Duty and Deceit
Chapter 25
Pure Evil
Mechs and femmes of all size and colors swarmed the square, pushing and shoving their way through to wherever they were headed. She had forgotten that this was the busiest and worst time of orn to be in town.
Towards the front of the armor shop, after standing in line for nearly a joor, the femme was almost there. A big, tan mech with purple accents shoved his way out of the busy throng, stopping right next to her. Seeing as there were a whole lot of people right next to her, the little femme didn't notice.
Until she saw his face.
"Are you ze one reeshponseeble for touching my vings? Because-" The calm blue face with the red optic lens suddenly swiveled to reveal an angry red face with a hole between the top denta.
"-I vill crush your peshky leettle shervos unteel you-" At this point the red face swiveled to be replaced with a pitch black face whose scribbled features twitched spasmodically. He held his hands together, mockingly batting his optics, one leg lifted slightly off the ground.
"-r shtrangely flat, bleeue face eez shining vith ze utmosht glee-" His face switched back to the red one and he leveled his cannons back on her helm. "-and you are writhing in agony on ze floor!"
As the femme gazed on, she realized that the mech didn't have any face at all... that was how he could switch between them. His face was just an advanced holo-projection of some sort... somewhere between a hologram and a holo-form.
"Vell?" She looked back up to see the blue face staring down at her in calculating disdain. "Can you not shpeak?"
She inclined her helm, respectfully pointing out the absurdity of his query. "My apologies, I do not know if I touched your wings or not. We are standing in a bustling crowd."
The red face frowned, confused by her simple words. She hadn't seen it change. "Oh... Can I steell crush your leettle shervos?" He switched faces back to the blue one, who seemed the most sane. "Your shtatement eez logical. I vill not harm you, my lady."
He bowed and reached for her servo just as his face changed over to the psychotic one. He - rather vigorously - smashed her hand against his face where his lips ought to have been, confirming her earlier observation. He didn't have a solid face.
She cocked an optic ridge at the tan triple-changer, her processors still struggling to process the mech's strangeness. He laughed somewhat creepily, still wearing the crazy face and opening his arms wide. "Ze name eez Blitzving... and I like warm hugs!"
Chuckling nervously, the two-wheeler looked around for an escape. She had little doubts that the nut job would hug her if she stayed. The femme shuddered. Not the hugging type.
"Next!" The armor smith yelled over the noise of the people.
"Nice meeting you, Blitz! Bye!" As she ran into the shop, the spy muttered, "Hope I never see that creep again."
She'd never been so glad to see the measurements drone.
"-nd Pilar asked me why I thought the school bully could become a nice guy," Terabyte vaguely heard Raf tell her. She could hear him, but it was like he was really far away. "And I told her it was because I knew someone else that used to be a bully and now she's one of my best friends…"
Terabyte would have smiled if she were able to move her face. For that matter, simply being able to move would make her smile at this point.
You foolish boy! When will you be silent? Megatron roared in frustration. She could feel his disgust and desire to extinguish the boy. He was pretending that her frame was still in power down, waiting for the medic nearby to leave. I am Megatron! Conqueror of worlds! I do not care about your miserably trivial squishy existence!
I won't allow you to harm him. Terabyte informed her leader firmly.
"-w you." Raf was explaining to Ratchet, pausing to show the medic something. "This is my family."
"M-hmm. Yes. How nice." The medic muttered, not really paying much attention to the youngling.
Megatron tore her attention away from Raf again with his challenging enquiry. Oh really. And, since you have no control of your own frame, how do you propose you will enforce such a bold decision?
I won't allow you to harm him. She repeated, more firmly than before. This is still my body and I will defend the innocent.
Would you fight your own leader for a single organic? Megatron countered, knowing that she still hadn't chosen a side.
I would fight for the life of an innocent child; species is irrelevant.
"-bee and Terabyte always listen to me." Raf explained quietly. "Even when no one else thinks it's important."
Ratchet stood there silent for a while before returning to whatever he was working on. Raf continued talking to her while he did his homework on his laptop.
"Tera, you don't have to stay so reserved around us, you know." Raf told her gently.
Ratchet came over and interrupted to say, "Rafael, I'm going to the supply vault to see if I can find a replacement part for this broken holo-projector. You know what that means right?"
"Don't touch anything." Raf said drily, smiling up at the medic as he left. "Like I was telling Ratchet, you're family too. You don't have to hide so much from us…"
Terabyte felt her optics open, but they held a cold glare. Megatron lowered her mask and her lips were curled up in a confidently disdainful smirk. He wanted to simply step on the boy, but after several astroseconds of internal struggle, Terabyte pushed her pede out just past where Raf was seated on the floor.
The warlord wore her frame with the air of a large and powerful mech, rather than the small spy that her frame was designed to be.
Raf jumped up and smiled. "Tera, you're awake!" When she just kept walking towards the ground bridge terminal without so much as acknowledging the boy, his voice got a little worried. "Tera? Terabyte!"
Her servos flew over the keys as the warlord typed in the coordinates to… the bottom of the Grand Canyon? Where Cliffjumper had told her he'd made the zombie army the second day since her arrival at their base. She felt a grudgingly pleased wave from Megatron, who'd been impressed by her typing speed. Apparently she'd learned well under Soundwave after all.
"Terabyte, wait!" Raf called, tugging on her diamond shaped knee-plate insistently.
Again she felt her leader's urge to terminate the 'annoying grease stain', but she fought her way into temporary control, long enough to gently push the boy away from her and step towards the green portal.
"Raf, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…" She whispered quickly, feeling Megatron regaining control, making speech increasingly difficult. "You need to stay away from me. I-I can't be trusted r-"
Her vocalizer shut off with a hiss of static as Megatron shoved her aside and took control over her frame once again. He abruptly turned away from the boy and stalked through the portal, ignoring Raf's pleas to stay.
Appearing in a dark, desolate canyon, Megatron looked around impatiently. He was using her upgraded scanners to search for something… catching a brief image of an ominously pulsating violet shard from his thoughts, Terabyte realized the warlord was searching for Dark Energon.
"Where is it?" She heard her own voice snarl. It was her voice, and yet it wasn't. It sounded harsher, angrier… and cold. Deathly cold. "Where!?"
He stood atop the canyon ridge, looking down at Optimus and his medic. Behind him lightning cut across the cloudy night sky, making him laugh at how fitting it was for the occasion. It was indeed a dark and stormy night. For Optimus Prime anyway.
Raising his fist, which held the shard of Unicron's blood, Megatron threw the shard with all his might, plunging it into the earth. As soon as the shard touched the ground, it was absorbed into the earth, to erupt out again in a charred mound, sending a web of cracks across the canyon floor as it awakened the dead of Cybertron to do his bidding.
Ah, yes. Megatron spun around and strode straight over to where he now remembered the shard had landed. Bending over, Terabyte watched her servos wrap possessively around the purple shard. If she were able to shudder she would have been hard pressed not to. The glowing shard seemed to have a... presence. As if it were alive.
Hearing the distinctive whoosh of an activating ground bridge portal, Megatron turned around, cocking an optic ridge. Terabyte tried to hide her brief amusement as she felt a minor disgruntled thought flash through her mind as Megatron realized that her optic ridges were smaller and less intimidating than his own.
"How convenient." She heard herself say, regarding the bridge.
Terabyte, spectator only in her own body, walked through the portal, her servos still tightly gripping the Dark-En shard. Every moment the femme was painfully aware of her revealed faceplates.
"Terabyte." Ratchet greeted her with suspicion, optics narrowing as he noticed the absence of the mask she was so determined to keep raised. A smug, sarcastic grin twisted her lip-plates. "What have you been doing?" Megatron ignored him, approaching with a slow and confident swagger. The medic caught a glimpse of the shard in her hand. "Dark Energon?"
When she kept approaching, Ratchet grew more concerned. The warlord ignored him still, and he started tapping in new coordinates into the ground bridge.
"Terabyte, stop." Ratchet commanded, pulling her hands away from the console.
She felt her lips curl up in a menacing grin, feeling the warlord's anticipation. "Bad move, Medic."
Terabyte mentally cringed as the warlord quickly and painfully scanned her battle tactics database, absorbing everything she'd ever learned of the arts of war. Once he was satisfied, Megatron slid between the medic's pedes, rising behind him to deliver a hard kick to a particularly sensitive joint in his back. Ratchet collapsed to the floor with a grunt, momentarily unable to move as his nervous systems glitched.
She felt herself bend down and pick up Raf, her servos closing around him, ready to crush the life out of the youngling. With a mental growl, Terabyte threw a memory file of a human movie at Megatron's mind, distracting the warlord long enough for her to gain motor control.
"Terabyte? Tera? What are you doing?" Raf asked her, worry shaking his voice. She could feel his squishy human heart pounding against her armor as she held him gently.
Walking over to a vent in the wall, Terabyte carefully set him down on the outside ledge of the vent. She looked at him sadly, her expression pained as she fought to maintain control over herself. "Raf, you need to stay away from me. I can't be trusted un-"
Once again the warlord shut her vocalizer off before she could tell the boy what he needed to know. As Megatron turned around and finished putting in the coordinates of the Nemesis, Raf called after her.
"Terabyte! You've got to stop this, I know you're better than this! You're not a Decepticon any more, you don't have to do this!"
Megatron walked up to the swirling portal and looked back to sneer, her voice darkly amused. "You should be glad to be alive, Boy."
With that, the warlord walked through the portal, emerging in the mess hall of the Nemesis. She felt Megatron throw her icy golden gaze over the mechs in the room. They had hardly noticed her appearance.
She felt a wave of Megatron's annoyance as he climbed onto the nearest table to give him more height. Charging her cannon, he blasted the roof to get everyone's attention. Once everyone's optics were on her, Megatron spoke with all the volume and dignity of the Decepticon leader... in her voice.
"Loyal troops! I, Megatron, give you one warning. Leave now, if you value your sparks!"
The Vehicons shared meaningful glances all around the room before they all roared with laughter.
"Awww... The pretty little femme can't hold her high grade." One mech crooned condescendingly.
"Hey! Isn't that the traitor?" Another mech asked.
Megatron and Terabyte both growled, she hadn't ever touched high-grade and never would. The warlord was infuriated by the lack of respect from his troops, though she wasn't sure how he had expected them to recognize him in her frame. Murderous rage flooded her processor from Megatron, and in that one moment, Terabyte knew, with greater horror than she'd felt since Protihex, just exactly what the warlord was going to do.
Everyone in this room was going to die.
Terabyte felt her body flying from one Vehicon to the next, using all of the skills she knew. She had only ever used those skills - to the extent that Megatron was now using them - twice in her life outside of simulations: when she killed Pyro and when she tried to kill Seaspray.
She watched and felt in horror as her dagger was plunged into the spark of a Vehicon named Iceclaw. She cringed mentally as her cannon blasted the helm of Handles right off his body. In her mind, Terabyte curled herself up into a ball as she was forced to witness such pointless slaughter at her own hands.
Her photographic memory provided her with each mech's name and job as Megatron killed them.
Screwdriver from engineering...
Lasercore from statistical tactics...
Solaris from communications and intel...
Upload and Download from medical...
The lists rolled on until finally the room was silent. All around her lay gray frames. A few wires gave out residual sparks and fizzles. Not a single mech had survived Megatron's fury.
With a morbid pleasure, the warlord continued on his way, not a passing thought regarding the slain touched his sick mind. No, Terabyte corrected herself, his mind wasn't just sick... It was evil.
Pure evil.
As he continued towards the lab where his frame was held, Megatron simply offlined any mechs he saw, before they could sound the alarms. She sensed with every termination that the warlord was not simply offing them; he was playing with her skill set as he off-lined them. That was what horrified her the most: he was killing his own loyal soldiers out of mere curiosity.
Looking down at his own lifeless frame, Megatron laughed. Oh, but you see... Your hands wear their life-En and your skills brought them death. So who is really responsible for their deaths: me? Or you?
His accusation struck her so hard that she regained control of her own frame again... Just long enough for her to purge her tanks all over Megatron's pedes.
The warlord, back in control, groaned and made a disgusted face. I ought to terminate you for that.
Ought to? She asked miserably.
With such skills however... you may yet serve me. Willingly or not.
How could he force her to serve him? Through threats? Torture? Terabyte didn't have time to formulate a reply, her train of thought interrupted by Raf's voice crying, "Ratchet! Don't hurt Terabyte!"
Hearing the warning, Megatron spun around just in time to brace himself as the medic charged yelling, "That's not Terabyte!"
She winced internally as his fist collided with her abdomen, still feeling the pain just as strongly in spite of not being in bodily control. In the surprise, Megatron had forgotten her size and was fighting back with brute force, which in her case was just barely enough to fend off the medic's attacks. Taking several more hard blows, the warlord finally grunted and blasted the medic out the door into the hallway, melting the locking mechanism into slag with a second shot to keep him out.
Terabyte's fist rose in the air, prepared to plunge the Dark Energon shard into Megatron's shiny silver chassis.
"Terabyte, don't!" Raf shouted desperately. "You don't want to do this! You aren't one of them anymore, you've got to fight him! Remember who you are! Don't let him use you, Terabyte. You've got to choose for yourself."
She lowered her hand - of her own will - and looked at him, her gaze and expression instantly twisting to show the pained horror she still felt. "Raf?"
"That's right! It's me. I'm right here." He sighed with relief, flashing her a weak smile. "I knew you always listened."
No! I am too close to be thwarted by a sparkling. Megatron roared, attacking her mind. She panicked as he threw up barriers and firewalls around her mind, building them faster than she could hack them.
She screamed, clutching her helm as burning fire seared through it in his anger. Falling with a crash to her knee-plates, Terabyte pressed her helm into the cold metal floor, trying to ignore the searing agony as she vainly fought the mental blockade.
"Raf... run!"
Letting out one final howl, Terabyte lost all awareness of the outer world. She couldn't see, hear, or feel anything. Not even her own frame. Only darkness. Vast, unending void.
Coolant rolled down her mental face-plates and she hugged her mental knee-plates, shaking back and forth, keening loudly. She wasn't sure exactly what she was crying for. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.
Everything seemed more fitting. She mourned the sparks Megatron just sent to the Allspark that rotation. She mourned Raf and what would no doubt be his fate at the evil warlord's hands. She mourned her indecision and her predicament. And she mourned that she hadn't seen how wrong the Decepticons were until now.
She still couldn't say for certain that the Autobots were right. She still could never forgive them for what they'd done to her family and her home. But surely, anything was better than what she'd just witnessed to be the new spark of the Decepticon cause. They had lost sight of the things they had once fought for: Cybertron, peace, justice... Now they had become corrupt, seeking only power.
A small hand landed on her shoulder gently, making her jump. Opening her optics, Terabyte looked down to find Raf standing next to her looking worried.
"Terabyte?" He asked tentatively, "A-are you going to be okay?"
Ratchet huffed, his voice failing to completely hide his own worry. Apparently he'd managed to get back in. "Physical damage is negligible, she may experience significant bruising, but she's perfectly fine."
"M-Megatron?" She croaked, her vocalizer hitching.
Raf averted his gaze. "I tried to stop y-him."
"What-" Her optics narrowed as she saw the beginnings of a nasty, purple discoloration that appeared to cover his whole right side... As though he'd been slapped with a Cybertronian-sized hand. Her voice filled with hate and loathing towards herself. "What. Did. I. Do?"
The boy looked away. "It's nothing, really... and you didn't do it, not really... Megatron did it, just with your hand..."
Terabyte ran a regenerative scan over Raf several times until she was positive that all the soft skin tissue was healed completely. She gently prodded the area that had been bruised.
"Better?" She asked him hopefully.
He looked at her then at his skin then back at her, his eyes wide, a small grin tugging at his lips. "Whoa... some sort of dermal regeneration ray?"
The Prussian blue spy nodded, smiling at the youngling, knowing from her excursions in human television just what the boy was thinking.
"Cool! It's like... Star Trek!" Raf exclaimed happily.
"Where did you get that?" Ratchet asked suspiciously, knowing that that particular scanning frequency required a special medic-grade optical implant.
"I had Knockout install it before we left Cybertron..." Terabyte smirked as she remembered the red mech's perfect compliance. He'd never questioned her too much after that incident with her cannon...
"Why?"
The femme wasn't quite sure why it mattered so much, but she answered anyway. "Um, I knew we'd be stopping at organic worlds for trade and restock. I thought it might come in handy."
Ratchet scowled. "You had an incredibly painful and expensive implant that is only used for restricted personnel... because you thought it might come in handy."
She could tell he didn't believe her. "Is it so wrong that I wanted to save and protect the innocents of the worlds we looted? The phase-sixers are not gentle."
Raf looked up at her curiously. "Megatron approved?"
"He didn't know. KO and I had a certain... understanding." She muttered, remembering that her mask was still down. Snapping it up moodily, Terabyte checked her proximity sensors, "We've got 'Cons coming. You can judge my having a spark back at base."
She held out her hand for Raf to step up and she stood, carefully holding the boy in the palm of her hand. Setting the human on her shoulder she waited for him to get safely positioned and grab hold of her shoulder plate before turning to the medic. For the time being, she couldn't afford to think about what had happened. Right now they needed to leave.
"Let's go... I want to get out of this place."
"Agreed."
As they proceeded, they turned a corner and ran straight into a squad of Vehicon troopers. Ratchet pulled out his blasters and shifted into a fighting stance, the Vehicon squad mirroring him.
Terabyte thought about the mess hall full of dead and pushed the medic's weapons aside. She growled at the Vehicons, "Put your guns down, walk away, and forget you saw us."
"Or what, Tiny?" The leader, a mech named Dullnut, sneered.
Her optics hardened as she tried to stop the flow of gray, dead faces in her mind. "You been to the mess hall recently? Maybe Corridor 118?"
She watched as simultaneously every mech's faceplates fell slack. There was a sound of rustling metal as armor shrank to their frames. Instantly, Dullnut moved his weapons to a casual position. Clearing his vocalizer, he said to his squad, "C'mon, mechs! Nothing to see here."
The rest of their way out was oddly clear, not a trooper in sight. Once they were clear of the Nemesis and she'd set Raf down, Ratchet suddenly turned on her, turquoise optics blazing.
He grabbed her by her neck and lifted her off the ground so she was at optic level, shaking her roughly. "What the pit was that? We do not use scare tactics! How do you expect anyone to join our cause if you make them think we're just as bad as the next 'Con?!"
Not regretting her actions for a moment, Terabyte hung in his grasp and calmly countered, "And what were you going to do? Terminate them all? How is that better? I let them go."
"I- Bu- That's-" Ratchet spluttered angrily before setting her down awkwardly. "I suppose you do have a valid point. You're the the last person I'd expect to care though."
She looked away. "Thanks to Megatron, I've killed enough today, don't you think?"
Raf put a comforting hand on her pede and smiled up at her sympathetically. "It wasn't your fault, Tera. C'mon, let's go home."
Right as he said that, a team comm-line opened. Prime sent a weary, /Ratchet, we need a bridge./
They walked up to the top of a small snow hill and looked down at where just a little further off, the Autobots were gathered. Raf waved at Bumblebee happily.
/You're not the only ones./
In the end, Jack and Miko had got a bridge for everyone when they got back to base after school. Now, a groon later, life at base had returned to normal for all but Terabyte.
She sat unmoving on the stair case, laying against the wall and staring blankly at the room in front of her. She couldn't stop thinking about all the mechs she'd killed under Megatron's control, and how badly she'd hurt Raf. She almost killed him!
Out of habit, Terabyte started writing her report, putting down the names of every single off-lined Vehicon. The casualty list was so long, making the quartex report twice the length of her usual, and she still had almost three whole orns left in the quartex.
As she thought about it, Terabyte couldn't help but make the observation: killing was so much easier when one was firing at a distance, when one didn't know the victims by name, when there was a cause by which to justify it. Reading a casualty report wasn't so personal.
She wouldn't have felt so bad if Megatron had had a reason for killing them. But he hadn't. They were simply in his way. He was in a bad mood and a different frame with a new skill set to experiment with.
Several breems later, the physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted femme relaxed against the wall, though her armor remained defensively flared. Across the room, Cliffjumper smiled fondly at the little recharging femme that he'd begun to see as the little sister he'd never had. With Megatron in her mind for over an orn... It would take time for her to heal.
Afternoon, two days later.
Skyquake stared up at the steel roof of the brig, weighing his options. It probably wouldn't be too difficult to break out and escape, but he wasn't sure where he'd go. Terabyte was here with the Autobots, and now that he had most of his memories back, the more he thought about it, the less the Decepticons had to offer him.
He needed to fight to perform his duty to Cybertron, but the Decepticons weren't doing anything for their homeworld. They hadn't really even made an effort to end the war either. More important even than that though, it was his duty to Terabyte as the only friend he had left in this war. He couldn't very well protect her if he was caught on the other side of the battlefield.
It'd been more than an orn since Terabyte had visited and he'd thought long and hard on the matter since then. Today, Skyquake had made up his mind. He was going to join the Autobots. For Terabyte.
Optimus Prime walked in and turned off the force field. Nodding slightly, he greeted the jet, "Skyquake."
"Prime."
Now that the formal greetings had been made, both mechs started talking at the same time.
"I want to join the Autobots." Skyquake said quickly, at the same time as Prime said, "I wish to offer you the chance to leave your Decepticon past behind and-"
The Autobot trailed off and the Prime's cobalt optics lit up as he realized what the fighter jet had just said. "You understand that this will not be easy?"
Skyquake nodded firmly, his mind made up. "I understand and accept whatever conditions you may have. I am serious in this, I wish to join the faction that has become home and family to Terabyte." He pulled out all of his weapons from subspace, completely disarming himself; and making a rather impressive pile of weapons on the table. "As a show of good faith: this my full armament, for you to do with as you please."
The scarlet and blue mech's optics shuttered for a moment as he processed Skyquake's action and demeanor before he smiled warmly. "It will be an honor to accept you into our family, Skyquake."
Skyquake saw the all too familiar mist of sorrow cross the Prime's optics. He'd seen that look in Terabyte's optics whenever she thought of her family and destroyed home. He'd felt it himself too often to count. It was the look of remembrance of a loved one or close friend lost.
The jet knew the comrade Prime was thinking about. He remembered killing the tactician and second in command of the Autobots. Skyquake didn't regret offlining Prowl. He hadn't done it for the promotion he got, or the glory, and definitely not pleasure. He never enjoyed the termination of the enemy. It was his duty, but that didn't mean he had to like it.
No, he'd killed Prowl because the Enforcer had tried to kill Terabyte.
He'd been so scared that rotation. When he'd seen her take that hit, heard her scream as she hit the ground... The jet had been terrified that she was offlined. If she had been dead...
Shuddering convulsively, the mech stood stiffly to attention. "Sir! Requesting an Autobot regulations and conduct manual, and conditions of defection, sir."
The Prime nodded. "I will have a datapad prepared and living arrangements made by morning. Until then, good cycle, Skyquake."
"Good cycle... Optimus Prime."