The constellations overhead moved with the slowness of forever, so even the all-patient no longer watched the heavens. But Illusionna had not been online all that long, and so she'd not yet gotten used to the constellations that changed always as Cybertron wandered around, aimlessly, through the ether. She had the entire sky mapped out in her memory circuits, but she was still too new to notice much of a shift in the stars.
A patterned 'clank-clank, clank-clank' brought her attention from the stars to the street. Through the broken down, barely above ground buildings she could see a long line of Transformers marching toward her. They marched like a collective, as if they all shared the same mind and it told them when to move their feet and their arms in their march. Their clanking echoed off of the empty rubble. As the Transformers, two by two, passed her, she noticed they all wore Decepticon symbols and had similar colored armor. "Foot soldiers," she said out loud. None of them turned to look at her.
She heard a roar above her, and turned her head up to look. A formation of jets flew passed, the largest she had ever seen. Like the foot soldiers, it seemed they all acted in the same way, their triple spikes connecting them in some way so they moved across the dark sky as one being, blocking out the stars.
She looked back to the line of marchers and noticed one Transformer who wasn't in line. She recognized him instantly. He glanced at her and they locked optics, her fuel pump felt as if it jumped in her chest cavity. His red optics glared for a moment, before he turned back to face forward. His large silver frame stood rigid as he marched, the cannon attached to his arm making him look all the more formidable. The way he shined reminded Illusionna of Spanner, one golden, the other a molten silver. Only his shine seemed cleaner, not a shine of oiled salve used with a cloth, but a sheen, as if it was a part of his paint, a solid sheet of mercury in the shape of a Transformer. He was the Decepticon she had seen in the gladiator auditorium at Polyhex, speaking against Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots. She jumped down from the empty barrel she was sitting on. A gang is going to jump him being out of the line like that, she thought. No, her own voice in her head shot back, no one would jump that mech. He was...her CPU could not come up with a word to describe him.
She watched the soldiers' backs as they marched, like mindless mechanoids, until they were out of sight. She could still hear them marching, though the roar of the jets was now out of her audio range. I wonder where they're going, she cocked her head to the side, Polyhex is the other direction. She shrugged and turned to go home.
Wind Rider was in the receiving room when she got there. Her voice was a soft hum, "I'm surprised we even have what we still do," Wind Rider said, "he's going to drive us all into ruin." She paused, and shook her head, "No," she corrected herself, "we are already in ruin."
"What do you mean?" Illusionna asked, leaning forward toward her.
"We're going to have to do something about it, and soon," Wind Rider went on, "or we're not going to have anything. Period."
"Why aren't we going to have anything?" Illusionna asked.
"Because he keeps using it all up," Wind Rider's voice dripped with venom, and she finally looked up at her sister. "The Decepticons have attacked Iacon."
Illusionna wasn't sure her audio receptors were working correctly. "What?!"
"The Decepticons attacked Iacon," Wind Rider repeated. "Today, with soldiers and firearms."
"How do you know?"
Wind Rider said nothing, but rather turned on the vid-com to the general Iacon station. It cracked a bit before it came in clear, "this…still…onslaught. This unprovoked attacked has left most buildings leveled. Our current count of fatalities, as of a moment ago, is up to 103."
They both listened to the reporter, neither of them could ever remember the 'vid' part of the vid-com working.
"Fatalities," Illusionna muttered, "103 Transformers are permanently offline?"
Wind Rider nodded.
The reporter droned on, oblivious to his listeners, "The attacks seem to be slackening off, as those Autobots with firearms has dwindled to almost nothing. One can only ask why this has happened and what Optimus Prime will do concerning Megatron, the leader of the Decepticon military and political factions."
"What does that mean?" Illusionna asked.
"The waste is going to leak into the energon," Wind Rider muttered.
"Wind Rider!" Spanner's voice came through the open door from the workshop. "Come back."
Wind Rider let out a hiss of air from her ducts. "I thought I had escaped him," she muttered. "Don't you care that the war is coming!" she yelled in his direction.
Spanner appeared at the doorway. "The war isn't coming here," he said calmly, "the Autobots and Decepticons are at war."
"The Autobots and Decepticons are the ones who fund you!" Wind Rider spat at him.
"Not anymore," Illusionna muttered.
Spanner shot her a murderous look, his golden optics glowing so brightly that his whole faceplate glowed. "We will have no trouble finding funding once I finish this project."
"You've been working on this project forever," Wind Rider said, her deep voice quiet. "Spanner, we need energon now and the war is coming here, now."
"The war is not coming here," Spanner repeated. "The Autobots and Decepticons are at war. The Dead End is in neither of their jurisdictions."
"That's because no one wants the Dead End," Wind Rider said.
The room was silent. Spanner stared at Illusionna and Wind Rider, his optics still glowing.
"I like the Dead End," Illusionna muttered.
Wind Rider let out a hiss of air from her cooling ducts and raised her hands in defeat. "You would," she snapped, turning in the air and floating out of the room. Illusionna heard the front door shut.
"Come one Luna," Spanner said, Illusionna turned her head to see him re-enter the workshop. "We have work to do."
OoOoOo
Illusionna watched the soldiers march past, their deep purple Decepticon symbols glaring on their clean, shiny chasses. It was almost a common sight now. Almost.
"Your turn," Ji'shada thunked her arm.
She turned to him, her optics glowing slightly.
Ji'shada's deep red color glowed like hot embers underneath the dust and soot which caked it. "Why do you watch them all the time?" he asked, handing her the small, asymmetrical piece of rubble.
"They're interesting," she answered, throwing it onto the game board they had burned into the surface of the planet.
"How are they interesting?" he asked, handing over three of his 'energon chips', also pieces of rubble. "All they do is march. They don't talk to you, even when you talk to them. They don't help anyone either."
Illusionna rolled again. "I wonder why they go to Iacon."
"To obliterate it, obviously," he held his hand out for his 'energon chips'.
"But why?" Illusionna handed him her rounded pieces of junk and the roller.
"You wonder too much," he rolled again and hissed.
"What drives them?" she wasn't paying attention to Ji'shada's poor roll. Her violet optics looked down the street where the soldiers had been. "Surely reunification can't be that important."
"Reunification?" Ji'shada thumped her on the arm again. "What are you talking about?"
"Reunification," Illusionna muttered, but she waved her hand at him when she saw the confusion on his faceplates. "Never mind," she drawled, "you don't know anything."
"I know I don't want to be a Decepticon," he shot.
"Why not?" she rolled the piece of metal too hard and knocking it off the board. "They're clean and they have energon." She stared at him for a moment, "Their lives can't be that bad." Ji'shada merely stared back at her. She made an angry click and stood up, "I'm going home." She was a good ten strides away from him when he finally stood up.
"Wait Illusionna," he called, running to catch her, "wait." When she didn't stop at the voice of her playmate, he grabbed her arm. "C'mon," he said soothingly. She cocked her head to the side. "I didn't mean anything." She watched him for a long moment, before shrugging her rosy-gray shoulders. "Hey," he said, his faceplates brightening at his idea. "Why don't we go to Iacon?"
"Shada," she held her hands up, "the Decepticons are invading it!"
"So," Ji'shada shrugged, "that doesn't mean we can't watch."
"They're killing Autobots," Illusionna's voice sank. Ji'shada's household obviously didn't have a vid-com.
"We're not Autobots," he countered, waving his hand for her to come, "we can see what they're doing."
When Illusionna didn't move, he added, "Maybe you can see what drives them?" Illusionna's optics glowed momentarily at what she took to be a barb. But the glow quickly faded. "We'll be safe," he said, "we're not Autobots."
"Alright," she replied, walking toward him. Ji'shada transformed into his passenger vehicle mode. Illusionna laughed as she climbed on the seat. "We'll get there in style."
"Of course," he replied, speeding off the same direction the soldiers had gone.
Iacon now looked like the Dead End. Ji'shada transformed when they reached the border of the Autobot city-state. Only, they couldn't tell the difference anymore. "This is where the Petrosystems Building should be," Illusionna muttered. Instead of the large business complex that had once been there, the landscape was almost flat. Craters in the surface of the planet made pathways several stories into the interior. Some were no larger than a hand unit, others were large enough for a mechanoid to fall inside. Illusionna and Ji'shada peered in one, the sounds of artillery in the distance, to see that several mechs had not avoided the hole.
"You think they're offline?" Ji'shada murmered.
Illusionna was silent for a moment. "Hello," she called into the crater, listening as her voice echoed. No answer. She glanced at Ji'shada, who merely shrugged his shoulders. She turned on the camera that sat on her shoulder, it emitted a soft pink light, and bent over to shine it down the hole. It illuminated the face of an Autobot, she could see his symbol at the edge of the light. Half of his faceplates had been melted, the liquid metal sinking into the circuitry behind his faceplate. The camera that had been his optic sensor glowed with a pale, pink light, staring at them lifelessly. "Oh!" Illusionna cried, jumping to her feet and backing away from the crater. She looked up to see Ji'shada had done the same thing, his mouth agape. "I want to go home," she told him, her voice entirely too loud in her audio receptors.
Ji'shada didn't argue with her as he transformed.