Blood Once Spilt

2.June.2007

BEAST WARS: BLOOD ONCE SPILT

The sun was beginning to set and silhouetted in its orange beams sat a curious looking velociraptor crouching upon a cliff, clutching something in its claws.

“By the fetid spark of Unicron!” Dinobot snarled “why won’t you work!” he brought his small, but strong, three fingered hand down upon the small device.

“Traitor!”

Dinobot turned around at the unexpected remark and saw Rhinox heading toward him whit a large grin across his horned face.

“You dare mock me, Maximal” screeched Dinobot. “If I had not joined your side you would have been killed be the predacons ages ago! Dinobot maximize!”

Rhinox wached with a look of pure bewilderment across his face as the raptor transformed and lunged at him whith his sword. The rhino displayed amazing agility for his size by dodging the whirling blade and proceding to knock the enraged Dinobot over with his horn.

Dinobot lay on the floor for a minute but soon regained consciousness.

“What brought that on?” demanded Rhinox with an eerie coolness

Dinobot tried to explain but it all came out in stutters “I…you…me…traitor” the former Predacon was trying to find the right words and finally exclaimed “you called me a traitor!”

Rhinox tried to calm Dinobot down “Relax Dinobot, its okay. I didn’t call you a traitor. In fact I was coming to say the opposite. I was coming to congratulate you on your work on the inter-matrix-spark-psycho-transmitter and help you with any fine tuning.”

Dinobot’s expression changed from that of infuriation to one of gratitude. “Thank you Rhinox” exhaled Dinobot, as if in attempt to breathe out his anger. Dinobot’s expression changed once again to one of confusion and anxiety.

“If you didn’t call me a traitor then who did?” questioned the velociraptor.

Suddenly Dinobot heard a faint whine coming from his left. He turned to face the origin of the noise. His optics narrowed trying to find the source of the incessant whining but his attempt was futile.

Rhinox, however, was staring in horror to the right he hoofed Dinobot in the side and bellowed “are you blind Dinobot! Predacons incoming to the right!”

Dinobot snapped out of searching for the noise and shouted his activation code “Maximize!” along with Rhinox, transforming them both into their robot modes.

They watched as the two small red airborne dots became slowly larger. One grew in to the manic fire ant Inferno and the other into the treacherous pteranodon Terrorsaur.

With out much warning the two Predacons opened fire from the air heavily damaging Dinobot and Rhinox. The two Maximals recovered quickly however and returned fire upon the airborne Predacons, but Inferno and Terrorsaur simply evaded the blasts.

“Foolish Maximals!” bellowed inferno “you are no match for the will of the royalty, Prepare to burn in the fires of inferno!”

Terrorsaur looked upon his comrade with scorn. “Stop making those insane speeches!” squawked the smaller Predacon “we’re trying to destroy them with missiles, not bore them to death with lectures about the ‘Royalty!’”

Inferno rounded on Terrorsaur “You’re just jealous because our queen values me more than you, inadequate worm!”

“Oh yeah” retaliated Terrorsaur “at least I don’t gain Megatron's favour by being the biggest butt-kisser Cybertron’s ever seen!”

The two Predacons continued to argue, completely ignoring the two Maximals below. Dinobot gave Rhinox a quick nod and Rhinox grinned. They turned to face the two Predacons and blasted them. Dinobot fried Terrorsaur with his optic laser beams and Rhinox tried to gun down Inferno with his ‘chain guns of doom.’

The crazed ant simply flew towards Rhinox as if unhindered by the vast amount of bullets being fired into his chest. Eventually Rhinox’s guns stopped firing and slowly stopped rotating. He had run out of ammo.

“You’re finished maximal. Surrender now and I won’t incinerate you…at least not straight away!”

Inferno let out his famous chilling laugh as Rhinox closed his optics, shielded his face and waited for the flame thrower to carbonize him. The searing heat of the flames never came.

Rhinox reluctantly opened his eyes and saw Dinobot with his sword jammed inside Inferno’s already damaged chest. “Thanks Dinobot” said Rhinox, breathing a sigh of relief “I thought I was a goner.”

Dinobot glared at Rhinox and stated “Get a weapon that doesn’t run out of ammunition. Swords never have that problem…”

The impaled Inferno started to twitch. The fire ant grabbed his flame thrower and with what little strength he had left he aimed it at Dinobot. “Die, maximal infidel!” he cried as he pulled the trigger.

Dinobot leapt out of the way of the jet of flame, which carried on past him and hit the inter-matrix-spark-psycho-transmitter. It started to fizz and energon currents shot out of it in different directions.

“Dinobot!”

In the confusion Dinobot thought he heard his name being said, again by the mysterious voice. He spun around trying again to find the source of the voice. Unfortunately, he spun right round to face Inferno. The Predacon let out a maniacal cackle and shot Dinobot squarely in the chest.

Dinobot didn’t even have time to scream in pain as he was launched towards his device. A bolt of energon hit Dinobot in the back as he was falling and his apparently lifeless body hit the floor heavily. The device immediately stopped fizzing after this.

“Dinobot!” cried Rhinox in anguish. He grabbed Inferno roughly by the neck and held the ant’s face close to his own and growled menacingly. “What did you do?”

The ant either ignored him or couldn’t hear. He was lapsing into emergency stasis lock fast. Before Inferno went offline he coughed and hissed “The enemies of the colony will…buuuurrrrn…”

Rhinox roared in frustration as Inferno passed into emergency stasis.

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Dinobot felt a curious feeling surge throughout his entire body. He realized he was on his back and tried to move into a sitting position. He succeeded but when he looked down the body that was before him wasn’t his. He let out a gasp of horror as the grim realization dawned on him.

He was just a spark, without a body. He shouldn’t be alive, but he was, and very much so. He looked around himself and noticed that he was no longer outside on the cliffs but surrounded with holo-simulators, the ones he had put into his inter-matrix-spark-psycho-transmitter.

Dinobot had restored his device to communicate with sparks that had gone offline and joined the matrix. It wouldn’t have been too hard to do, all he needed was to draw out the sparks energy signature using a warp gate, and then for the spark to generate a holo body using the thought activated holo-simulators to create an artificial body and then use the controls to activate a radio transmitter.

When he’d gone to steal the golden disk with Scorponok and Megatron he’d taken the damaged artifact (rumoured to be the great Autobot scientist Perceptor’s last invention before he went offline) and repaired it.

But this was all wrong. It was supposed to draw sparks out, not pull them in! This was too much of a coincidence to have happened by accident, it had must been tampered with but by whom?

An evil cackle came from all sides of the disembodied velociraptor. Dinobot then heard the same voice he had several times earlier “I knew you were stupid, Dinobot” taunted the voice “but I didn’t think you would be stupid enough to walk out on the greatest victory the Predacons will ever have!” It let out another shrill cackle.

Dinobot started to realize that the reason he couldn’t see the speaker was because the voice was inside his head. “Who are you?” He roared, still staring blindly into the shadows

“You don’t remember me, Dinobot? Aww, isn’t that a shame because I would do ANYTHING to forget YOU!” the voice had changed to a more threatening tone.

There was static electricity in the air, Dinobot could feel it. Suddenly Dinobot was looking through familiar optics at a strange body he had not seen since he crash-landed on this strange planet. His surroundings changed immediately as the holo-simulators created a hard photonic world around him.

He looked about himself at the once beautiful Predacon city of Polyhex. Since the Maximal Imperia had come to power, though, the once proud Decepticon city had essentially become an enormous slum due to the crippling reparations payments the Decepticons were forced to pay in their defeat at the end of the Great War.

Dinobot tried to move his arms but to no avail. He then saw his former commander, Megatron, him too in his pre-beast-wars form. Dinobot now understood that he was having an involuntary flash back, presumably caused by who ever was manipulating the device.

“Ah, you’ve decided to take up my offer, then?” asked Megatron

“Yes” answered Dinobot, unable to stop the flash back or prevent himself from talking “I would be more than happy to help you, old friend.”

Dinobot felt sick as he remembered once calling Megatron his friend. “The golden disk is as good as ours”

“Splendid,” crooned Megatron “you have made a wise choice in joining me old friend, yesss…”

A loud whining sound pierced the air and a yellow jet transformer transformed in mid air landed beside Dinobot. It had an emotionless, purple face with a face mask blocking all but the eyes from view.

“I couldn’t help over-hearing you, fellow Predacons” said the jet “and I would very much like to join you in taking that disk.”

His confident remarks were returned with a look of scorn from both Dinobot and Megatron.

He panicked at their reaction “I-I-I” he stuttered “I could be…useful…” his voice then trailed off, his eyes showing a clear sign of panic.

Megatron allowed an evil smirk to pass across his face “I don’t know this transformer, old friend” said Megatron “we mustn’t let any outside party’s know of our plan, he could tell anyone. He mustn’t be allowed to live, no! Obliterate him!”

The jet raised a hidden pistol, drawn from an unknown place, and aimed it for Megaton’s head. Before he could pull the trigger, Dinobot brought his super-heated claw weapon down across the transformers chest. He cried out in pain, but still had the strength to draw

a concealed sword from behind his back and hold it in front of himself for protection.

Dinobot felt his lip curve into a grim smile.

“Finally,” he snarled “an opponent that may be a worthy challenge in a duel.”

The jet lunged at Dinobot with his small rapier and locked his sword with Dinobot’s super-heated claw.

Their weapons clashed again and again. Each combatant took small swipes at the other, causing minor slash wounds. It seemed that Dinobot had the upper hand, forcing the jet into a corner with his superior strength. This was until the jet took a swipe at Dinobot’s leg. He roared in agony as his body fell away from his severed foot. The jet turned to face Megatron, foolishly turning his back on the fallen Dinobot.

“Your lackey leaves much to be desired, Megatron” he said with his lost confidence returning “I hope his mediocre performance doesn’t reflect on yours”. He then brandished his sword threateningly.

Megatron chuckled and said “Never turn your back on an opponent unless he is completely destroyed. If you can’t grasp this simple concept, you are not worthy to join my crew, no.”

Before the jet could realize what Megatron was talking about a crippled Dinobot struck him in the back with his claw. The jet collapsed to the floor, but Dinobot didn’t stop. He was completely consumed by rage and he brought his weapon down upon the jet time and time again until he was satisfied he was deactivated.

A smile went across Megatron's face as he witnessed the sheer brutality Dinobot had acted with. He wondered whether the jet would have told the Maximals or a higher Predacon authority, not that it mattered now. All he wanted to do was repair Dinobot so that tomorrow they could put their plan in action and steal the golden disk.

The flashback ended and Dinobot realized what he had done. He had killed in anger and for a moment thought that he had lost all his honour. The moment was brief, however. The voice inside his head spoke again.

“Megatron was right you know, Dinobot” Admitted the voice “I would have told Magmatron every thing if you had let me live. We would have come and stopped you... and killed you.”

Dinobot realized what was going on and cried “You were the jet I killed so our plan could proceed unhindered” he paused briefly to snort with anger “You brought me here for revenge!”

“Very good Dinobot” confirmed the voice, but this time not from within Dinobot’s head, “And now let vengeance begin!”

Rhinox stared out into the sky in hopes of spotting Optimus Primal or Airazor coming to help him.

“Slag” he growled under his breath “if Dinobot is still alive he won’t last long...”

A large spider crept up behind Rhinox seemingly unnoticed. “You won’t last long either” cackled the spider.

“Tarantulas!” cried Rhinox in surprise.

“That’s right,” stated the spider “I’ll destroy you and Dinobot before Primal even notices you’re missing!”

“I don’t think so,” said Rhinox confidently and pointed at his communicator.

“No, Maximal, I don’t think so!” cackled Tarantulas “I’ve just erected a jamming field around the area, the first of many…”

As the insane spider laughed to himself he failed to notice that Rhinox had picked up his chain gun.

“Keep laughing spider,” growled Rhinox, aiming the chain gun at him “and there’ll not be enough of you left to fill a thimble”

This only made Tarantulas laugh more. “You fool!” he cackled “we both know you’re out of ammo, give it up!”

Rhinox looked crest fallen. His only defence, a bluff, had failed. He turned around as if looking for something, and he found it. Dinobot’s sword was still inside Inferno. Before Tarantulas had a chance to react Rhinox wrenched out the sword from Inferno’s body and held it before him.

“You think that will help you?” mocked the spider “Tarantulas terrorise!”

The spider transformed into its robot mode and prepared to strike. Rhinox lunged at the spider and brought the sword down with terrific force. Tarantulas grunted with pain and staggered back with one of his arms missing. He aimed his missile launcher and fired it into Rhinox’s chest. Rhinox spluttered in agony, but continued fighting. He stabbed at Tarantulas again and again puncturing his chest in several places.

Before the spider succumbed to his wounds he fired his machine gun legs at Rhinox.

The spider eventually collapsed, but not before he had considerably damaged Rhinox. He looked at the gaping hole that had been blown into his chest and then again to the sky line, looking for sign of rescue…

Dinobot watched in grim anticipation as a large robot walked out of the shadows to face him. Its strange purple head had a mouth lines with four large fangs, its arms brandished six long talons and it had two bright yellow wings on its back. The robot was colored a dull gold, except for the strange head. Its glowing red optics narrowed and glared into Dinobot’s.

“You never learned my name, did you, traitor?” asked the former jet. “It doesn’t matter now, I’ve changed it to suit my new transformation, allow me to demonstrate. Transquito beast mode!”

Dinobot again watched as the transformer turned into an enormous mosquito. He opened his mouth in awe. As Dinobot did this he realised that his spark had a different body, his current one.

“I thought that you may prefer to die in your present body, traitor,” stated the mosquito.

Acting on pure instinct, Dinobot unsheathed his sword and rotating shield. The colossal insect pounced on Dinobot and as it did so disarmed him, sending both his weapons spiralling across the floor.

The huge insect prepared to plunge its proboscis into Dinobot’s chest. Dinobot grabbed it and twisted it away from his chest just before it sunk in. Dinobot then slammed on the mosquito’s back as hard as he could and sent it spiralling across the air and into a wall.

In this brief moment of confusion, Dinobot grabbed his sword and again prepared to do battle with Transquito. As Dinobot turned to face his foe, Transquito transformed and stabbed at Dinobot with the six talons on his forearms. Dinobot tried to block them but was eventually overcome by the whirling blades that used to be the mosquito’s legs. One drove itself into Dinobot’s shoulder, another into his leg and the rest tore Dinobot’s sword from his hand and threw it away.

“You fool,” mocked Transquito “you shouldn’t have taken me on, I was trained in the art of multi-blade combat by Magmatron himself!”

Dinobot snorted at Transquito and his eyes glowed green. Transquito stared in shock as Dinobot’s optic lasers blasted him with a beam of green light. Dinobot tried to pick up his sword and finish off the mosquito when he was hit in the side with a powerful missile.

He landed hard on his back. He watched with disgust as Transquito loaded another missile into his mouth and prepared to fire again. With great effort, Dinobot raised his sword and sliced at Transquito’s chest. The blade cleaved through Transquito’s body and a look of rage passed across his curiously fanged face.

Dinobot braced himself for the cold feeling of a talon burying itself in his body but instead of stabbing at Dinobot Transquito took a step back and bellowed “Beast mode!”

Transquito transformed into an enormous ant lion, with jaws larger than the actual transformer. It struck at Dinobot from both sides with its huge mandibles. Dinobot slashed at them for as long as he could, but when he turned to hack at one the other slashed him across the back. Eventually Dinobot gave up and collapsed against the control panel.

“I... surrender,” panted Dinobot, his hand slowly twitching on the levers “you have beaten me.”

Transquito transformed into robot mode with a look of utter glee on his face.

“You mean I, Transquito, have defeated Dinobot, the great warrior?” he paused in anticipation for Dinobot’s reply, but none came.

A loud electrical fizzing noise came from behind Transquito and he turned around to see what it was. He looked up in pure disbelief as he original Optimus prime stood before him, a warp-gate portal glowing behind him.

“I may be beaten, Transquito,” said Dinobot, using all of his power to stay online, if only for a few minutes longer “but he seems to have plenty of fight left in him.”

“This can’t be!” cried Transquito in horror as the giant red and blue robot reached for his gun.

Transquito fired a missile at Optimus, but it had little effect. Optimus simply shot Transquito in the chest and grabbed him before Transquito could fire on him again. Transquito’s damaged body started to glow and a spark reluctantly flew out from within his chest.

Transquito’s body broke apart into the photons of light that it was composed of.

“I may join the matrix now, Dinobot, but I’ll find another way to come back, even if it’s not in physical form” The spark of Transquito shouted. “I’ll take away the one thing you value more than your life -- your honour!”

The spark went into a fit of hysterical laughter, but was pushed into the portal by Prime’s huge, blue hand. Dinobot saw this as his last chance to do what he repaired the device for, even if Optimus Prime was an Autobot.

“Optimus Prime,” asked Dinobot, as politely as he could “Is my honour in jeopardy if I have joined the Maximals to battle a common foe?” Although Optimus’ face mask prevented him from being sure, Dinobot thought he saw Optimus smile at him. Before Dinobot received an answer Optimus departed through the warp gate and every thing went dark…

Dinobot awoke sometime later in a CR chamber. He eventually came to the conclusion that he had been extracted from his inter-matrix-spark-psycho-transmitter. He walked out of the chamber and right into Optimus Primal. Optimus looked at Dinobot with a stare across between anger and curiosity.

“Why did you need that device, Dinobot?” he asked.

Dinobot was not quick to answer. It seemed as if he wasn’t entirely sure himself, but he finally answered.

“I wished to know if my honour was in jeopardy by joining you Maximals against Megatron. I wanted to speak with a Decepticon warrior from the Great War and see if they thought that I had lost my honour. But I don’t think I needed to hear their opinion anyway.”

Dinobot paused for a minute as if thinking what to say, but eventually continued.

“It seems that only a few Decepticon’s followed a code of honour. I battled with one of Magmatron’s lieutenants in the device. He said that what ever it took he would find a way to strip me of my honour. But I believe that I have earned so much honour serving with such honourable comrades that not even Primus himself could take it away.”

He paused again as if remembering who he was talking to and regretting what he had just told him, but still he continued.

“I don’t need a Decepticon or Autobot to tell me if I have honour, I know I have honour.”

With that last sentence Dinobot left the room to head out on a routine patrol, leaving Optimus Primal with a confused and thoughtful look upon his face.

“What happened out there Rhinox?” he asked.

Rhinox had been hidden from view behind one of the CR chambers, trying to repair what was left of the inter-matrix-spark-psycho-transmitter.

“I don’t know…” he sighed “one minute he was dead on the floor, the next he was just in stasis lock. He seemed to get his spark back just before you came to save us. I can’t explain it, Optimus, and I don’t think Dinobot will tell us either.”

“He said something about a lieutenant,” said Optimus “how did that get into the device?”

Rhinox shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe he just kept looking for some way to get out of the matrix, and found it in Perceptor's device.” Rhinox stopped talking and further examined the device. “I guess that Perceptor made this gizmo so that when he died and joined the matrix someone could bring him or someone else back.” Rhinox and Primal both looked at each other for a long time.

“I wonder if we could…” started Optimus, but Rhinox cut him off.

“Forget it. The device is all but slag now. I couldn’t repair it even with my lab on Cybertron.”

The two Maximals left the room, with the inter-matrix-spark-psycho-transmitter discarded in the corner. Without any provocation it started to fizz and a soft whining sound came from inside…

Dinobot watched as the sunset turned from an orange to a bloody red. He wondered if this was the last he would see of Transquito and if he would come back from the embrace of the matrix again and take his honour, like the revolting Predacon said he would. Dinobot stopped worrying and went about his duties.

Suddenly he heard a slight whining noise. He prepared to attack, but as he turned around he saw nothing. His imagination circuits were getting the better of him. He decided that it may be for the best that he just went back to his quarters for the remainder of the evening and forget this whole incident had ever happened.

Sometime after the events of Optimal Situation…

Megatron was in a deep sleep in his bath, with his rubber ducky floating along beside him. He was having a pleasant dream of destroying all Maximals when an eerie whining filled his head. The image of Optimus Primal being crushed underneath Megaton’s foot shattered into several tiny shards. In its place was a strange purple head that had a mouth lined with four fangs.

“Megatron,” it spoke “a stasis pod will soon crash and I have plans for it that you will help me implement. Here's what I need you to do…”

Megatron thrashed about in his sleep causing the bath tub to nearly topple over as the head gave him its plans. Megatron, although unable to stop the dream of interfere understood every word and downloaded it into his memory.

The next day Megatron woke up and decided it was time to implement Transquito’s plan.

“Waspinator,” Megatron called “I have a job for you involving that stasis pod! We are going to get a once valued comrade back from the inferno-minus his most distasteful part, his honour yesss…”

“Ooh, where Megatron get idea to un-kill lizard-bot?” asked a curious Waspinator

Megatron replied “Let’s just say it came to me in a dream…”

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Disclaimer: I don’t claim any rights to any of the above characters; they are the property of the creators of Beast Wars and Transformers.

This is my first fan fic so please be kind and please vote for it in the action adventure competition.

By Thundernerd4.