation from Optimus and Rodimus Prime.
This station was the base of a special team consisting of Autobots and humans who was overseeing the legal and illegal use of time travel and transwarp-technology and was scouting alternate universes.
Cyclonus and Scourge were sitting in one of the rooms and were waiting for their search units to bring in the necessary information.
Currently they were reading in the archives of the station about the past activities of this group.
At the one side they wanted to get an better idea how their new (and old) partners were working, on the other they just wanted a way to occupy themselves.
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The principles of Time travel and the crossing to alternate universes are closely related. Both can be realized with the use of transwarp-technology.
Another universe is in many cases only a different time-line whose history diverged from our at a certain point in the past, separated from us through the hyperspace and the dimension of time.
Some of this worlds split from ours billions of years ago and don´t longer have any similarity with ours anymore, others just now in our time and are different in only a few details.
Some of this worlds had been created naturally, other through the interference of a time traveler, some are stable others are unstable side time-lines and collapse as soon as the cause of their existence is negated.
Transwarp is based on the artificial creation of wormholes through particle-concentration. This made it possible to cause a rift in the time-space and to reach in theory every point in the multiverse.
xxx
Cyclonus had just red this interesting article from the Autobot scientist Brainstorm. It described very quickly and precise the idea of the transwarp-technology that they were all first introduced to by the mysterious pyramid in the Earth year 2011.
XXX
As he continued to look through the archives he also found another file that greatly interested him.
There were a number of alternate realities described, one where the great war never happened,
one where the Autobots and Decepticons inside the Ark reactivated centuries earlier as the humans were still primitives,
another where Ultra Magnus was send to a mind-prison at the beginning of the war and not recovered until millions of years later, when Optimus Prime was already in stasis on Earth.
There was also a world were Unicron had found Cybertron nearly 9.000.000 years earlier. While the Transformer of this universe managed to damage the physical body of the Chaos Bringer beyond repair, the greatest part of the population had been wiped out and their home-planet itself obliterated.
Ironically, this was probably a hidden blessing from Megatron´s failed attempt to turn Cybertron into a mobile fortress in their own reality or maybe as some thought it had been Primus plan all along.
XXX
But what he found of the greatest personal interest was a universe where a very special time-traveler appeared in the year 1987 on Earth.
This time-traveler was nobody else than a second version of Skywarp, of himself in a sense. He remembered how something very similar also happened in his own world, back then when the creature Cabal was manipulating the time-line.
A future version of himself came back to warn them. In this version of the story the second Skywarp survived his injuries and joined Megatron´s troops, however under a different name and with a altered body.
Thanks to him the Decepticons had access to limited knowledge about possible futures. But it turned out that the time-line was already too changed for this to be truly effective. But he had managed to give them a early warning about Unicron and 20 years to prepare.
What they didn´t count on was Starscream´s betrayal that played out pretty much the same way as in the world he knew.
Megatron was turned into Galvatron and his regular counterpart had taken his new identity as Cyclonus. In this reality however the Decepticon leader died in the battle against Unicron and his own other self had taken over in his place.
Instead of Galvatron it was Cyclonus who led the Decepticons against Rodimus Prime. The other Skywarp was still a member of his army and went from that point on once again under his real name.
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It was a bizarre story from his point of view. But who can say what if?
He had seen himself die on that day back then, after giving Megatron his warning.
They had also located the world where the other version of himself came from.
That time-line had collapsed after the destruction of the time-machine that had caused it´s creation in the first place. It´s consistence was from the beginning only build up on this.
After reading about this reality Cyclonus understood the need of his other self to warn Megatron about the time-travel device and urged him to destroy it.
Cybertron wiped out by Unicron, both Autobots and Decepticons practically brought to extinction.
By what he had red the Megatron of this world had been under the mental influence of Cabal for years and had slowly been losing himself more and more.
He or rather Skywarp remembered all too well how this creature could twist someone´s senses from the time they had found him on a dead world millions of years ago.
This entire reality had ultimately been nothing but a tool for Cabal to realize his own terrible aims.
In his opinion it was a good thing that this world didn´t exist anymore.
"Cyclonus." He heard a voice that he knew all too well. "We have found them", Rodimus told him.
As it looked their scouts had located their enemies, it was time to put an stop to them once again.
"Very good", he replied.
Side-note: This chapter is nearly identical to the epilogue of the story Time Circle that is describing the same situation. It is also referring heavily to what happened in that story.
