Chapter 56
Rodimus stood.
"No point pissing about".
He said to himself, a rather happy tone passing his lip components, despite it being a forced happy tone.
The Autobot leader decided on heading left, it seemed the best course of action and he'd just have to hope it came up under where he was meant to be heading.
There was no light now, with that happy little man gone there were no giggles, he attempted to smash the sides of the gorge's walls but that proved useless, all he felt was his fists sink into the possible muddy terrain formation.
He stopped.
"Wait a fraggin' minute…."
Rodimus turned and reached out for the wall.
"I expected it to be dirt because it was the ground that opened up and I expected it to be soft when I struck it because it was dirt, and I expected it not to give because it was well… a lot of dirt".
Rodimus struck the wall. It was harder. There was a spark of light.
"None of this is real".
A whisper.
He began smashing his fists into the now no longer dirt wall and soon little specs of light were flickering around him, floating into the foreboding environment, giving him at least a moment of vision. Then the all too familiar, but very much welcome, sound of shattering. The walls that had entrapped him fell about him and he found himself standing somewhere. Somewhere else.
"So you figured it all out, did you? You must be so proud".
The Autobot leader turned to face the owner of the voice. A different voice then the one that had previously tortured him.
"I have to give you credit, Autobot, I truly believed you would succumb to my helper here".
The thing from the sky appeared.
The chamber was large, it was regale, but not in a way that earned respect or awe. It would illicit fear, loathing and a feeling that told you that you were worthless.
A large Decepticon insignia hung behind a large throne which was where the "boss" was sitting. The material was faded, frayed and a little disjointed. There was a long path up to the throne which Rodimus was rather dismayed to see was crafted with the sheet metal from the faces of Autobots, energon flowed down the walls, but it was dark, cold, rotten, it was the energon of the dead. The room had a darkness to it, while Rodimus could see every detail, it was still so bleak.
"Take a good look, Autobot, it's the last thing you will see, but you will always be a part of. There's no escape from here".
"From the Decepticon Matrix, you mean?"
"Why… yes. Impressive that you figured it out. So many Autobots are so ignorant of the truth. Of my truth. Of the truth of this form. Of the Decepticon Matrix. Of the…"
"Shut up".
"Why you impertinent little whelp".
"Let's just fight and get this over with so I can go home".
"Oh, no no no, Rodimus Prime, I went to a lot of trouble to get you in here, you're not going anywhere".
"Who are you?"
"Oh, that doesn't matter. What matters is that I'm here to destroy you. TO claim your spark for our own purposes".
"So you're what, a mismatch of parts, a bunch of Deception leader's souls mushed into one great big Decepti-mesh?"
"You are only making it worse for yourself".
"You never existed, did you; you ARE just a merge of others".
"BE SILENT IN MY PRESENCE FOOL!"
Rodimus felt himself being flung across the room, he slammed into a pillar that had the forms of metallic snakes engraved into its steel.
The creature came rushing at him, a blur of black and red optics and stinking of death. Rodimus braced for its impact and took it easily before flinging it around and into the pillar, the creature phase shifted through the structure and came to stand behind the Autobot leader.
"Silly Autobot, I created this place, you can't destroy me within my own existence".
Rodimus swung a punch, he missed, or rather, the creature moved too swiftly for him to strike. He swung again, the same result. The creature continued to laugh as Rodimus unleashed every move he'd ever been taught, until exhausted, he fell to his knees at the other's feet.
"You may address me as Master. I think I will let you live a little longer, if only to prolong the suffering of your friends as they look down upon your sparkless corpse".
It laughed. Rodimus was less then impressed, he found strength, pulled on it, and upper cutted the Master while it was distracted by its own maniacal fantasies.
"You don't exist. You can't do slag!"
Rodimus lunged up and landed violently on its chest. It pushed Rodimus off with no effort exerted and watched as the Autobot leader skidded to a halt against that pillar. The thing reached out his hand and the snakes came alive behind him, slithering off their position and wrapping their long metallic forms around the Autobot. They started to pass through his body, unimpeded by any law of science or physics. One found its exit through his mouth, he screamed in unbridled fear as the realisation dawned on him that he truly was in hell. They started to pull him backwards, and the snakes passed through the floor and his own body without hindrance, it then passed through his CPU that he was being slowly pulled into the floor.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
He screamed.
"NO! NOOOO! NOOOOO! THIS ISN'T REAL! THIS ISN'T REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAL!!"
"Ahhh, the disbelief of youth. Welcome to reality. Welcome to your reality, Rodimus Prime".
Who ever he was, he stood over Rodimus, enjoying watching the suffering Autobot.
"Don't get too happy".
Rodimus flicked himself up, and punched the creature in the chest.
"How did you…?"
The being asked as it laid splayed on the floor.
"What, you think I can't fight off snakes? Seesh, you don't' give Autobots a lot of credit".
"So you can defeat snakes, you can't defeat me".
He waved his hand dismissively.
"Well, why don't you fight me like an honest mech instead of hiding behind those zombie powers of yours?"
"Why should I have to fight you when your friends can do it for me?"
He motioned with a finger and Rodimus turned to see Ironhide, Prowl, Ratchet, Wheeljack and Brawn approaching.
"What the pit is wrong with you?"
"Well, you did say zombie powers".
Ratchet lunged first, his body coated in dried energon, a gapping hole in his chest, optics shattered and smoke stains tainted his face. He held out his fractured fingers with their peeling metal sheeting.
Rodimus easily slugged the once surly medic and he fell back into the path of Ironhide. Prowl came straight up from behind and tripped over the medic and the weapon's specialist. Brawn made it to connect with the new leader and began clawing at his face, though his left arm useless, the massive black hole in his shoulder proof as to why.
"Brawn! Its me!"
Rodimus cried as he pushed the once staunch mech from his body. Brawn fell backwards and struggled to regain his balance. Wheeljack came at Rodimus next but slipped on a puddle of rancid lubricant and fell backwards.
"Okay, even I think that's pathetic of you".
The Autobot leader chuckled in regards to the creature. Yet, he had realised that those Autobots didn't exist, they didn't exist.
"They're not real".
He whispered.
He turned and faced the being.
"They're not fraggin' real! You just made them look like those Autobots, but they're not those Autobots, they're in the Autobot Matrix, not stuck in here, stuck in hell, you can't…"
Rodimus took a step back and realised something. It dawned on him. Something he had never contemplated before. The creature was realising that perhaps the Autobot was coming up with an idea that could destroy his realm.
"KILL HIM! EVERYONE KILL HIM!"
The being screamed as it raised its hands up. Various forms rose from the floor, the zombie Autobots stood, but their bodies now black and dark and without identification, they were just empty shells now walking towards their destruction.
"You can't get any darker then this".
Rodimus popped his chest plates and tugged at the Matrix.
"NOOO!!"
The being ran towards Rodimus, pushing his mindless minions out of the way.
"I WILL STOP YOU!"
It screamed, the voices of thousands, perhaps millions speaking through him, as every Decepticon spark, every tiny fragment of data rose up in revolt to stop the Autobot performing an act that could destroy them all.
Rodimus raised the Matrix above his head and it started to open, the powerful glow destroying any of the evil that got in its way. The creature tackled, knocking the Matrix from his hands, it bounced a few metres and came to a rest against a wall, the casing slowly closing back over its precious contents.
"I will destroy you!"
The creature then pushed its hands through Rodimus' head and into his CPU.
The femme was on the table. She was begging for mercy. An Autobot insignia on her chest. Energon oozing from where her optics had once been. A Deception leader stood over her. He spoke words that were not meant to soothe, rather to torment. You should be honoured. You are the first. And you will destroy your kin. Then she was gone, forced into a stasis where she was aware she was being polluted with evil and could do nothing about it.
Then he saw Decepticon leader after Decepticon leader dying, and with their final cycle they gave a piece of themselves, a piece of their spark, to that poor femme on the table. Occasionally the femme would change, a different form, soon it stopped being Autobots. He saw Deception femmes offering their bodies for the "honour".
These visions came with no time span and he was unable to give any thought or connection to chronological order.
Then there was the last femme. An Autobot. Not just any Autobot. It was the bond mate of Alpha Trion. An ancient femme with wisdom and understanding of things that to the most had passed. Her capture was a blow to the Autobot cause and a blow to Alpha Trion who essentially retreated into his own world, fighting the Decepticons from below the surface of the planet, giving his knowledge to Autobot leaders but only ever being seen by them and no other. It was how the Autobots came to know of the Decepticon Matrix. This femme was now its host and through her link with Alpha Trion she sent to him the information he would need to counter it. But sadly, she was then pulled into the deep evil that had polluted her predecessors.
Somehow, somewhere, within that place of darkness, she found the sparks of the Autobot femmes and she united with them and caused the Decepticon's ultimate weapon against their enemy, their source of knowledge and morale to go insane. It rebelled and it destroyed and Rodimus found himself standing in an ancient Decepticon base watching this femme destroy any who passed her way. She possessed a power that was both unnatural and blasphemous.
She stood over the Deception leader of that time and destroyed him, not engulfing his spark but destroying it outright. His death gave Megatron the excuse he needed to take complete control. Rodimus witnessed a conversation between Megatron and several high ranked Decepticon generals. He had never believed in it, thought it was a waste of time and resources and too dangerous. Let it loose on the Autobots if you truly want to utilise it as a weapon, he'd argued. Now a smirk spread across his face plates, he was the best to lead, his own section of the Decepticon army was more successful and more disciplined and those Generals died at the end of his fusion cannon when they refused him.
But Megatron was no fool, he had the Decepticon generals give the orders for her capture and detainment – if he had, and many had died in this mission he might be hated. And he was correct. Many did die. And he was not to blame. But he took those loyal to the Generals, their officers and commanded them to take the Decepticon Matrix out in a shuttle and fly it into the Sun of another system. At first they refused the order. Telling him to give it to another group of Deceptions, sub-ordinates, or neutrals', or slaves, or drones. Oh, but Megatron was so persuasive, all he did was hold the bond mates and sparklings of those Decepticons over a smelter and he had their complete obedience.
On the day Soundwave announced that they had lost contact with the shuttle, it was assumed by all that the mission was complete. Megatron took those bond mates and sparklings and in front of all those loyal to those fallen Generals, and the former Decepticon leader, he had them dropped into a smelter that was at a lower heat then normal. It took at least three planetary cycles for the femmes to die, about one for the youngest sparklings.
That was how Megatron earned his loyalty. Through fear.
Whether Megatron knew that the mine a base he sat upon contained the weapon he inwardly feared, Rodimus did not see.
Rodimus found strength to push the monstrosity away.
What he then saw was the bond mate of Alpha Trion standing behind the creature who was clambering for the Autobot Matrix with intention to destroy it.
"Open the Matrix. Destroy him".
The Autobot leader turned, standing firmly, with a confidence he had never felt, even as the "indestructible" Hot Rod. He marched towards the being and picked him up, glared at him staunchly, used a few words that won't be repeated and then flung him across the chamber. He grasped the Matrix.
He walked back to the being who now looked rather sheepish.
"Not such a tough guy without a physical body to posses, huh?"
Rodimus pushed the Matrix into his face, the casing providing only a slight barrier between the being and the thing that would destroy him.
"That was you, wasn't it, you reached out of your little hovel here and caused all those unruly shenanigans".
The thing started to laugh; the walls began to ooze with stinking energon and coagulated oils.
"You will never get rid of me. I will always exist in some essence".
"Yeah, well, good luck with that".
Rodimus knelt on the being's chest and opened the Matrix, the beams of light reached out and erased everything it touched, including the being he knelt on.
Soon, all there was, was Rodimus. Standing. The background white.
"Thank you Rodimus Prime".
The bondmate of Alpha Trion stood before him.
"No problem".
--
Rodimus woke.