CHAPTER SEVEN
Thanks to the Grade-A navigation system on Devcon's ship, Windblade and the Autobot bounty hunter had tracked Turmoil's ship to a planet on the edge of Nebulon space. As the ship made its descent through Taros Seven's atmosphere, Windblade anticipated her upcoming confrontation with Deadlock as she sharpened her blade.
Is this against the Autobot Code? she wondered. Looking down at her sword, she tried to justify her reasons for taking this path of revenge. Yoketron was like a father. We're at war. He's a Decepticon. I am delivering justice.
Windblade sighed as she returned her blade to its sheath. Yoketron had once told her that vengeance was not something a Cyber-Ninja partook in. But that was before the war.
At this point, revenge pretty much drove everyone.
* * *
The tide had turned against the Decepticons, but in Impactor's eyes, it was for the worse.
While Scourge's bloodlust was now focused on the Decepticons that had just arrived, this only meant that Orion Pax was plummeting deeper and deeper into darkness. If he wasn't stopped soon, Orion would truly be gone for good.
"We'd better vamoose before he sets his sights on us again," Roadbuster said behind him. "Scoop's gone to get the Xantium prepped-"
"No," Impactor said sharply. "We have to save Orion before he kills himself."
"What if he kills us in the process? And how are we sure that that's Orion?"
"We're not," Impactor admitted. "But either way, he has to be stopped."
"How?" Springer asked. "We're down to little over forty mechs. How are we going to stop either him or the Decepticons?"
A small smile crossed Impactor's face. "By being Wreckers."
* * *
"So, what's Prometheus?"
Having just escaped from the scraplets, and not knowing what was up ahead, Perceptor decided that now was as good a time as any to speak his mind.
Without looking at him, Azimuth smiled slightly. "I've been expecting you to ask that ever since we boarded the ship. Emirate Xaaron gave you the message, it would seem."
"Yes," Perceptor murmured. "I recall the name from my venture into the Hydrax Plateau with Scrounge two decades ago. What does it mean, exactly?"
Azimuth was silent for a moment before speaking. "What do you know about the Titans?"
"I know that they are the vessels of the fabled Knights of Cybertron, but nothing beyond that. Are you saying Prometheus was one such Titan?"
"Yes," Azimuth replied. "The last one made, in fact. From what I've read, he strayed from the path the Knights had set him on and absorbed the light of a nearby star, before releasing it and provided fire for all to use."
"No offense, but that sounds stupid," Perceptor said. "So, what does Prometheus have to do with this quest?"
"This is his corpse."
Both Perceptor and Glyph stopped in their tracks and gave Azimuth bewildered look. "What?" they exclaimed in unison.
Azimuth smiled, though what she was amused by, Perceptor had no idea. "When I discovered him twenty years ago, Prometheus was awoken by my arrival and he spoke to me. He told of his story, saying he was betrayed by his brothers and left here to die. From that day forward, he has vowed revenge and I was his first chance to satisfy his taste for vengeance."
"How?" Glyph asked.
"I was the first living being he had seen in eons. I was the only connection he had to the rest of the universe. Thus, he asked me to find the rest of the Titans and rewire their brain modules so that he could mentally control them."
Perceptor raised a metal brow. "So, what do these recent Titan sightings- Hydrax Plateau and Xeres- have to do with this?"
"They were Titans I had discovered and brought under Prometheus' control," Azimuth said. "When they were discovered, they just so happened to have been awakening at the same time."
"What about those poor bots murmuring Prometheus' name?" asked Glyph.
Azimuth's face fell. "'Poor' doesn't begin to describe it. They were bots I captured to use their spark energy to reboot the Titans."
Perceptor's jaw dropped open, both at what Azimuth had stated and the bluntness of it. "What? Are you saying that you killed fellow Cybertronians just to reactivate these Titans?"
The old astronomer nodded, her face impassive. "Pretty much. Sacrifices had to be made."
"But why?" Glyph exclaimed. "What makes an ancient Titan worth several innocent lives?"
"Innocent." Azimuth spoke the word slowly, as if she had never heard of it before. "Are we truly innocent, even now, when we are at war?"
"But some of them were fellow Autobots! And even some of the Decepticons may have been good once. Why are you doing this, Azimuth?"
The older fembot stared at the younger one, her optics twinkling with... was it pride?
"I have been chosen," Azimuth declared. "Primus himself, through the Knights, through Prometheus, has chosen me to undertake this mission."
"What mission?" Perceptor asked.
"To retake Cybertron. For too long has it gone without strong leadership, leadership which the Titans we have believed in for so long have."
Perceptor shook his head, not believing a word of this. "I'm sorry, Azimuth, but you have truly lost it. I cannot allow you to do this."
"That's okay," Azimuth said nonchalantly as she raised her arms. "I don't need your permission anyway."
As she pressed a panel on her right arm, Perceptor suddenly lost control of his body and he collapsed to the floor, with Glyph doing the same.
"I have been chosen," he heard his former colleague say as he slipped out of consciousness. "That is all I will ever need."
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