This thing has been a work-in-progress since Halloween of last year. It's still not finished, but I figured I'd go ahead and post it now because otherwise I'd have to wait until next year if I wanted to keep it "seasonally relevant." No idea when I'll get around to finishing it; who knows, it could take until next year!
UPDATED 1/2/2024 Finished now
TALES FROM THE LOST LIGHT
HALLOWEEN SPECIAL
The Lost Light - four months after the Prime Wars
“Well, that was a total bust.”
Bluestreak sighed dejectedly as he slumped forward in his seat, planting his elbows on the table as he held his head between his hands. Sitting with him were the few remaining patrons at Swerve’s that hadn’t gotten up and booked it after the complete and utter failure that had been the final day of his themed Movie Week. Things had been going just great; the horror-themed movies he had shown his crew mates earlier in the week had been well-received, with films ranging from worlds such as Nebulos and Brobdingang to Vestum Major and Eurythma. However, his showing of horror movies from Earth had gone down poorly and practically half the room had left within the first twenty minutes.
“I just don’t get it,” Bluestreak said. “I thought horror movies were beloved on Earth. I mean, they make so many of them!”
“In my opinion, human tastes in theatrical productions are nowhere near as sophisticated and well-refined as Cybertronians. Or other species, for that matter,” said Crosscut. “Their concepts are typically trite and their originality leaves much to be desired. Their productions appeal only to the lowest common denominator.”
“Well, Swerve seems to enjoy them.”
“I fail to see how that proves me wrong.”
“I don’t know, I’ve always wanted to star in one of their productions,” said Hoist. “I’ve always felt that I would make for a good monster. Or maybe even a daring hero.”
Crosscut gave the green and orange tow-truck bot a look. “I’ve offered you plenty of roles in my productions but you always turn them down.”
“Because the roles you offer me suck.”
“Ah, you protoforms and your big entertainment productions,” muttered Overhaul. “Back in my day, we kept ourselves busy with work and didn’t need to waste our time watching other bots play pretend. I swear, all of that stuff that cropped up during the Golden Age was what caused us to become pretentious and vain-glorious. It’s how you get bots like Sunstreaker and Tracks.”
“Speaking of Sunstreaker, he was the first out of the room, wasn’t he?” asked Bluestreak. “I thought for sure he’d enjoy them since he’s binary-bonded to that human.”
“What movie was that again?” asked Hoist.
“I think it’s called Twilight or something. It was supposed to have vampires in it, though they didn’t look like any vampires I’d seen before.”
Overhaul jolted at this, his optical sensors brightening as he stared at Bluestreak. “Wait. Twilight and vampires? Are you sure you’re not talking about Bloodron’s warship?”
“Why would I be talking about Bloodron’s warship?” Bluestreak asked.
“Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of the Twilight, capital ship of the Horrorcon Fleet.”
“To be honest with you, Overhaul, I’ve never really been one to keep track of the names of ‘Con ships. If it’s purple, it’s bad and needs to be shot down. That’s all I concern myself with.”
Overhaul harrumphed. “Fair enough, I suppose. Still, anything those humans come up with for their little stories doesn’t compare to the horrors we faced in our final showdown with the Horrorcons at Archa Seven.”
“How so?” asked Crosscut.
Overhaul glanced at him and then to the others. “Are you sure you want to hear it? I’m not exaggerating, you know.”
“After all the stuff we’ve been through together, I doubt anything can faze us much,” said Hoist. “Besides, it has to be more entertaining than… whatever that was.”
Overhaul seemed to mull over the request for a moment. Finally, he said, “All right. I don’t see why not. It’s been long enough for me to have gotten over it. Let’s see… it was Cycle 9598, I believe. I was serving aboard the Iron Hope and we were locked in combat with the Horrorcons in the Archa system….”
Overhaul's Tale: "Twilight's Last Gleaming"
Archa VII, Cycle 9598
If you’ve ever been in open space combat, you would know that it’s not fun. While our flight-capable bots strafed the Decepticon ships, us land-based bots were forced to stand on the ship using mag-clamps to prevent us from floating away. Some of my comrades were daring enough to disable their mag-clamps and go free-floating as they shot at advancing Decepticon fighters, though only a few of them lasted longer than five minutes using that strategy.
Ultra Magnus was leading the defense, standing on top of his ship with all of his weapons bristling. At the time, I had found it strange that he did not use the space armor he wore at the Battle of Obsidar, though of course now we all know the truth about the little guys beneath the Magnus Armor. Still, he was armed to the teeth and his armor was the bulkiest and blockiest I had ever seen it. It would have taken a member of the Decepticon Heavy Brigade to even get close to knocking him off the ship.
Fortunately for us, Bloodron didn’t have any of those type at his disposal. At this point in the war, he was very much doing his own thing, independent of whatever Megatron wanted him to do. He had teamed up with Scorponok for his recent campaign, which just so happened to reunite the Horrorcons with two of their own that Bloodron had lent to Scorponok’s forces. Apeface and Snapdragon were their names, I believe, and I found myself wrestling with the former when he dropped down onto the hull of the Iron Hope, the impact nearly strong enough to send me flying.
“End of the line, Autobot!” Apeface growled, looming over me in his gorilla-bot form. All of the Horrorcons were triple-changers, being able to transform into either a starfighter or a mechanimal. Not sure if they were built like that or if Bloodron had made some modifications to them. Bloodron himself never had a third mode, at least not to my knowledge. In fact, he probably spent more time in his bat mode than he ever did….
Right, sorry. I’m digressing. Where was I? Apeface, right. I’m pretty sure he used to be a gladiator at some point, just going by some of his tactics. He tried to smash me into the hull of the ship, but I was small enough to get under him and blast him from behind, sending him flying into space and knocking into his buddy Snapdragon. The rest of the battle pretty much carried on like this; the ‘Cons would try to knock us off our ship and we would knock them back. It was a constant game of back and forth, with no end in sight.
That all changed when Bloodron pulled out his secret weapon.
Bloodron had been laying low for most of the battle, leaving his second-in-command Bayonet in charge of giving orders. Just after we brought down the last of his ships, leaving only the Twilight, Bloodron came out of his hiding spot and flew straight towards an Autobot soldier I had just met while on the way to the Archa system. I never got his name and, as I watched Bloodron suck the energon straight out of him, I realized I never would.
Somehow Bloodron had gotten his servos on a vamparc ribbon, a weapon that had been banned by Autobot High Command after Zeta Prime had proposed using it early on in the war. It gave anyone wielding it the ability to drain an enemy’s energon and use it as ammunition, a feature which Bloodron was quick to put to use as he started shooting balls of energy at us from his mouth. Before we could even pick up our bearings after this development, Bayonet started doing the same thing; she even started draining energon from other Decepticons as she and Bloodron pushed their way through the front lines!
As corpses of Autobot and Decepticon alike floated around us, Ultra Magnus realized that we would all be sitting cyber-ducks by staying outside and ordered us to retreat back into the Iron Hope. He then ordered the gunners to concentrate all fire on the Twilight while he fended off Bloodron and Bayonet on his own. I thought for sure Magnus was gonna be a goner, but I guess his bulkier armor gave him extra protection from the ‘Cons’ vamparc ribbons and he was able to make short work of them. After pinning Bloodron to the hull, he brought his hammer down and smashed the warlord’s head until it was nothing but tiny pieces of metal. Bayonet then came flying at him only to be sent spiraling by one of his shoulder rockets. She ended up right in the Iron Hope’s line of fire as it released a large energy beam that surely disintegrated her and sent the Twilight plummeting towards the ninth planet of the Archa system. Whatever Horrorcons were left over we picked up and threw into the brig, though Apeface and Snapdragon had already fled to Scorponok’s ship, which had made a retreat after Bloodron had lost the rest of his ships.
It was a bittersweet victory for us. We had brought down one of the Decepticon Empire’s oldest serving warlords but lost a lot of Autobots to his energon-sucking rampage. Its one thing to see a bot get blown to pieces… but to have their life get sucked out like that, leaving behind nothing but a gray husk of a bot… that’s the kind of thing that keeps you up. It still keeps me up, even to this day.
* * *
“Zeta Prime wanted to use vamparc ribbons?” Bluestreak asked. “Man, no wonder everyone hated him.”
Overhaul nodded grimly. “We never found out how the ‘Cons were able to get their hands on them. Sometimes I wonder if even Megatron knew that Bloodron had access to that kind of technology. Like I said, warlords like Bloodron did their own thing and had little respect for Megatron’s authority.”
“Hard to blame him,” said Hoist. “I don’t think anyone respected him when he joined us on our quest.”
Overhaul stared at him in surprise. “Megatron was on this ship? The Megatron?”
“Yeah, back when Rodimus was leading us. It’s a long story—one for another day—but he joined us after we stopped the Heralds of Unicron at Garrus-13. He was with us for about a month or so before we had our showdown with the Secret Order.”
“And you guys were… okay with that?”
“No. But Rodimus and Ultra Magnus had him under watch and he rarely ever ventured out of his assigned habitation suite. If we didn’t know better, it was almost as if he was never there.”
Crosscut tapped his chin. “Wasn’t it around this time that we traveled to Deimus? It was on Drift’s map and the next stop after Caminus.”
“Deimus, right,” Hoist said. “I remember Deimus. That was… that was a trip, all right.”
“What happened at Deimus?” Overhaul asked.
Hoist glanced at him and then the others. “I take it we’re all swapping stories now?”
Bluestreak shrugged. “Might as well. It’s only fair since Overhaul shared his.”
“If you say so,” Hoist said. “So, after we reached Deimus, Rodimus sent out a few scout ships to look for an abandoned Decepticon outpost. I was on one of these ships along with three others when a slight pilot error caused us to crash-land on the planet….”
Hoist's Tale: "The Fear Factor"
Deimus, Cycle 9815
“I wish I had just stayed on the Lost Light,” Huffer muttered.
“The feeling is mutual, my friend,” Sunstreaker replied, sitting next to him as they watched me repair the ship we had crashed in.
Huffer glared at the yellow Autobot. “Yeah, well, we wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t been admiring your reflection!”
“I was not admiring my reflection!” Sunstreaker protested. “I thought I had seen something in the windscreen.”
“Yeah, you did. It was yourself. You just looove looking at yourself. I bet you have pictures of yourself plastered all over your habitation suite.”
“I do not!”
“Can you guys keep it down?” I called over to them. “I’m trying to work here.”
“You’re gonna be working forever at this point,” Huffer groused. “How long has it been already? Twelve hours? A day? A week?”
“By my calculations, we have been in this predicament for approximately three point five hours,” said Perceptor, who was hanging upside down from the ceiling. Well, it wasn’t the ceiling but rather the floor, since the ship had ended up upside down. And he was halfway fused through it rather than “hanging” from it. Look, I’ll explain later, okay? Just… just shut up and listen.
“It should not take much longer,” Perceptor went on. “At the rate Hoist is working, we should be back in operational order within the next five hours.”
“How can you even tell from where you are?” Huffer asked.
Perceptor proceeded to launch into a scientific diatribe with words that I had never heard before and cannot pronounce. Huffer then started to complain about Perceptor’s answer (because that’s what Huffer does best) while Sunstreaker shouted for both of them to shut up.
This was the environment I was forced to work in. If you ask me, I’d say Perceptor was being generous with his estimation.
Eventually, Sunstreaker got fed up with the company he was stuck with and told us that he was going to head out and scout the area. I wanted to ask him to take Huffer with him, but I already knew there would be no point in that. Luckily, I was able to convince Huffer to work on getting our communications array back up and running so we could send a signal to the Lost Light, though of course he couldn’t do this without cursing and grousing under his breath.
For almost fifteen minutes, everything was quiet and I was able to work in peace. Then, Sunstreaker came screeching back into the ship and loudly transformed to his robot mode.
“Cloaking shield. Now.”
“What?” I asked him.
“This ship has a cloaking shield, right? Activate it now!”
“We haven’t even gotten communications back up. Why would I have fixed the cloaking shield by now?”
Sunstreaker growled as he banged his head with his fists. I wondered if that was a good idea, seeing as he was a Headmaster. Yeah, yeah, story for another time and all that.
“We’re in trouble,” he said. “Big trouble.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re not alone on this planet. Scorponok is here.”
“Scorponok?!” Huffer exclaimed. “I thought we saw the last of him back on Earth!”
“So did I,” Sunstreaker said grimly. “But I saw him with my own two optics, in all his purple and green glory.”
“Is he on the way?” I asked.
“Most likely. I’m pretty sure he saw me.”
“Then we don’t have much time. In fact, I don’t think we have any time. Unless Huffer’s gotten the comm array back up and running….”
“Yeah, nowhere close to that,” Huffer muttered.
“Then we’re probably screwed.”
“Let us not give up hope just yet,” said Perceptor. “I’m pretty sure I stored my Biomolecular Displacement Size Modifier in my chest compartment.”
“I’m sorry, your what?” Sunstreaker asked.
“My chest compartment. Let me just—”
“No, no. The other thing. Your Bio…?”
“I know it’s an unwieldy name. Brainstorm suggested calling it the ‘shrink ray’ but I find that to be woefully inadequate.”
“Well, you might want to work on the acronym, at least,” Sunstreaker muttered.
“What does it do?” I asked.
“It works similarly to Brainstorm’s mass-displacement gun,” Perceptor explained. “However, rather than shrinking the target, it shrinks the user and all those selected within a given radius. We could use it to shrink ourselves and escape Scorponok’s attention.”
“Or we could grow ourselves to Titan size and smash him to pieces!” Huffer suggested.
“I’m afraid it does not work like that.” Perceptor lowered a silver panel on his chestplate and reached inside. He rummaged around in his chest compartment for a moment before frowning and closing it up. “Ah. Unfortunately, it would appear I left it in my lab. Either that or Brainstorm took it.”
Huffer slumped to the floor and buried his face in his hands. “We’re all dead.”
As much as I wanted to offer some words of consolation or reassurance, I found it difficult to disagree with Huffer’s assessment. I continued to work on the ship, hoping that it would take my minds off things. We all braced ourselves for the inevitable, waiting for Scorponok to tear his way through and obliterate us all.
When half an hour had passed and we were still online, I looked over to Sunstreaker and said, “Maybe he didn’t see you after all.”
“Or maybe he’s just toying with us,” Sunstreaker replied. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“Well, for whatever it’s worth, I think I’ve finally got the scanners working again. At the very least, we can see how far away he is from us.”
I put the scanners to work and we both watched as the radar swept the surrounding area of the shuttle. With each pass, the scanner came up with nothing; as far as it could tell, there was not a single living Cybertronian (or any object for that matter) within several miles of where we were.
I reported as much to the others and of course Huffer found himself obligated to provide us all with the worst-case scenario.
“He’s probably using a cloaking device.”
Ignoring him, I looked over at Sunstreaker. “What happened to Scorponok the last time you saw him?”
“Grimlock burned him to a crisp,” Sunstreaker replied. “His Headmaster partner got away and I’m guessing got himself rebuilt into a copy of Scorponok by Unicron’s heralds.”
“And did that copy look exactly like the original Scorponok?”
“No, actually. He had black and gold armor plating.”
“And the Scorponok you saw out there was in the regular purple and green?”
“Yup.” Sunstreaker raised an optic ridge at me. “What are trying to get at?”
“I’m starting to wonder if that was actually the real Scorponok you saw out there.”
“He seemed pretty real to me.”
“That’s just it. Maybe he was an elaborate illusion; like some sort of complex holomatter projection. Trailbreaker’s told me a lot about how his projections work; he even said he once made a hologram of Halonix Maximus that was convincing enough to scare off Megatron.”
“If it’s just a hologram, then who cares?” asked Huffer. “Let’s just finish fixing up the ship so we can finally get off this dirtball!”
Without warning, the ship suddenly shook violently. We were all knocked off our feet (or at least those of us who still had feet) and alarms started to blare all around us. I scrambled back to the scanner and got it to give me a visual of what—or who—had caused the shake.
“Let me guess,” Sunstreaker said. “It’s Scorponok.”
“It’s not Scorponok,” I said.
“Was it an earthquake then?”
“It’s Sixshot.”
“Sixshot?!” Huffer exclaimed. “Sixshot is here?! And Scorponok?! Oh man, we are so slagged.”
“That does not make sense,” Perceptor mused. “Sixshot has not been seen in centuries.”
“Maybe this is where he’s been hanging out this whole time!” Huffer pulled himself into a fetal position against the wall and clutched his head. “We are so dead we are so dead we are so dead—”
“Can someone shut him up so I can concentrate?” I said.
“Concentrate on what?!” Huffer snapped. His optical sensors were flashing wildly. “We don’t have any systems other than a crappy scanner! We don’t have any weapons and even if we did…. I mean, if the Wreckers couldn’t take him out in any of their many clashes with him, then what hope do we have?! I’ve seen what he can do! I’ve seen squadmates get slaughtered by him! We are dead, Hoist! We are—are—are—”
“Huffer, calm down or you’re going to—”
Huffer’s body seized up and spasmed before going completely rigid, his optics shutting down as he went into stasis lock.
“Well,” Sunstreaker said, “you got what you wanted.”
Shaking my head, I looked back at the scanner to see how long we had before Sixshot broke through our hull and killed us. To my surprise however, where he had just been mere seconds ago, the Six Changer was nowhere to be found. When I said as much, Perceptor startled both me and Sunstreaker by raising his voice.
“A phobia shield! That’s it!”
“A what shield?” Sunstreaker asked.
“A device created by the Galactic Council to scare unwanted visitors away from their territory. It latches onto a conscious being’s greatest fear and manifests it as a physical projection. When Hoist brought up the possibility that Scorponok may have been an illusion, I started to have my suspicions, and if Sixshot has vanished now that Huffer has passed out, then those suspicions have been confirmed.”
“But they’re not holograms through, right? Because that shake felt very, very real.”
“Most phobia shields only use simple projections,” Perceptor said. “But it is possible that this might be a newer model, one that uses an improved form of holomatter.”
“Great. So that means we need to shut ourselves off in order for the phobia shield to stop attacking us. Which means we can’t call for help, we means we are stranded here forever.”
“One of us will need to stay online,” I said. “If the phobia shield has only one fear to latch onto, then it’ll be easier to escape.”
“And how do we decide that, huh?” Sunstreaker asked. “There’s no use if our fears are something big and scary like Scorponok or Sixshot or, I dunno, Tarn.”
“I guess we can rule you out then.”
Sunstreaker opened his mouth as if to retort, but stopped himself. He glanced at Perceptor, then at me, before shrugging. “All right. I hope you guys know what you’re doing.”
With that, he willingly placed himself into stasis lock. I’m guessing his human Headmaster partner did too; I’m not exactly sure how their whole thing works, but since it didn’t cause us any problems, I guess he knew what he was doing as well.
“That just leaves you and me, Percy,” I said to Perceptor.
“Indeed. I take it you don’t have any gripping fears that will impede our progress?”
“Gripping? Yes. But it won’t impede our progress.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I know exactly what my fear is. Can’t say we can afford finding out yours.”
I picked up a tool of mine off the floor and struck Perceptor in the head with it, knocking him into stasis lock. Not my proudest moment, I have to admit (don’t worry, I apologized for it afterward). With no one else but me for the phobia shield to latch onto, I was able to work on repairing the ship in peace. Eventually, I was able to finish Huffer’s work on the comm array and got a distress signal out to the Lost Light. For the next few hours, it was just me, three unconscious Autobots, and the vast nothingness that surrounded us. I don’t think I’ve even been more happier to get back onto the ship than when they finally picked us up….
* * *
“Your greatest fear is loneliness?” Bluestreak asked.
“Were the nuances of his story that lost on you?” Crosscut retorted.
“I mean, it only kind of came up towards the end….”
“But you could hear it in his voice! In how he told the story! The pathos that he put into every word….” Crosscut turned back to Hoist, a hand over his chestplate. “I owe you an apology, Hoist. I underestimated your storytelling abilities. I promise you that I will one day craft a production worthy of your talents.”
“Uh, thanks,” Hoist said. “I, uh, can’t tell if you’re being serious or not….”
“Right then, director-bot,” Overhaul said. “Your turn. I’m sure your story will blow all of ours out of the water since you have such a way with words.”
Crosscut narrowed his optics at the smaller green and orange bot. “Your sarcasm is hardly subtle, Overhaul. But very well. Since we are sharing stories that are apparently nightmarish in nature, it is only natural that mine takes us back to one of the darkest days in Cybertron’s history….”
Crosscut's Tale: "Monsters in the Dark"
Cybertron, Cycle 9701
It was during the height of the Cataclysm. Thunderwing had amassed his cult of followers and given them monstrous forms, mutated by the effects of his synthetic Dark Energon crystals. Amongst these “Monstercons” (no relation to the twisted creations of Gigatron) were such fearsome foes as Skullgrin, Bomb-Burst, and Iguanus! Many an Autobot had fallen to these precarious pretenders and it was up to me to lead my squad through their terrible trap.
“Is all the alliteration really necessary?” Hoist asked.
Shut up. Anyways, my squad and I were traversing the shadowy plains of the Badlands, investigating a distress signal that we had received, when we ran into a team of Decepticon Pretenders! Silverstreak, the reckless bot that she was—
“Hey, I know her!” Bluestreak said. “We came from the same assembly line. She and I used to—”
Quiet! No more interruptions! Ahem. Being the reckless bot that she was, Silverstreak charged head first towards the Decepticons, guns ablaze, only to be jumped from behind by Iguanus. Cordon took aim, about to try and blast him off of her, but he was distracted by Bomb-Burst and Bugly flying above his head.
It was at that moment that Skullgrin revealed himself, cackling maniacally. It was clear to me that this whole thing had been an ingenious trap set up to—
BREEP! BREEP!
Set up to—
BREEP! BREEP!
An ingenious trap set up to—
BREEP! BREEP! BREEP!
* * *
“For Primus’ sake!” Crosscut slammed his hand on the table. “Can’t I finish my story?”
“Sorry, guys,” Overhaul muttered, getting down from his seat. “Riptide’s hailing me. I promised I would help him fact-check his report on the Battle of Altihex.”
“More like he wants you to write his report for him,” Bluestreak said under his breath.
“Thanks for the fuel, Blue,” Overhaul said as he headed out. “And thanks for sharing your story, Hoist.”
Crosscut harrumphed he as he rested his head in his hand. “Would’ve been nice if I had gotten to share mine….”
“I best be heading out, too,” said Hoist. “Bet there’s a queue outside the medbay full of bots complaining about a loose screw or something….”
Once Hoist had left, Bluestreak was left alone with Crosscut. The Autobot gunner looked over to his silver and red comrade and gave him a sympathetic smile.
“I’m all audio receptors, in case you wanted to finish.”
Crosscut shook his head. “I’ve already lost my train of thought. Besides, it’s hard to be passionate about a story when someone—even if its just one person—is not invested in it. Such is the struggle of a creative soul; one negative voice is louder than the chorus of approval.”
“Right.” Bluestreak did not at all sound like he understood. He reached behind the counter and brought out a fuel can. “Care for one last round of Nightmare Fuel?”
Crosscut sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”
Postscript
Four months later
“All right!” Bluestreak said to his gathered audience. “Everyone ready for Movie Night?”
“It had better be good,” groused Gears. “The last one was awful.”
“Don’t be such a philistine,” retorted Crosscut. “While they may be barbaric in some regards, the Femaxians have a unique culture that I think is translated beautifully to the screen.”
“Just please tell me it’s not another Eurythman flick,” said Pipes. “I can only take so much singing.”
“Don’t worry, it’s an Earth flick,” Bluestreak assured him. “In fact, it’s a new one that just dropped recently. I don’t know how Swerve was able to pick it up, but he says it was released on a day when humans celebrate their love for each other, so I imagine it must be pretty special.”
“So long as it doesn’t have any van pyres,” said Sureshot. “Or whatever those things were called.”
“Nah, none of that here. I think it has something to do with morality; Thirty Shades of Grey or something like that.” Bluestreak double-checked the title. “No, wait, that’s a five. Anyway, I’m sure it will be a clean and wholesome flick.”
“If not, I’m going to punch Swerve in the face,” grumbled Gears.
“All right, everyone comfy?” Bluestreak grinned and hit the play button.
