"Where have you been?" Wind Rider asked as Illusionna entered the great room of the house.
"Out," was all that Illusionna replied, flopping down on the couch.
"Out where?"
There was a moment of silence, the sound of Wind Rider polishing her arm made a soft swooshing noise as the ointment was rubbed into her metal skin. "Just out," Illusionna said, her voice tight.
"Well excuse me!" Wind Rider leaned back out, "I was just worried about you," her face was a caricature of concern.
"Yeah right," Illusionna stood up and headed toward the door to the workshop where she could hear one of Spanner's tools whirring away.
"Hey, come back," Wind Rider called.
Illusionna ignored her, and as the door closed behind her she heard her sibling say, "Well, someone's in a bad mood."
You'd be in a bad mood too if you just saw a dead Transformer, she wanted to hiss but she kept silent. She felt a strong compulsion to not tell anyone about her and Ji'Shada's recent outing.
She walked up to Spanner, past the several bodies of unfinished Transformers that he had begun to build. Most of them were older than Illusionna herself, and were nothing more than metal frames upon which wires had been connected. One of them had a head, with both of its lenses for its optics in place. It stared out in front of it blankly, catching the glint of the blowtorch Spanner used. But his blank look was of one that had always been lifeless, never given the spark of consciousness. It was remarkably different from the mech she had seen in the hole, but she couldn't articulate how.
An energon cube lay on the floor, a tube attached to it leading the blow torch that Spanner held up against a machine. He looked up and smiled, "Ah, just what I needed," he motioned her toward him, "you can hold this piece in place."
Illusionna took the slat of metal from him, and held it up against another one. "Are you building the body for it?" she asked, her voice raised a bit to be heard over the blowtorch.
"Yes," Spanner replied, his optics glued to the spot her was welding.
Illusionna looked about, "Where are your other prototypes?" she asked, but Spanner either didn't hear her, or didn't deign to answer. For all Illusionna knew, he had used the parts in the other three prototypes to make up this one. After all, they had all failed so far. "Are you almost done with this one?" she asked, making sure he heard her.
"Oh no, darling," he replied, chuckling at the absurdity of such a statement. "There is still a long way to go."
"Have you tested it yet?" Illusionna shifted on her feet, making the slat of metal move.
Spanner looked up at her. "No," he turned back to the welding. "I have to have these pieces in place to protect the circuitry."
"Do you think it will work?"
"Do you think it will work?" Spanner countered.
No, Illusionna wanted to answer, "I hope so," she told him. Spanner was an idealist, she knew, and thought that all of his crazy inventions would work. A good number of them did, he could have argued back at her, but it did them little good nowadays. He needs to
make weapons or something, Illusionna clicked to herself derisively, or something that creates energon.
Spanner looked up at her click with a stern look on his faceplate. Illusionna dimmed her optics and looked away from him, wishing, for not the first time, that the workshop had a door that led to the outside. This conversation wasn't going much better than the one with Wind Rider. She looked down at the energon cube in silence, watching the level of the pale swirling pink and blue liquid slowly go down. It was almost empty when she saw it wave against the side of the cube.
Illusionna thought she had a glitch in her optics for a moment, turned away and then looked backed at it. The tube sucked up the last of the energon and the blowtorch went out. It couldn't have moved, she thought to herself, how would it have.
Suddenly, the entire workshop waved from side to side, and a deafening BOOM blew through her audio sensors. Both Spanner and Illusionna froze, staring at each other in confusion, Spanner's golden optics glowing brightly.
BOOM! The workshop moved again, and items began falling off of the walls and the table. Spanner grabbed Illusionna's hand, and ran to the door. BOOM! The room shook again, and one of the unfinished bodies toppled to the ground.
Illusionna tripped over something, lost her grip on Spanner and fell against the door. She saw a yellow hand grip her arm. "Spanner!" she cried, but her voice was drowned out by another BOOM as he dragged her through the door into the great room.
"Get underground!" Spanner yelled, pushing Wind Rider toward to the hallway. The front door opened, and Wind Rider fell through it, just catching herself before she hit the ground.
They all rushed down the stairs, and ran into the first room they came upon, the study. When the door was closed, another BOOM shook the building and the lights went out. Sparks came from the corner of the room, and Spanner held up his hand, electricity running between his fingers, illuminating the small room in a dim glow.
"What's happening?" Illusionna asked, her violet optics glowed almost as brightly as Spanner's hand.
"We're being bombed," Wind Rider said, her own optics flaring.
"Why are the Decepticons bombing us?" Illusionna turned to her, her mouth twisted in
fear.
"They're not," Wind Rider sank down against the wall, until her aft hit the floor. "They're coming from Iacon."
The bombing lasted for hours. The three of them fell into a sullen silence, punctuated by the darkness of the room and the muffled BOOMS that made their way down to their level. But, eventually, the booming stopped, and they felt safe enough to emerge from hiding.
As they climbed the stairs, the smell of scorched metal met their olfactory sensors. The great room was still intact, albeit rather messy. Wind Rider opened the front door and levitated outside. "Oh!" she exclaimed, the other two crammed through the doorway to her.
The top level of the house was gone. Support beams that had held up the walls were nothing more than stumps protruding from the roof. Spanner backed up to the other side of Abscess Bay to get a better look at the destruction.
"Our house," Illusionna's voice was quiet and small. "Half of it is gone."
Spanner didn't say anything. He simply stared, an anxious look on his faceplate, at what had once been the second story of his dwelling.
Illusionna walked down Abscess Bay, passing her own house, avoiding pot holes, some of which went several layers below ground. Turning down Abrogate Lane to a main thoroughfare, she began to wend her way back through smaller side streets, dragging her little wagon of energon cubes behind her. No one was around these days, if someone decided to loiter, it was usually underground, away from any missiles or bombs that might come their way. The Dead End was a relatively flat place, rarely having buildings higher than one story above ground. Now, sections of it looked inverted, gaping spaces, open-mouthed to the eternally dark sky. Illusionna made it a point not to look into them.
She arrived at Ji'Shada's house, or the remains of it. All that was left of the one story building was the south facing wall, standing erect among the rubble. Illusionna stood at the periphery of the debris, debating her next move. If she found survivors, she did not have enough energon to repair any damage done to them. She had no desire to look into the face of a Transformer that had gone offline; dead, lifeless optics staring at nothing like darkened windows. So she turned from what was left of her friend's dwelling and headed back to her own home, trailing her energon behind her. She still wasn't used to the second story of her house being gone, with its one beam pointing toward the stars. She opened the front door, and nearly rammed down by Wind Rider.
"You're back!" she plucked up an energon cube, and bringing it to her faceplate.
Spanner walked up calmly, as if his own internal recharging mechanism wasn't screaming at him to refuel. "There are only three cubes, Illusionna," he noted when he got to the wagon.
Illusionna was silent for a long moment, and Wind Rider stopped her recharging to look at Spanner. "That's all he gave me," Illusionna murmured, her optics dimmed to almost lightlessness.
"He only gave you three?" Spanner's voice was incredulous, he drew his golden shoulders square and his amber optics flashed. "That's only one cube a person."
"That's all we're supposed to get," Wind Rider interjected, even her smooth, deep voice showing a hint of nervousness at her creator's actions. She backed up a pace, however, when Spanner shot her a look of anger, his mouth puckered and his optics bright.
"Didn't you manipulate the chip?" Spanner turned back to Illusionna, his voice rising with every word.
"I did!" she raised her hands in defence, waving them softly, "they've cut the rations again. He said if I wanted more energon, I had to get out and earn it like other mechs!" Her voice was panicked, and her back was against the closed front door.
"Earn it?!" Spanner's voice exploded like a laser from a pistol. "Do I not work, to earn this energon?" He kicked the wagon over, sending the last two cubes skidding across the floor to bump into the wall with quiet thunks.
"I'm just telling you what he said," Illusionna's voice was shrill, "he said the ration's been cut off to ½ a cube per mech per cycle!"
"That's still twice as much as we were supposed to get," Wind Rider's voice broke through before Spanner could speak again, "she did manipulate the chip."
Spanner turned to her, the same angry look on his faceplate. "This isn't enough to work with," his voice was now tight and strained, "it's barely enough to refuel on."
"It's not Illusionna's fault," she said, "we're all edgy lately." When Spanner said nothing, she continued, "With all the stuff that's happened, we're all just jumpy."
Spanner slowly turned from her toward the two energon cubes he had kicked down the hallway. "Put those away," he motioned with one of his buttercream hand units. "We'll have to share these for now."
In the courtyard of the Conduit, the energon fountain, which had never had energon in it as far as Illusionna could tell, loomed empty and broken, like everything else in the Dead End. Wind Rider claimed that there had once been a ball on the top tier of the fountain, but someone had stolen it before Illusionna came online. "Why would someone want a big metal ball?" she had asked.
"Why would someone want to take anything that was not valuable?" Wind Rider countered. When she got no reply, she answered, "Because people are stupid."
The huge double doors stood open, as they always did. Above them, inscribed in the wall of the building was the saying "The Light is never further than your optics." It didn't matter how many times someone asked one of voices what it meant, a straight answer was never given. Illusionna figured that the voices didn't know what it meant either.
Wind Rider had Illusionna by the hand unit, and floated above the decorated ground at a leisurely pace. The courtyard was already busy with speakers, people talking with people they hadn't seen since the last time they had congregated at the Conduit. By the fountain stood a group of people Illusionna didn't recognize. They weren't regular speakers at this Conduit, or she would have known them instantly. After all, she had come online here, and attended the Conduit every congregation ever since. But as one of them moved, his arms waving as he spoke to someone, she saw a red, blue and gray Transformer leaning against the middle tier of the fountain. His helmet framed his gray faceplate and wing extended from his back, as if framing his body as a work of art. He was a generic body type, as where his two companions, the kind that transformed into a tri-flyer. On each of his wings was a Decepticon symbol. His head turned to her direction, and his scarlet optics caught hers. She had slowed enough that Wind Rider noticed she was dawdling, and turned to her, "What's the matter?"
"That mech," Illusionna pointed with her head to the Transformer. "He's looking at us."
Wind Rider clicked, obviously not impressed, but then the blue Transformer's gaze shifted from Illusionna to Wind Rider. Wind Rider stopped her forward momentum to come to a stop as she looked at him. "What's he doing here, I wonder?" she muttered, her voice very soft. Illusionna knew that she wasn't asking for an answer, so she remained silent. Then, Wind Rider shook her head, and began floating forward again, in through the double doors.
The room was stadium style, as all gathering places were. The slightly raised center was surrounded by chairs, each had an indentation in them, as if at one time they had cushions. They sat down as the people began milling in to the Conduit in full force.
The red, blue and gray Transformer saw where Wind Rider and Illusionna were sitting and motioned for his little entourage to follow him. They took their seats at the opposite end of the row that Wind Rider had chosen. He leaned forward, catching Wind Rider's optics again. She quickly looked away to the resting bed, where one of the Voices of Vector Sigma had gently tapped a small bell. The gathering room hushed, and people who had not yet sat down took seats as quietly as possible.
The Voice of Vector Sigma raised his hands above his head, "Children of Sigma," he called, "welcome!"
"Can't he come up with a better introduction?" Illusionna heard the people in front of her say, "he says that every time!"
"I know that many of you are confused and frightened at the recent events that have taken place." A hum went through the crowd at the understatement of his words, "Fear not!" Illusionna jumped at the loudness of his voice, "for even as the world seems to be shrouded in chaos, order will make its way back into our lives."
Illusionna didn't see how much order could come back into the lives of people who had no houses or no work or no energon. Where had this Voice of Vector Sigma been living? Certainly not in the Dead End. Did he not look outside the Conduit doors once in a while?
The Voice of Vector Sigma moved aside to reveal the dais that stood front and center of the gathering room. A large dent was on the side, it had been there when Illusionna laid upon it, and it had not yet been repaired as a new body lay upon it. Wires were connected at the side of it, and then lain an energon cube, three more were connected to it. Illusionna rubbed her back in memory at the connection falling away as she sat up for the first time, and excitement started to tingle through her.
The Voice of Vector Sigma's finger retracted to reveal a key, and inserted it into a slot on the dais. His optics flared and then dimmed. His faceplate went slack. Illusionna could not detect any vocal noise at all. The Voice stayed still, his dimmed optics looking straight ahead. She heard the three flyers begin to fidget. "This was a stupid-" one of them said.
"Arise!" shouted the Voice of Vector Sigma. Illusionna jumped, and heard the rattle of several other seats.
The energon on the dais began to slowly empty out of the cubes. The body on the table didn't move.
"Arise!" shouted the Voice again.
When the body still did move, the Voice of Vector Sigma raised his hands. "Speak, you gathered here, speak! Arise!"
"Arise!" the Conduit echoed with the sound of the voices those in the room.
"Again!" The second energon cube was now half empty.
"Arise!" the room boomed with the sound. "Arise! Arise!"
The third energon cube began to drain, and the Voice of Vector Sigma's optic flared again, his finger still inserted into the dais. "Arise, arise, arise!" the chant continued and the energy continued to drain from the cube.
The energon cube drained empty, and still the chant continued. The Voice of Vector Sigma extracted his hand from the table, and raised his arms, whirling to face the entire room. "Arise!" he shouted, his voice louder than the rest. "Arise!"
The body on the table remained still.
The Voice of Vector Sigma lowered his arms and the congregated Transformers fell silent. All optics remained on the body on the table.
"Arise and welcome!"
The body did not move.
"I told you this was a stupid idea," said one of the flyers sitting near Illusionna and Wind Rider, his voice having a slight chuckle to it. "This doesn't work."
Others began to talk and stand, the Voice of Vector Sigma looked down at the body on the table, on his faceplate a look of pity.
She turned to the Decepticons, and flashed her optics, "That was mean."
All three of the flyers turned to her, their helmeted heads in unison. "So?" answered the purple one.
"Illusionna," Wind Rider hissed, levitated to her side. "Hush."
"No," the red and blue one stepped forward. "Let her answer." She couldn't tell if his shrill voice was mocking or not.
"It was mean," she repeated, "we wanted him to come online."
"So did we," the Decepticon answered. "But it didn't work, did it?"
Illusionna had no rebuke.
"Come on," Wind Rider pulled her arm toward the door.
Illusionna turned and followed her sister out. She heard the purple one say, "Does it ever work, or is it just some stupid superstition these lug-nuts believe in?"
"It doesn't matter," Illusionna turned at the sound of a new voice. The blue flyer said, "we gotta find out where the Autobots stashed those weapons they stole."
The red, blue and gray one caught her optics with his and nodded. "Yes we do," he said.
Everybody know that, Illusionna wanted to spit at them, but Wind Rider dragged her through the door back out to the courtyard. The lug-nuts.