Dark took over, “dude, I know that feeling.” He says, “my original thought of me as nothing but a monster, which I was, and I wanted nothing more than to serve Unicron but scrap happened; you’d be surprised what happens when your only company is your other when falling outside time and space.”
“If it means anything, I’ll help you not be treated like garbage or a monster.” Dark says, offering his hand to shake.
If he had them, LD-L1 would have pursed them in exasperation. “Worthless, Worthless, overpriced, junk, fake, probably all fake but cannot be bothered to check. You sould probably verify your selections before you try to sell to someone.” He was likely ruining this merchant’s day, but he had little patience for con artists. “You should know as well as I do rhag the humans don’t like their artifacts leaving their worlds.”
With the meeting coming to an end and the councilors departing, Axis let out a deep sigh of relief. No one ever said being Prime would be fun… or easy for that matter.
She made her way to her personal chambers in order to pack for the trip. With a snap of her fingers she opened a subspace portal and placed in various belongings. Her favorite pillow, a couple framed pictures, all that sort of thing. Her attention however was quickly pulled to a large object on the floor. She walked over to it and picked it up. The severed head of Nemesis Prime. A keepsake from her fist major victory as the new Prime… her only major victory as the new Prime.
As she held the head in her hands, she felt it’s cold and lifeless eyes bore into her, judging her.
What if all that was just a fluke? A trick of cosmic luck playing to her favor? What if it was something she couldn’t do again?
Her skills hadn’t been tested in five thousand years. She used to be a warrior, a gladiator. But before the other day she rarely ever needed to pick up her blade. She was the one who fought and killed Nemesis Prime. But now some random insecticon anarchist was able to not only keep up with her, but significantly harm her. Had she grown soft? Had she lost her edge? Was she really able to handle a crisis like this again?
Axis quickly pushed the thoughts out of her mind and tossed the head into her subspace portal. Such worries were counter productive. Whether or not she was capable didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she needed to try to the very best of her ability. And that’s exactly what she planned to do.
“No, we’re ready to go as soon as you’re able.”
Maximus replied.
Honeycomb was already heading up to the living quarters and set to make herself comfortable.
“Oh, I suppose we outta talk payment before we get going. How much is this gonna cost?”
The predacon asked.
Seraphicon sends a signal to the others going on the mission that he had a ship ready to go.
“It seems we have transport ready and waiting,” Defender says. He transforms into tank mode, and begins rolling down the street, his treads clanking as he moves.
Maybe I could stand a bit of oil, he thought. I forgot about getting repaired since last time I took a trip.
Hearing the sound of tracks, Oreo looks up from reading Seraphicon’s message.
“Let’s see what we’ve got this time,” he exclaims, swiftly changing into his vehicle mode. He drives off towards the spaceport, for once keeping within the speed limit.
“Excellent,” Beta Maxx says with a relieved sigh. He then looks past Seraphicon at the Pack Mule, as the dock workers finish preparing it for flight.
“And I see we’ve already acquired a new mode of transport,” Beta observes. “Wonderful. Is everyone here? I have quite a lot to tell you all.”
“True. Terrans do tend to be a tad possessive,” the merchant says, nodding his head. He smiles thinly, attempting to conceal his irritation. “I, however, believe that my species’ rich history should be shared with our galactic neighbors- especially with cybertronians! Our two histories are so often intertwined, after all…”
Undeterred, he picks up the engraved pauldron and holds it up for LD-L1 to get a better look at the sword-and-lantern crest. “Take these scraps of armor, for example,” he says. “This symbol is the Witwicky family crest- as in Jameson Witwicky, the human who helped the Autobots win the Battle of Mission City. Have you ever wondered what his descendants got up to after the Great War? Wouldn’t you like to own a piece of that history?”
As Oreo and Defender drive to the spaceport, a human woman runs after them on the sidewalk. Leslie Jiménez-Hansen weaves between the legs of cybertronian pedestrians as he frantically waves the pair down.
“Only a modest sum,” Quickdraw says. “I’m no luxury barge- I don’t ask for that kind of money.”
The man names his price, and sure enough, it’s easily affordable for most cybertronians.
There is a knock on the door to Axis’s chambers. Downburst stands in the hall outside, waiting not-so-patiently to speak with the Prime. Her impatience is born of worry: on her datapad are reports from across the New Imperium concerning fleet movements through cybertronian space. The reports contain nothing out of the ordinary at first glance, but the recent revelation has called them into question.
Maximus happily paid the fee.
“By the way, you ever actually been to Eukaris before?”
He asked.
Axis nearly jumped at the knock at the door. Her feathers bristled, nearly standing on end. Though she very quickly tried to ease herself. She pat down her arms and legs so that her stress wasn’t so visibly obvious. She put on her usual calm expression and went to answer the door.
By every appearance, the Prime looked no different than usual. As cool and composed as ever. But anxiety still burned in her frantically beating spark. Doubt still stormed in her mind. Those dark and soulless eyes still haunted her.
As soon as Axis opened the door, she was quick to notice the Angelicon’s worry.
“Hello Downburst. Have you something to report?”
Oreo, hearing the shouts, skids to a halt, much to the chagrin of Defender, who is forced to reverse his tracks almost instantly. The result is a loud grinding of metal on pavement, along with a large shower of sparks.
“Drat you,” Defender mutters.
“Ooops…”
Oreo detects the reporter catching up on the sidewalk.
“Do you need a ride?”
Seraphicon nods, “just waiting for everyone so we can launch.” He says.
“No I don’t really, one, that crest is wrong, the Ermine backing pattern isn’t oriented correctly, nor is the sword. As a matter of fact, it’s upside down, a particularly egregious error as a sword pointed down indicates defeat or the struggle ceasing. Second, I know quite well what they did after the war, namely they went into the Diplomatic corp, and established a few colonies if I recall Properly. You’ll need to try harder than that, or better yet show me a genuine article.”
“Been there a few times,” Quickdraw says with a nod. “Nice planet. Good people. I’ve thought about settling down there, even.”
“Yes,” Leslie pants as she trudges up to the odd duo of the ancient Earth tank and the brand label-covered car. “That would be great, thank you.”
Presumably, she would then open Oreo’s passenger-side door and climb inside- unless the bot has any objection to that, of course.
“Yes, of course,” Beta Maxx says. He looks around the docks, taking note of Razor and LD-L1 among the merchants. A red human pickup truck crawls slowly through the crowds of travelers, and Salvage transforms into his robot mode as he approaches the group. Like Beta, he, too, seems tired.
"Alright, I’ve got everything squared away with Riveter. “I’m pretty sure she’ll shoot us if we come within a hundred yards of one of her ships again, but let’s not worry about that right now.”
“I assure you, everything here is genuine,” the merchant insists. He takes a step back, gently places the engraved pauldron back beside the helmet, and then points over to the half-destroyed android mounted upon a rack.
“That Revenant tried to kill me- I’ve got the scars to prove it,” he says. With his other hand, he tugs his sleeve back to expose three thin lines of scar tissue running up his forearm. The android’s hands each have three slender fingers ending in sharp points- it’s possible that this “Revenant” was indeed the thing that inflicted this injury.
“Not really,” Downburst admits. "Actually, I was hoping you had something to say. I mean, if Firestorm and that other guy are right, then the quintessons might be coming back- what should we do? Do we tell everyone? Warn the Allied Species? Sew up a white flag and invite the Imperial Magistrate over to Iacon to negotiate our surrender?
“…We can probably rule out that last one right away, huh?”
“Welcome aboard,” Oreo exclaims, opening the passenger-side door. His interior is luxuriously decorated with carbon-fiber and black leather, along with an excessively complicated dashboard that is displaying speed, rpm, fuel, energy efficiency, and weapons. His Overcharger is mounted to a contraption in the back row of seats, likely for use by a passenger. A touchscreen display flips out of the passenger dashboard, showing icons for radio, video, phone, and text communications.
“The only thing I don’t have yet is a champagne cooler, so you’ll have to wait until we reach the spaceport to get drinks or food.”
Kitai turned towards Firestorm and Dark. He looked them in the eye.
His face was silent, and dark. Suddenly he asked a question. “Do you?”
He said, he face unwavering. “Do you understand? You had a choice. You always had a choice. Me? What choice? What servitude? There was nothing. Did you hear me? Nothing. And you all don’t understand just what that means, do you? You each had your chances, while i, was nothing. You had free will, a chance, something to help. I massacred families, loved ones, all to satiate a sick freak’s love for death. Tens, maybe hundreds, fell. Realizing that? Felt like the worst thing ever. And never knowing. You had each other, while i had rotted away for years. And do you know what happened? The blood never left my hands. When you returned, people greeted you, knew you, perhaps even welcomed you. And I froze, never knowing that after everything that happened, I couldn’t even remember the pain. I tore my kin, human, and others, to their graves. All for nothing. For a cause, that never mattered. And now, I’m here, at this crossroads, where people don’t trust, me, trust you, and bow to the others. What service does it all suffice for? And for all the primes power, all their greatness, why am I alive? An act of kindness, or did no one care? Regardless, nothing will repay what happened. Because unlike you, i can’t atone for my nature.
I can’t wave my hand and make the pain and torment stop. Answer me this:
Why do you think you can help stop others, from treating me from what i am? Who are you to stop others from being afraid? And what do you to gain from it?”
Razor looks over towards the company’s new transport, noticing Kitai and Firestorm conversing, as well as the others grouped at the ship. She heads over to Beta Maxx, wondering if anyone else has arrived yet.
Dark and Firestorm think on this for a moment, “well, to answer the first: all I can do is my best effort to extent the hand of friendship and the offer to stand up for you if others look down on you. To the second, I can show through my own interactions with you that there is more to you than they think, whether or not they stop fearing you is their choice but how you respond to that is yours. The third: I would hope to gain a friend, maybe not feel so alone,” Dark pipes in, “but I wouldn’t do it for any glory or fame but to try and do good and help someone who we feel a kindredness to.” They say.
“It isn’t for any selfish reason but to help someone and do good.” Firestorm says, “we all have a choice.”
Leslie is, for a moment, speechless. This level of luxury wasn’t at all what she was expecting.
“That’s perfectly fine,” she manages to reply. "You have just about everything else…
“I’ve worked things out with my producer,” she tells Oreo. “He thinks I’m doing a day-in-the-life sort of thing with various cybertronian dignitaries.”
Beta Maxx and Salvage are doing their very best to not eavesdrop on Kitai and Firestorm’s spark-to-spark-to-spark, while they also wait for the group to assemble. Beta, in particular, scans the crowds anxiously while rapping his knuckles against his thigh, producing a quiet metallic tapping sound.
“Very nice!” Maximus replied with a big bright grin.
“I wish I could move back to be honest. Iacon is great and all, but nothing beats home for me. The big open sky, the towering mountains, the dense jungles. There’s no other place like it.” The predacon spoke with a distinct air of nostalgia.
“If you plan on settling down there I’d definitely say go for it. Though you’ll want to put a lot of thought to where exactly on Eukaris you want to stay.”
“I’ll be perfectly honest. I have… nothing. The Quintessons are still such a foreign concept to me. I don’t know what approach to take. The best I can come up with is warn our allies and put our worlds on high alert. But the last thing I want is to raise a galactic panic over what may be a false alarm. Especially after we were let out of our exile just a few short days ago.” The Prime replied nervously.
“Well, as long as Lady Axis is around, you won’t be wrong,” Oreo says. He begins rolling towards the spaceport again, though at a much safer speed than before. Behind him, Defender slowly follows, taking a last look at the statues of his old comrades. He salutes the statues, then transforms to tank mode.
“May Primus guide us,” he says quietly.
“So I’ve been told,” Quickdraw replies. “You two get comfortable- we’ll be breaking orbit 'fore you can spit.”
The man leaves the common area and strides off to the vessel’s cockpit. Moments later, the whole ship shudders as its engines are brought online and its hatches snap shut. The rugged spacecraft heaves itself off the landing pad and lurches forward, twin tails of plasma trailing behind it as it climbed steadily skyward. Out a nearby viewport, Maximus and Honeycomb could watch the spaceport, and the rest of our heroes, slowly disappear from view.
“Well, you know what they say,” Leslie says with a self-satisfied smirk, “the best lies always have a hint of truth to them.”
@ValkyriePrimal @BlackBeltGamer98 @DuneToa @ProfSrlojohn @MakutaOisli
With our heroes nearly-regrouped at the spaceport, Salvage looks over their latest spacecraft. The Pack Mule is a sturdy ship that will doubtlessly serve its new crew well. The dock workers disconnect the hoses feeding energon into its engine, and the last of the supplies that Seraphicon had requested are loaded into the its cargo bay.
“No way!” Salvage says, recognizing the vessel. “The Pack Mule? I thought it got scrapped after that whole thing with the-… never mind. So, who’s gonna pilot?”
“Respectfully, ma’am, I think there’s gonna be a panic whether you want one or not” Downburst says. “Quintessons tend to have that effect. Chancellor Patel’s probably going to alert the rest of the Human Polities- that’s what I’d do if I was her, anyway. We can’t control how they’ll react.”
“Really?” Kitai asked. He hesitated, before talking. “Thanks.”