Chapter 13

Metroplex, earth

One Autobot was sitting at the end of an large conference table inside of one of Metroplex interrogation rooms and was telling three others, who were placed in opposite to him, the story about the last years of his life.

"It was the day Unicron attacked earth. Our home-world Cybertron had at that time already perished before at his hands", he was explaining to them.

"It had only been one shot, only a single impulse from both of Unicron´s eye lasers. Two particle blasts with far more firepower than anything we had or anything we could build.

One of them hit the American west-coast. It eradicated not only Autobot city and the over 90 robots inside, but everything in nearly 100 kilometers around it. All of the state Oregon was turned into a giant glowing crater. The impact that had happened in a already geologically unstable area and was followed by a line of earthquakes that caused devastation all over the planet.

Parallel to that the other blast went down somewhere in the pacific and caused tsunamis that hit the coasts of the American continent and east Asia. Nearly 200 million humans died on a single day. And that was only the first day of the attack", the robot sitting at the end of the table before them described his memories. He explained it to them as if it was common knowledge that everybody should be informed about and where he came from it was.

The three who were listening to his story were Optimus Prime, the Autobot leader, his temporary second in command Jazz and the Autobot Mirage. They were all hearing the scenario that their new guest was explaining to them. It was nothing that they would even want to imagine. What he was telling them was nothing else than a nightmare.

In the history he was describing to them Unicron had won. He had successfully destroyed Cybertron and built up an army of his creations, programmed and brainwashed into his willing pawns. Earth and several other planets had been overrun, the Transformers reduced to a few fleeing survivors, the human race to more than a half wiped out.

Optimus Prime and Hotrod, Rodimus Prime were in this world long dead.

Only a few days ago this new Autobot had been found by one of the patrol groups in the area close to Metroplex. He had suddenly appeared on their scanners, seemingly out of nowhere. The Bots who had found him brought him to the base.

Then he had started to explain who he was and where he came from. As he had told them he had just arrived on this planet recently, or more precisely in their universe.

Actually this robot was at the first look not a stranger at all. The newcomer was in fact an exact copy of their old friend Prowl. They all tried hard not to stare at him.

Even Optimus Prime felt a bit insecure in his presence.

The famous Autobot tactician, one of his own old lieutenants from the Ark crew, had died in the first battle of Autobot city, over seven years ago. They had found his corpse, they had buried him.

As if he was the one to talk, Optimus thought. He had after all himself been dead for two years.

But there was a difference. While his body had been resurrected by the Quintessons, his mind had returned from the Matrix after it had been reconnected to him. This on the other hand was a dead robot, a friend who had suddenly returned without an explanation.

But he had given an explanation, Optimus remembered and it explained really a lot. The other Megatron, Skywarp and Thundercracker, sudden appearance, how they and Galvatron can exist at the same time and why he was here, his motivations.

He and his men came from a parallel universe, one that had been very similar to their own, until a few years ago. Then things have taken a turn to the worse there, really to the worse. They were refugees.

"You Optimus Prime", the double of Prowl told them now, "are in my world long dead." He looked quite insecure as he said this. Normally this was completely untypical for the Prowl they remembered. "A long time before Unicron ever attacked us directly, before we even knew anything about his existence, he had send out agents to prepare for his coming. Years ago our Optimus Prime was one of the first to fall in their earliest attacks."

Optimus showed no visible reaction as he heard the story about his counterpart´s fate, but at the inside he felt more than a bit unsettled.

"Not only you but also the Matrix had been lost", Prowl continued. "Our best and probably only way to stop him was gone, but we didn't even knew this at that point. Unicron began to capture Transformers and change them into his own creations. Over the time the reformed robots were brainwashed and reprogrammed to absolute loyalty to him", Prowl continued. "He used for example Insecticons as the base for the group he called the Sweeps.

In the earth year 2006 Unicron attacked Cybertron. First he devoured the moons before he turned to the planet directly. He destroyed the Decepticon army, their fleet and the Autobot resistance forces at the same time. And not only them, the technicians and civilians of both sides, the empties and neutrals, the entire population. He ripped our home-world to pieces and consumed the remains.

Then, only a few weeks later, followed the assault on earth I have told you about. With a single strike he won and sent the planet into a global disaster.

A short time later Unicron´s creations invaded earth. The planet was still in chaos at that point. The most Autobots were already dead and the human forces had been decimated by the destruction caused by the earthquakes and the floods. There was only little resistance at all. The unicronians as we called them now first attacked the remaining major cities, the one that were not completely destroyed yet and burned them down."

"You had allied yourself with the surviving Decepticons", Optimus pointed out.

"Of course we did. What other choice did we have in this situation anyway? But it the end it didn´t make a difference. There were so few of us left.

To that came that the Sweeps possessed a similar replicating ability as their Insecticon "ancestors", in fact even an improved version of it. In the beginning there had only been a few of them, but then they started to clone a nearly unlimited number of themselves. They leveled entire towns to use them as raw materials for new copies.

We tried to fight back, we allied ourselves with Megatron and his last warriors, but we had no chance. For the last five years we had to see how the last of us and the human race were hunted down and systematically destroyed, how Unicron continued his way through our galaxy and consumed other planets, one after the other, how his creatures took over neighboring worlds and raided them like the did with earth to strengthen their own forces. The Decepticons were actually cooperating with us, but it was simply not enough. Our people were dieing while the enemy was constantly growing in strength. "

The Prowl they remembered barely showed his emotions. His actions had always been dictated by logic and strategy. This version of their old friend however showed openly his grieve about what had happened in his world. And that alone told everybody who had really known this Autobot that the situation he was talking about had been serious.

"And so it continued. We were losing the war. Step by step we and our human allies were being exterminated.

Then a few months ago Megatron and a group of his closest allies suddenly vanished. For years he had been working with us, but at that time something had changed. Our few remaining Decepticon allies were gone. Megatron had obviously given up the alliance, but we didn´t knew why. We investigated and tried to find out what happened.

What we found out was this, Megatron came to this universe. He had somehow discovered a new form of technology that allowed him to travel to parallel dimensions, like this one. By the information we have it seems that he had been in contact with someone from your world for some time and that they were planning something."

`In contact with someone from your world and that they were planning something´, alone this words were enough to give the Autobots a bad feeling.

"That are some interesting news Prowl and not very comforting", Optimus said to him. "Megatron had made himself known to us a few weeks ago. He and his followers destroyed the Earth base on Mars and our version of Autobot city. As far as we know he is right now on Cybertron and involved in some coup attempt against Galvatron. He is pretending to be the Megatron from our world who has returned to take leadership."

"Galvatron?"

"You remember that we have told you that the unicronians in our world have resisted Unicron´s control and have managed to free themselves from him. They are now still part of the Decepticons in this universe."

"Yes but, their leader, Megatron himself?"

"Megatron, now Galvatron, was one of the Decepticons Unicron had recreated", Jazz confirmed to him.

"That would explain a lot", Prowl admitted, "in first line why he would be part of such an questionable take-over attempt. As you can imagine nobody in our universe trusts Unicron´s creations or likes them in any way. There is no way that Megatron would accept a unicronian as the Decepticon leader, even if this unicronian was himself."

"And how do you think about this matter?" Optimus asked him.

"Optimus, I generally trust your judgement and as you know I have just arrived in this world a few days ago, so I am not exactly fit to build an opinion here. If you say this unicronians are normal, at least normal for Decepticons, I will trust you in this."

That sounded very much like the Prowl they knew, Optimus thought, always a logical mind who didn´t let his emotion get in the way of his decisions. There was a reason that the group that interrogated him consisted of Prowl´s old comrades from the Ark. They hoped to see it if this person was really who he claimed to be.

Yes, counted in the terrible experiences of this version of their old friend, he actually seemed to be the same person. The story he had given them was of course very fantastic. They were aware of parallel universes. Once some of them had even landed in one of them per accident. But that randomly people were appearing from another dimension was hard to accept, even for them.

Prowl however had shown them examples of the technology that had send him here and demonstated how it worked. As far as they could tell it was a variation of Galvatron´s new transwarp engine.

"I understand Prowl", Optimus answered. "I believe the information you have given us is very important. Now we will see how we can make the best out of it."

xxxxxxx

Cybertron

Megatron the new and in some sense the old leader of the Decepticons was having a conference with his new officers. Many of them, to say it lightly, were not exactly reacting well to some of the latest events.

Skorponok was currently standing in the middle of the throne-room and was loudly stating his concerns.

That was to some degree the admittedly questionable victory that Megatron and his followers had gained in the leadership struggle. The fight had not really been decided by the competitors but their troops had become involved, the situation had gone out of hand. In short words, it wasn´t sure which of the leadership candidates was really the stronger one.

But in first line it was something else, the way how they had won and why the Sweeps had interfered in the first place.

During the fight Sideways, Megatron´s new right hand, had received a wound that by all rights should have killed him. But somehow the wounds healed themselves in a matter of seconds and he stood up again, completely undamaged. Sideways practically returned himself from the dead. This had caught Cyclonus, who had actually already won the fight at this point, by surprise.

The Sweeps saw that quite understandable as a reason to to interrupt the fight and attack. And then Sideways managed in a strange way to stop them all. It was as if he had activated a unknown weapon that took them all out.

Megatron´s faction had won the fight, but the way they did it was more than questionable, even by their standards. Nobody was even really sure how they won. Had Sideways a few special abilities nobody knew about, had they used some sort of secret weapon?

There were many who were convinced that their group had simply been cheating. Of course "cheating" only meant that you had won in some creative way that nobody had figured out.

Of course the only alternative would have been to follow Galvatron, who had already lost the contest. There was nobody who actually doubted that he and the others had survived the fall into the lave sea, but they would be in a terrible condition now and nobody wanted to stand at the losing side.

Still nobody was even halfway comfortable with the idea of a zombie as new second in command.

"And you simply expect me to accept this?" Skorponok asked loud. "I have seen the records of the fight Megatron. Sideways was dead. He got a laser blast right through his spark chamber and then he just stood up as if nothing happened and blasted Cyclonus, who was too shocked to even move, not that I don´t understand why.

You told me that you have no idea how you have done this, you told me that you didn´t knew that he had such abilities at all. This guy just stood up after a deadly wound and now you want me to just accept him as your second in command?
Tell me Megatron, what else do you not know about your so called second?"

"Ah, I see it is not really my leadership but my choice in allies that you have a problem with Skorponok?" he replied, leaving it unsaid that Skorponok himself had also been such an ally.

"I have problems with supposed allies who have completely unexplainable powers that they refuse to explain or even mention, as you should."

"And I guess you will advice me now to take a new right hand." Megatron smiled, "someone more trustworthy, someone like you."

"Maybe", Skorponok replied.

"Perceptive and ambitious like ever. Despite that I hope our alliance is still standing despite our small disagreements."

"Yes Megatron, despite my doubts about Sideways I accept your authority as Decepticon leader."

"And I will hold up my part of the agreement." Megatron raised the volume of his voice now, so that everybody in the hall could hear him.

"Our next aim of conquest is the planet Nebulos and I will give you the absolute authority over it Zarak."

"Thank you Megatron", the nebulon inside Skorponok´s body smiled as he replied, "that was all I wanted to hear."

Beside Skorponok, were Thunderwing, Onslaught, Hungrr, Razorclaw, Astrotrain, newly promoted leader of the triple changers and Starscream, who had taken back his position as leader of the air-force and several others who Megatron didn´t recognize assembled in the hall.

They all were group leaders and sector commanders who came, more or less willingly, to swear alliance to the new leader.

Skywarp and Thundercracker stood to both sides of the throne.

"All hail Megatron", Skorponok began to shout, Astrotrain was the first who fell in, then followed Hungrr and Starscream, then Thunderwing, Razorclaw and the others. The room haled from their declarations of loyalty.

Of course Megatron knew that at least the half of them were nothing but pure opportunism.

xxxxxxx

Planet Scarvix

The two groups of Transformers were now together searching the ruins of the destroyed city.

The meeting between them had played out like someone would imagine a meeting between Autobots and Decepticons to be. At first they were pointing their guns at each other, waiting for the other to attack.

As the Decepticons announced that they were willing to a temporally truce to get their work done, the Autobots were understandable sceptical.

Finally they had agreed to work together, for now. It was after all better then to shoot at each other and then still having to continue with the search.

They had now spread into three smaller groups to cover a greater territory.

The Duocons had separated, Battletrap was walking with Sizzle and Freeway and Flywheels with the other two Sparklerbots.

Skyhound was with the battlechargers, forming a team consisting only of Decepticons. He and his two partners were now checking one of the larger buildings that had not been completely leveled.

None of them had seen the shadow moving on top of the house or how the being was jumping off the roof, landing directly behind them.

Skyhound didn´t see the attack coming as he was suddenly slammed down from the back. Runabout and Runamuck instinctively draw their guns before they could even make out the attacker.

xxx

As the other two teams had heard the screams and the laser fire their first thought was that the other side had betrayed them. It took them however only a few moments to realize that the team that had been attacked was the one consisting only of Decepticons.

They transformed and drove as fast as possible in the direction where they have heard the noise.

As they arrived at the place a few minutes later, they saw the three lying disarmed on the ground. Runamuck looked as if he had been shot.

Over them stood a large figure who was pointing a laser cannon that had replaced his right hand on all three of the downed robots. The other recognized the figure as the bounty hunter Death Head by the descriptions they had heard.

"Greetings Autobots, Decepticons", he addressed them. "I just came back and found out that my home is destroyed, together with the entire town I lived in. Can be lucky that I didn´t come back earlier or I would be dead too", the bounty hunter told them.

The six remaining Transformers had pointed their guns at him.

"It seems that I had mistaken your friend here for one of the attackers", Death Head claimed, pointing at the Sweep. "Looks exactly like them. No hard feelings, yes?" He said and demonstratively aimed his own weapon at heads of the three he had just defeated.

"Okay we believe you", Flywheels told him. "We have no intention to fight you, just put the gun down.

They all had heard from the reports how dangerous this robot before them was and they had really no intention to fight him. None of them had any sympathy for the bounty hunter, he both attacked Optimus Prime and killed a Decepticon the last time. But if it was anyway possible, they wanted to avoid a life and death fight with him.

Sure all of them together could probably take him, the only question was how many of them would survive.

Death head lowered his weapon. It seemed he also had no intention to fight.

xxx

"So you say that the attackers had been Sweeps?" Fizzle asked him a few minutes later as the bounty hunter had told them the things he knew about what happened here.

"A Quintesson armada", Death Head said, "together with an army of Sweeps. They were all looking exactly like your friend here, only black instead of blue."

"Black?" Freeway repeated surprised. "A new design?" He asked the Sweep.

"If it is one then not from us", Skyhound answered. "Maybe the Quints have stolen our technology."

"I am surprised that you of all people are helping us Death Head?" Fizzle pointed out. "The last time you attacked our people."

"That was a job, nothing more, nothing personal", the bounty hunter replied. "By the way, I would also like to know why the Quintessons destroyed my home-town."

I guess you can not tell us who gave you that task?" The Autobot asked.

"One in my business never talks about a contract", the bounty hunter replied.

"It could turn out to be important", Fizzle explained to him.

"Do I look as if I care Autobot? You should be glad that I even told you something useful at all without payment. Guess I really want to get back at the Quintessons."

The bounty hunter turned around and was going to leave them behind.

"You", Fizzle growled angrily.

"Forget that", Freeway told him. "At least we know something now."

"Whatever, if the Quintessons have a new robot army we should try to find out everything about it what we can", Sizzle suggested. "I think we should make a visit to New Quintessa."

"I agree with the Autobot in this", Flywheels said. "Let us find out whatever we can."

xxxxxxx

Cybertron

Skorponok was leaving the throne-room, followed closely by the others. They would be starting to prepare the next great campaign. By what they knew, Nebulos would actually be a valuable target for their next attack, a organic planet full with natural resource to convert to energon, with raw materials and in a acceptable strategically position.

Not nearly as resourceful as Earth of course, but it would do.

And it could possibly secure Skorponok´s loyalty to him, at least for a time. Till then Megatron would have figured out a way to keep him under control.

As the last of the officers had left the room, he saw that Thundercracker and Skywarp were looking at him.

"So my loyal seekers", he asked them, completely knowing what kind of reaction was to await, "are you also worried about some problems you want to share with me?"

"Problems?" Skywarp repeated his question, "you mean aside from the fact that your new second in command is an abomination and the most of the army is more scared of him than of the Autobots? Where should there be a problem?"

"I appreciate your sense of humor as always Skywarp." The seeker had always a strike for sarcasm and jokes, but here, Megatron had to admit, in a sense he brought the situation to a point.

"Maybe Skorponok is right about Sideways", Thundercracker suggested. "What do we really know about him anyway? Nobody can tell how he could simply stand up after he had been shot. However you put it Megatron, he is keeping information from you."

"You are right", the Decepticon leader admitted. "But he was also the one who had helped us to reach this universe in the first place. We were in a situation where we had already lost and he had helped us out of it. Through him we were able to gather new troops after we had arrived in this universe."

"Yes, but do we know why he did all this? Why had he helped us at every stage? Maybe he only wanted power for himself the entire time?" Thundercracker told him.

"Maybe you are right. But at least for now, Sideways is too important for me. Don´t forget, Doomsday and his mercenary group are loyal only to him and for the invasion of Nebulos we will need every man.

But when I will have secured my power base, after we have conquered Nebulos and dealt with eventual dissidents, I think then I will not longer need Sideways.

My friends", Megatron addressed them as he lay back in his throne. "I think you are getting far to insecure about such unimportant drawbacks.

Yes, Sideways is keeping the secret of his abilities from me and it is no wonder. With such a unique power I wouldn´t act differently in his place. But sooner or later I will get out of him how his regeneration works and then I will find a way to use it for my other troops. In the end I will find a way to make it work for me.

Remember, only a half year ago we were lost, only a few scrapped survivors, hunted down by Unicron´s spawn. I think the years on the ground have made you two far too paranoid and insecure. So don´t let your baseless fears dim your view at the bigger picture.

After years of suffering, destruction and defeat, we are back in power. Finally we have won. It had only been a few months and I am standing at the brink of total victory.

Cybertron is mine, the Decepticon empire is mine, the Autobots decimated and in scatters, tomorrow Nebulos will be mine

and soon earth will be too."