The Intergalactic Highway

(( OOC: No worries, Alak. Thanks.

una and company, if you guys get bored, feel free to speed up a little and arrive at the Axalon, if you want. I would think your group should get there before Orcariner's. It's up to you. Rhinox and Rattrap are there after all. ))

"I know that now and I know your disappointed, I understand that, you have a right to be."

Optimus glanced at Saber-Fang while she spoke, then over his shoulder to Dinobot before looking straight ahead again.

"I'm not sure. I think I've always had it inside me, I wasn't fully aware of it until three weeks after I was made General, but I didn't think it was a threat. It was just this presences in the back of my mind."

So it probably wasn't some simple malfunction or crossed wires. Odd. What could cause such a feral state? Her beast mode? ...But she hasn't always had that. None of them did until they landed here. Maybe it was stressed enduced. Being a leader of any sort always had its drawbacks. Stress, worry, the constant optimism required to keep the crew going no matter how bleak things got. He would have to think about this a little more; maybe find some research on what made Cybertronians snap, so to speak. Maybe she wasn't the only case.

"As far as I can tell, it's triggered by a sudden and last minute need to protect myself, other then that I have no idea."

"Perhaps Sonar can shed some light on that," the leader threw in coldly. "It would appear he knows a bit about this." Primal kept his eyes forward. It disappointed him that a Predacon knew of this situation before her own leader did. And, yes, he remembered the way Saber had acted when the bat first showed up with the Predacons. It looked like a mix of surprise and terror on her face. Not to mention what Optimus overheard with Sonar trying to keep Starshadow away from Saber when she was out of control. "Has it only occured in your alternate form?"

Snow Trix glanced at Glowatick as he stuck himself in place to the ceiling then kneeled slightly as the ship began to tip. "One way to get rid of cargo." She said hoping that the cargo hitting Nemisis would be enough to get her out.

"Perhaps Sonar can shed some light on that,"

Saber forced herself not to flinch at the sound of Sonar's name.

"It would appear he knows a bit about this."

"I wouldn't surprised. When that little freak of nature wants to know some thing, he'll kill any one to get it."

"Has it only occured in your alternate form?"

No... she wanted to say but she couldn't bring herself to say it, instead she replied.

Saber nearly stumbled as another wave of exhaustion hit her "Far as I know, yes..."

She felt guiltly about lying to him, it was lies upon lies, she knew sooner or later that it would come back full force and she would deeply regret it, but it was the only way until she could come up with a way to tell Optimus the whole truth.

Steelclaw followed Sonar as he walked for the control room, and followed him in when they finally reached it. Once inside, he looked at the equipment all around. There was a lot of stuff in there he didn't understand.

But his processor was on a different matter.

"So Starshadow was giving you trouble, I take it? Figures, with the whole... 'don't follow Saber'... thing. Y'know, you'll probably never hear her admit it, but you did her a favor keeping her back. That Maximal definitely wasn't her normal self."

"But it does surprise me," he continued. "I kinda' thought you'd be the type to let Starshadow see for herself how unmatched she was."

* * *

Dinobot followed on and listened intently to the conversation. Optimus seemed to doing a good job of directing it to the answers he needed.

Saber-Fang wrote:"Far as I know, yes..."

That was hard to believe. She had confessed only moments before that she'd learned of her problem three weeks after being promoted to General. Of course, she'd excused it by saying it was only a presence in her mind, but what could that even mean? In all likelihood, it was a lie and meant nothing.

* * *

Whitegrazer wrote:Cheetor, on the Axalon, do we have a sparring room?

"Yeah, anywhere Rattrap and Dinobot run into each other," he said.

"But no, not really. The land right behind the Axalon is pretty flat and open, though."

Nemesis growled as the cargo bay doors opened, immediately sucking everything in its path out into the the airspace outside. Looking out there, the female saw clouds and she could feel the breeze as well as the afternoon sunlight hitting her armor. It dawned on her that she was on a ship somewhere, far from the cold vastness of space that was the last thing she remembered.

Her initial instinct was to leap out of the open cargo doors, out into freedom. For a moment she entirely ignored the pieces of junk that were hitting her and flying past her, only appearing disturbed as a spare black and yellow striped Waspinator butt bounced off her chest plate. T

She glanced back to get a better look at what she had assumed to be her capturers, noting the considerable size difference between them. Then with a grin she attempted to transform.

Nothing happened.

Furious Nemesis did a quick check of her systems. Her wings were still there, no major malfunctions, yet something peculiar was going on inside her.. Something she had never experienced before..

Nemesis took a step back from the open gate, sidestepping some more flying debris while doing so.

"What is this place?," she asked the other two.

Sonar opened one of the control panels and started checking a few things over.

"So Starshadow was giving you trouble, I take it? Figures, with the whole... 'don't follow Saber'... thing. Y'know, you'll probably never hear her admit it, but you did her a favor keeping her back. That Maximal definitely wasn't her normal self."

Sonar paused for a split second before replacing a fried wire.

"Starshadow is far to proud to admit when she's wrong."

"But it does surprise me," he continued. "I kinda' thought you'd be the type to let Starshadow see for herself how unmatched she was."

Sonar narrowed his optics as he continued fixing or replacing wires, making it look as if he was contraiting on what he was doing.

"I did what I thought was best. If Megatron wants to win the Beast Wars, he will need every one to accomplish that."

After a few more tweaks he was finished.

"Done," He said looking up at Steelclaw with a straight face. "Some of the wires needed to be fixed or replaced. In doing so the range has been boosted to at least fifty percent, giving you all the range you need to contact Glowstick."

He walked past the bear and headed for the door.

He knows some thing is up. No matter, he's not smart enough to put all the pieces together. He thought with in inward smirk.

He stopped at the door and turned to look at Steelclaw. "If there's any problems, come and get me and I'll see what I can do."

I'll have to keep an optic on Steelclaw, but I doubt he will be much of threat, at least to me. Sonar thought as he left the control room, his optics narrowed.

Glowstick watched as the female appeared to have come to her sense. The ship started to tilt back to a horizontal plain as Glowstick released Snowtrix and released the ceiling. I see you've come to your senses.. You are currently aboard the Predacon assault transport Leviathan. I am Communications officer Glowstick, captain.. and a few other titles I couldn't care about, and this is Snowtrix. Our forces detected you from our force's mother ship the Darksyde when you hit the atmosphere of this unknown planet and crashed into the northern seas. This planet is a massive source of energon, to the point where prolonged exposure is lethal to unshielded lifeforms like yourself. If you continued your actions, I would of simply let you burn yourself out after 3 minutes..

Glowstick then hit the button to the hanger door again as it started to close. As for what we Predacons are, we are your replacement as the Decepticon empire was destroyed and Cybertron went under a process to make more energy efficient lifeforms. We have taken the transformations of the local lifeforms to use as shielding against the planet's energon to prolong our activities outside of the ship as our robot mode field dampers only work in short periods depending on the energon in the area. Now then.. if you have any further questions, by all means present them while we return to the Darksyde, I'm sure you'll want to meet our leader and learn more of the current war waged on this planet.

Starshadow placed a hand on her forehead and took the device, heading out of her quaters, walking past Sonar with a growl as she whispered a death threat.

"Next time, if you ever stand in my way, I won't go easy on you..." and with that, she walked to the entrance of the Darksyde, transforming into beast mode, running to her new lair.

Frilla looked to Whitegrazer as she began to walk with the frilled lizard, smiling a bit, "Well welcome to then since we never got proper introductions and sure I don't see why not." She replied thinking some help might make things less awkward. Well she hoped. "Guess to better hep with names my name is Frilla but I don't think I ever caught your's." She said to Whitegrazer.

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Feralnight nodded, "They shouldn't be that far behind think give it a few minutes they'll be in sight." She replied reverting to beast mode, "And I agree with that. You'd be able to explain the situation better then us, especially with the Decepticon. It's odd though that it was even here." The fuzor said. The question was how it had gotten there in the first place or to why it was here. Something of their past didn't just fall into their laps randomly.

"I'll try." Was all Wintersong could say but it would take time for this to pass over. he felt she could have thought the situation out better and have helped her team better then she had, being reckless only risked getting them killed. Icebreaker and Tigatron were right about trying to move on and the younger tigress would though she wouldn't stop trying to do better with her choice of action. "I think I see Orcanier and Feralnight ahead." She said and zoomed in a bit on them seeing them in the distance.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"And with your technology now you'd be dead unless you have a new form from this planet. Your lucky the ice kept you in a way preserved but you won't last long with outdated form like that." Snow Trix added after the introductions. She was still surprised how tall their ancestors really had been and Nemisis was just an example of how great their ancestors had been regardless of Autobot or Decepticon. But with the femme unfrozen Snow Trix could see this femme must have been quite a warrior back in the day. "And also what should we be calling you? Think a name is better then just 'Decepticon' all the time."

Nemesis stared blankly at the two Predacons for a moment, shifting her gaze from one to the other.

Surely these two were jesting..

She knew things had been bad in the Decepticon empire, and she was well aware of the fact they had attempted to implement what was commonly referred to as 'protoform' technology, a fact that had caused her and others who refused the change to leave Cybertron behind, yet she had not even imagined that the empire would end up falling during her absence. Some unwanted changes were coming about, yes, but deep down Nemesis had hoped these changes were a temporary setback and certainly nothing permanent.

As she contemplated what the two Predacons were telling her, her expression changed to a frown.

These two little furrybots had to be out of their minds to claim they were the replacements of the Decepticons. Nemesis had been part of an experiment to implement new technology herself, and she had seen those (although often failed) experiments get tossed aside for the implementation of a smaller frame size. Yet she remained of a larger size and without any disturbing tentacles or other animal traits like the creatures she had heard about that lived on those organic planets.

This planet is a massive source of energon, to the point where prolonged exposure is lethal to unshielded lifeforms like yourself.

"

Fixing her gaze on Glowstick again, she fought the urge to stomp the creature into the ground.

Unshielded lifeform..

She contemplated the words for a moment, despite the bitter aftertaste they left.

Although Nemesis herself was too young to have gone to Earth, she did know stories told by the Decepticons who made it back from Megatron's expedition there. She had heard rumors of massive amounts of exposed energon crystals which were powerful enough to cause a machine to malfunction and even explode if impacting them. Yet such finds had been rare and only a few fatalities had been reported.

"You expect me to believe you?," she finally responded, the disdain of even talking to these creatures quite apparent in her voice. Doubt, mistrust, dislike, and some confusion as to how she had ended up here lingered in the back of her mind.

"And with your technology now you'd be dead unless you have a new form from this planet. Your lucky the ice kept you in a way preserved but you won't last long with outdated form like that."

Outdated? The other female's words caused the Decepticon to burst out laughing. This situation was just getting more absurd by the moment.

As the laughter finally came to a stop, Nemesis quickly slammed her elbow into a nearby stasis pod with enough force to break a chunk of metal off it. She then snapped the sparp piece, maintaining her balance despite the ship rocking with her sudden movements.

"You amuse me, little one," the large female said without turning her attention to Snow Trix. Instead she was looking at the piece of protoform metal in her hand, letting her fingers trail its surface.

Her frown turned into a faint grin as she located a sharp edge on the metal, suddenly slamming her open hand down on the smoother surface of the remaining part of the stasis pod. A second later she rammed the metal piece through the exposed hand, penetrating the metal and circuits alike. Her face cut into a brief grimace as she did, revealing that she did infact feel the pain.

Lifting up her hand she held in in front of her face, studying the uneven edges of the hole penetrating her palm. Sparks were flying on the inside, the faint humming sound appearing again as the area began glowing once more. The female Decepticon held up her hands so her two smaller companions could see, as the nanobots rapidly started devouring the metal from the piece of the stasis pod in order to repair the damaged hand. She clenched her fist around the shrinking piece of metal, only to reveal a fully revitalized and functioning hand as she reopened it again.

She chose to ignore the sensation of the nanobots inside her still working on implementing the new technology into her own circuitry.

"And also what should we be calling you? Think a name is better then just 'Decepticon' all the time."

"Nemesis is what they called me," the female stated matter-of-factly, while studying the contours of her newly reformed hand.

During their conversation, Orcariner's radar beeped and alerted him of the others' arrival. They were within range so it would take only a few cycles for the scouts to make it back to the rendezvous point.

"Maximize!" he said.

Orcariner stood upright and allowed his glaring height to make it easier for the others to find him.

Sonar wrote:I did what I thought was best. If Megatron wants to win the Beast Wars, he will need every one to accomplish that.

That was quite similar to his explanation of motives the first day he'd arrived on the planet.

And it could make sense. It just seemed with all the heel-dragging Sonar showed when missions were announced, and all the time he spent alone doing who knew what, that pleasing Megatron was not at the top of his list of things to do. Of course, he could still wish to please Megatron even if it wasn't his primary goal, and maybe that truly did drive him to save Starshadow. But for a Predacon who got on Sonar's neural circuits that badly, Starshadow seemed an unlikely candidate of rescue for the greater good.

Maybe he just didn't want anyone observing Saber in the condition she had been in, or maybe he had a lingering doubt in the back of his processor that Starshadow might actually have injured Saber.

What was clear was that Sonar didn't sweat during conversation of sensitive information. Neither he nor Steelclaw had verbally acknowledged Sonar's obvious familiarity with what they'd witnessed on the battlefield, but it must certainly have crossed the bat's processor that Steelclaw was curious about it, and he still never gave any direct indication that it had.

But why should Sonar care? What was it about Saber-Fang's condition that he didn't want to discuss, that he wanted to pretend to be oblivious too? How could an acknowledgment hurt him? Everything seemed to be pointing to a history between the scientist and the general, and it didn't look like it'd been a beneficent one.

Sonar wrote:"Some of the wires needed to be fixed or replaced. In doing so the range has been boosted to at least fifty percent, giving you all the range you need to contact Glowstick."

"Oh," Steelclaw remarked. "I didn't even know something was wrong. I just figured this stuff didn't have the range I needed." He turned around to face the communication equipment. "Shows how much I know."

Sonar wrote:If there's any problems, come and get me and I'll see what I can do.

Steelclaw turned around again.

"Well, thank you, I'll keep that in mind. You've really been an incredible help."

With that he faced the communication equipment and started activating it.

"Snow Trix, Glowstick, this is Steelclaw. How is the mission proceeding?"

"Oh," "I didn't even know something was wrong. I just figured this stuff didn't have the range I needed." "Shows how much I know."

Sonar stopped again and turned his attention back to Steelclaw.

"A simple mistake no harm done." He said with a small smile.

"Well, thank you, I'll keep that in mind. You've really been an incredible help."

Sonar shrugged in disinterest. "I do what I can." He finally left the control room and headed back to his quarters.

Keeping him off my scent will be easier then I thought. But I will still need to keep a close optic on him just in case He thought.

Glowstick watched as Nemesis damaged herself and started to repair the damage Oh good, a masochist with advanced repair system. I'm guessing your at least Micromaster era technology.. In anycase, you can believe what you like when we land, I'd rather not stick around this area too long or the Maximals that tried to hide your body in the deepest hole they could find might attempt to do it again. Snowtrix, you can fill her in.. and try to keep her from breaking too many more things..

As he floated away to the upper level, he detected the radio signal from Steelclaw.

Blazemane wrote:"Snow Trix, Glowstick, this is Steelclaw. How is the mission proceeding?"

Glowstick climbed into the pilot seat pushing his squid drone out of the way, then activated his radio, a video display of Glowstick appearing on Steelclaw's display back at the Darksyde. He transmitted his voice, but appeared to display no sound externally. Well lets see.. I nearly drown a kitten and amazingly the Leviathan suffered only damage from the crazy Decepticon chick we picked up. She calls herself Nemesis, cute but she gives me the creeps.. some sort of masochistic claustrophobic nutbar that can auto repair herself faster then Waspinator.

the Video feed then changed to the Cargobay displaying the image of Snowtrix and Nemesis. On the one hand, I wont have to repair her, on the other.. I'll have to repair everything she touches. But enough of my misery, how'd your date go with Whitegrazer? Toe up and six feet under, or did you manage to sweet talk her into joining us? he then gave a dark chuckle.