Transformers Regenerated: Pax Cybertronia XI, Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT
--Somewhere in the Ardurian system--

    “The Terrorcons have returned, Chief Justice. The Ore-6 has been successfully retrieved.”

    “Excellent work, Flame,” Tyrest replied, standing on the bridge of his assigned Worldsweeper as he oversaw the scouring of Arduria. “I must say, that went much smoother than our attempts on Caminus.”

    “Yes, well, it helps that the Ardurian rocs don’t pose as much as a threat compared to certain others,” Flame replied.

    “This is true,” Tyrest agreed. “Anyway, return to the ship. We shall be heading for Tsiehshi next.”

    After terminating the call, Tyrest sighed as the weight of what was to be his next task bore down on him. The time was drawing near, he knew, to finally bring in Rung to fulfill his purpose. The Grand Architect had ordered him to do so once half the ores had been recovered; with Caminus, Eukaris, Velocitron, and now Arduria accounted for, with others already at LV-117 and Prion, this left only seven ores to be recovered (and, as the Grand Architect had constantly reminded him, Earth was already in “safe hands”).

    He knew it would have had to have come to this eventually; he had simply hoped it wouldn’t have to have been difficult for the both of them. For reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on, Tyrest felt a connection towards Rung that he had never felt with anyone else. Despite having never interacted with the psychiatrist much, they had both been around since the dawn of the Silver Age, witnessing Nova Prime’s unification of the Thirteen Tribes and the genesis of the Autobot Commonwealth. Rung was, as far as he knew, one of the last bots remaining from that era. As someone who was sentimental to preserving historical knowledge, Tyrest wasn’t all too keen on losing him.

    But the Grand Architect had given him a command and he would see to it that it be fulfilled to its full extent, regardless of his feelings on the matter.

    As he turned to leave the bridge, Tyrest couldn’t help but feel that something was… off. As if there was a familiar presence hanging over him. He looked around the bridge but saw only the spiky Lunarians that crewed the Worldsweeper. Shrugging it off as a side effect of his conflicted thoughts, the Chief Justice strode towards the door.

*  *  *

    Great. Just great.

    Skids cursed himself and his luck as he picked himself up from the elevator car he had just materialized atop of. While he supposed he should have been grateful that he hadn’t been teleported right in front of Tyrest or a Legislator, it did mean that finding Rung and getting to him was going to be more difficult than he had first thought.

    Still, he was a Secret Service agent at spark. He was used to getting himself into sticky situations like these.

    The muffled sound of the elevator doors opening clued him in to the fact that someone was entering beneath him. Thinking quickly, he dropped down and magnetized himself to the top of the lift so that, when it shot down the shaft at high-speed, his body wasn’t instantly torn to shreds by the sheer velocity.

    Once the elevator had come to a halt, Skids allowed a few minutes to pass before getting to work. As carefully and quietly as he could, he unbolted and removed the hatch into the elevator car. After seeing that no one was inside and that the doors had already closed, Skids jumped down into the lift and quickly approached the control panel. As he hacked into its interface to open the doors, he could hear voices speaking on the other side albeit muffled. He enhanced his audio receptors to pick up what they were saying.

    “—best for you. It needn’t have to be like this.” That was Tyrest, unmistakably.

    “My mind has already been made.” Rung this time. Skids began to increase the pace of his hacking. “Do what you will; I refuse to break.”

    “How unfortunate. I was really hoping for a better end for you. Fearstorm, if you will.”

    Fearstorm? What was Fearstorm doing here with Tyrest – hell, how was Fearstorm alive? Deciding not to spend another second dwelling on it, Skids finally got the elevator doors to open and he stormed out of the car, all weapons already deployed.

    “Nobody move!” he ordered, training his guns on Tyrest and Fearstorm, the latter who was now silver and bearing wings. He could see Rung sitting in a cell behind an energy cell, looking surprised at the sudden appearance of his friend. “If either one of you lays a single servo on my buddy, you’re getting a face full of bullets.”

    “Ah.” Tyrest looked at Skids with a mirthless smirk. “It’s Skids, isn’t it? I remember you from Gigantion. My processor still aches from that.”

    “A lot more of you is going to ache if you do anything to Rung.”

    “I see you haven’t lost that arrogant bravado of yours, Autobot,” Fearstorm said as he pointed his own gun as Skids. “A lot can happen in two years and yet some bots never change.”

    “Or stay dead,” Skids retorted, glaring at the Vehicon. “Mind letting me in on how you’re here and still kicking? I thought I left your corpse in the distant future.”

    “That you did, which was just one of your many mistakes. Although my head had been destroyed, my spark remained intact long enough for my new benefactors to retrieve my remains and rebuild me into a newer, stronger form.”

    “And they decided to keep you even after they found out that you were an obnoxious dipstick?”

    Fearstorm scoffed. “Your insolent remarks as beget by your insecurity mean little to me, Autobot, as they always have.”

    Tyrest huffed with impatience. “If you two are quite done....”

    Skids shifted his attention to the Chief Justice. “I don’t know what it is you’re planning to do with Rung and I don’t really care. Let him go now and we’ll gladly be on our way.”

    Tyrest chuckled. “All I need to do is press a switch on my staff and you’ll be magnetized to the floor while my Legislators tear you apart. Is that really how you want this to go down?”

    “Skids,” Rung spoke up, his voice soft. “Please.... You don’t need to do this.”

    Skids glanced at him before returning his gaze to Tyrest. The two of them locked optics, each one silently daring the other to make the first move. Rung watched helplessly from his cell while Fearstorm kept his weapons trained on Skids, stealing covert glances at the Chief Justice as he awaited his superior’s signal.

    Tyrest’s finger brushed against a button on his staff... and Skids immediately unloaded all of his weaponry.

--The Lost Light--

    Swerve had seen enough Earth-made horror movies to know he was living one.

    No lights in the halls, dried energon on the walls, a severed arm laying on the floor... it was so similar that he almost thought (no, almost hoped) that this was all an elaborate play-slash-prank set up by Crosscut or something. But then he remembered that Crosscut was far from the prankster type... and that Crosscut was limping behind him with his entire right arm missing, energon still leaking from his broken shoulder joint.

    “What I would do for a shovel right now,” the former ambassador muttered to himself, the lights on his helmet flickering.

    “I don’t think a shovel’s gonna do you much good, pal,” Swerve grimly replied. He had found Crosscut in his theater room after it had been stormed by a centaur-like robot. All of Crosscut’s actors and crew had been killed by the Destructon, leaving Crosscut for dead after ripping off his arm. Why Crosscut specifically had been spared, Swerve was not sure... and he doubted he would ever find out the answer.

    “The medbay is just up ahead,” he said to Crosscut. “We’ll get you to Velocity and she’ll patch you right up.”

    “I think we’ll have to wait in line,” Crosscut commented.

    Swerve froze up as he saw figures standing down the corridor in front of the medical lab. Before he could make a move, lights flashed in his face and he was able to see the three bots clearly. Hoist was standing at the front of the line, supporting a damaged Grapple as the latter hobbled on one leg. Behind them both was Crossblades, who had a deep slash running from her right shoulder down to her left hip. Her helmet was the source of the lights being shone in Swerve’s face.

    “Welcome to the Survivor’s Club,” Crossblades said as she dimmed her lights. “I wish to say it was a bigger party than it actually is.”

    “Did you guys run into a centaur bot, too?” Swerve asked.

    “Yup. He eviscerated Doubletap and Turbine with his sword before cutting up me and Grapple here. Hoist found us just after he had left.”

    “And he left just like that?” Crosscut asked. “Why didn’t he stay around to kill you?”

    “He told us he would be back,” coughed Grapple, his voice box sputtering. “Primus knows what that means.”

   “It means he’ll be back to finish us off,” said Crossblades. “I think he’s just toying with us. They all are.”

   “What are we going to do then?” Swerve asked. “Just let them pick us off one by one? I mean, there are only like, three or four of them, right?”

    “It took the entire strength of the Elite Guard and the Convoy Corps to repel them the first time,” Crosscut muttered. “We don’t exactly have that kind of strength here.”

    At that moment, First Aid poked his head out the door to the medbay. “Next?”

    While Hoist helped Grapple in, Swerve peered inside the lab. Velocity was patching up Blades while Nickel attended a wounded Streetwise. Looking past them, Swerve spotted two other bots laying on repair slabs, both having been placed in stasis lock. He immediately recognized them as Cannonspring and Clocker, the former having left the crew after he had merged with four others to become Nexus Prime.

    The thought of the ancient Prime combiner caused a lightbulb to go off in Swerve’s head. Ignoring protests from the doctors, Swerve barged his way into the medbay and ran up to Cannonspring. He looked the gray bot over, hoping to find a hint of what he was looking for.

    “Swerve, could you please not do... whatever it is you're doing?” First Aid pleaded him.

    Swerve paid him no heed as he continued to examine Cannonspring’s body. After a moment, he finally went, “A-ha!”, before shoving a hand into an area on the gray bot’s back.

    “Please tell me there’s a reason for this besides to embarrass me,” Crosscut murmured.

    “I know a subspace pocket when I see one,” Swerve replied. “And it would be kinda strange for someone like Nexus Prime not to have one, especially considering the kinds of things he carries.”

    “What are you talking about, Swerve?” First Aid asked.

    Swerve pulled his hand out of Cannonspring’s back portal and showed the others what he had drawn out of the subspace pocket. As First Aid and the others stared at him in awe, the bartender grinned.

    “I don’t suppose your other Protectobot buddies are around, First Aid?”

*  *  *

    “Come on, Ammo, don’t short out on me now.”

    Bluestreak cringed as Ammo crackled with static in response, his voice box left exposed from the deep cut that had taken out the upper right half of his body. Nearby, Trailbreaker was keeping their attacker at bay with his force field; the impenetrable “panic bubble,” as he called it, enveloped the three of them along with Atomizer and Pipes, both who had sustained injuries as well. According to Trailbreaker, the shield would only keep the centaur bot out for thirty minutes; once that half-hour was up, they would all be screwed. Atomizer had said he had radioed in for support, but Bluestreak didn’t have confidence they would arrive in time.

    Outside, Psychokhan bashed his sword against the force field, taunting the trapped Autobots with each blow. “There is no fate that awaits you other than death. Accept your ends now and I’ll make them as quick and painless as possible.”

    “Even if we believed that claptrap, the chances of us getting out of here are equal to you getting in,” shot back Trailbreaker. “Hate to break it to you, but you’re gonna have to wait to murder us all.”

    “Prolonging your deaths makes no difference; you will all fall to my blade.”

    “Great job,” Atomizer muttered. “That really scared him.”

    “Look, it’s hard to act tough when you know you’re gonna die,” Trailbreaker snapped. “Unless those ‘reinforcements’ you called for get their afts here....”

    “Guys, I’m losing Ammo fast,” Bluestreak said. “Can somebody help me here?”

    “Do any of us look like medics?” Atomizer asked. “Besides, what does it matter? We’re all dead anyways.”

    “Wait,” Pipes murmured, raising a shaky arm. “He’s... he’s stopped.”

    Bluestreak looked over to see that Psychokhan had ceased attacking the force field and had taken a step back, still watching the Autobots closely. His attention was then diverted away from the Destructon to a tall, dark figure that was coming towards them from down the corridor, various parts of its silhouette ending in spikes. Although he couldn’t make out any of the figure’s details, Bluestreak couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of dread whenever he stared in its direction.

    All around them, the force field started to flicker. Bluestreak glanced at Trailbreaker whose attention was focused on the approaching figure. Without looking at the others, the black-and-red Autobot raised a servo towards them.

    “On my signal,” he said quietly, “I want you guys to run.”

    “Run?” Pipes asked. “But the force field is still up.”

    “Not for long, it won’t be.”

    “But I thought—”

    “Just do as I say,” Trailbreaker hissed. “And Bluestreak, I’m afraid you’ll have to leave Ammo behind. His corpse will just slow you down.”

    “But he’s not—” Bluestreak started to say only to look down and see that Ammo’s once-blue and yellow plating had since faded to gray, the lights in his visor having gone out.

    The dark figure drew closer and the force field continued to flicker, slowly but surely dissipating around them. Turning around, Bluestreak saw that there was now a gap behind them that would be wide enough for them to escape through. He looked back at Trailbreaker just in time to see him nod.

    “Go.”

    Bluestreak bit his lip, hesitating even as Pipes and Atomizer transformed and drove through the gap. Suddenly, he was back in Praxus, watching the Helix Gardens burn as Decepticon Skyraiders razed the field of blue crystals....

    “I said go, you idiot!” Trailbreaker snapped. “Don’t let my sacrifice be in vain!”

    “You’re not sacrificing yourself for anything.” Bluestreak grabbed Trailbreaker by the arm and began to drag him towards the exit. “I already have enough survivor’s guilt to last me a lifetime.”

    “Why do you think any of you are going to survive this?” The voice had come from the dark figure, whom Bluestreak could now see in clearer detail, making out his spiky maroon appearance. “Do you not expect us to be thorough?”

    “No,” Bluestreak said, trying to sound as confident as his smirk implied. “I expect you to—”

    He heard a cry as Pipes flew over his head, crashing into the last vestiges of the force field and causing it to evaporate completely. Bluestreak whirled around in time to see Atomizer firing his crossbow at a large, brutish mechanoid just before it brought its massive fist down and smashed him into the deck. Bruton then set his sights on the remaining three Autobots as he drew a spiky mace from his back.

    “Oh, scrap,” was all Bluestreak could muster as the three Destructons bore down on them.