The Coming

"Why haven't they been dealt with?"

"The problem is all our attempts to destroy them have been too...indirect. We tried hitting mosquitoes with a missile. We need something that will get into their inner workings, like a virus - corrupting them from the inside."

"What do you propose?"

"I propose we use what we've learned. I propose we use the pods."

"We can't. We 'dropped' one, remember? They'll expect it."

"Maybe, but they don't really have a way of dealing with it. Besides, I've worked on a back-up plan in case things go wrong."

"Back-up?"

"Her name will be Carnelian. She is a special agent, fine tuned into the emotive qualities of this race."

"Huh. Emotions are so unnecessary. They breathe disaster."

"Agreed. They are a flaw. A weakness. She will prey on this and use it to implement the destruction of the warriors. "

"Then we will carry out this plan. You have my consent."

"Perfect..."

The fog lifted and he could see for a few meters. It was night time and there was no moon out. The stars were covered in a thinly spread layer of cloud cover. He was walking through a forest. It was silent, save the noise of his own breathing. Dried leaves crunched beneath his feet, but the noise was so muffled he hardly noticed it. He moved through the trees, his spark pulse quick and powerful. His body was tense, every part of his being was focused on finding him.

An owl swooped in front of him, a silent ghost in the dark. Something moved to his right and he stopped. He lowered himself a little and aimed his weapon at the source of the noise. Fear, excitement and the haunting sensation that he was about to kill, or be killed, trembled down his spine. Dinobot held his breath.

The bushes moved forward, branches snapped and something large and black with glowing red eyes leapt forward. In a second, he opened fire. The shriek of laser intensifying inside the barrel of his gun, the piercing scream from the friction as moved through it and the deep, swallowed bang it made as it left slit the throat of the heavy silence. The bright flash of green made impact with the creature lunging for him and there was a small explosion. A startling, feminine scream came through the chaos of sound. The bushes ignited, and her dark form was silhouetted in the flames. She twisted in them, clawing at the air in desperation. She wailed in agony as the fire bubbled her beast mode's skin. Most of it began to melt off or hang limply and she doubled over, fell to her knees and cried. Her hand stretched out for him and slowly she turned to look at him. He saw her face, and screamed.

Cheetor had never seen any of his comrades cry before, and he didn't expect to see any of them do so. Least of all Dinobot. Yet, he heard whimpering coming from behind him, and he turned around in his seat, positioned in front of the monitors, to see Dinobot, asleep in Rhinox's chair, twitching and crying softly. Or at least it appeared he was.

"Must be having one really bad dream," he muttered. The velociraptor had stalked in about half an hour ago to check if Cheetor had picked up anything on monitor duty. He hadn't and Dinobot had sighed wearily and slumped into Rhinox's chair. There he'd apparently dozed off and now he was having a nightmare.

Cheetor debated on whether he should wake him up or not. Personally, he liked being woken from a nightmare, but some prefer to come out of it themselves, otherwise they get startled and even ashamed. He suspected Dinobot might be the latter, so he settled for just watching him. He wasn't quite sure how it worked, but when people hover over you when you sleep and stare at you intently, you tend to wake up (feeling rather uncomfortable).

After a few moments, this worked. Dinobot's raptor eyes slowly opened, closed and then opened again. He lifted his head, yawned and said: "What are you looking at?"

Cheetor blinked and stared at him incredulously.

"You mean you don't remember what you were dreaming about?"

Dinobot hopped of the chair and stretched with another yawn.

"Hmm? No...I wasn't even aware I was dreaming."

He shook himself and transformed to robot mode.

"Any news?"

Cheetor shook his head, still looking a little aghast.

Dinobot snorted and left the room, disappearing down the hallway.

"What. Ever," Cheetor grunted and turned his seat around to face the monitors. He wished he had Rhinox for company, but the big guy was outside teaching Emerald about their surroundings, how sentinel worked and in which direction the Predacon base and their various outposts were.

Emerald flinched. She knew that this was bound to happen sooner or later. She was new to flying, but after the first few days she thought she'd mastered it. She had tried to imitate one of Airazor's nose-dive-then-pull-up-just-before-hitting-the-ground moves, only she was a bit too slow on the 'pulling up' part.

Uncle Rhinox had taken her to the edge of the jungle and explained to her about the different terrains Earth presented. She'd asked if she could fly high up and survey the landscape so as to get a clear view on what he was talking about. He reluctantly agreed, and first opportunity she got, she started playing in the sky. She ducked and dived, did loopy-loops and various other fun tricks.

"Emerald, that's quite enough! Stop fooling about and come back down, now!" he had yelled.

She was disappointed, but then thought of an impressive way of coming back, which ended in a not-so-impressive crunch!

Now she was seated on a rock while Rhinox was re-attaching her dislocated left wing.

"Hold still!" he groaned as she twitched from the pain.

"I can't! It's sore when you do that!"

"Well, it wouldn't be sore if you hadn't pulled a stunt like that."

She pouted.

A few moments later, he was finished.

"There. All that's left are a few scratches that the C.R. chamber can fix later."

She stood up with a sigh and walked over to a little pool at the entrance to the jungle. It was very still and she could see her reflection clearly. She blinked at herself, tested her wing, saw no threatening sparks and settled down to the fact that she wasn't damaged enough to get off lessons.

Rhinox watched her stare into the pool for a while, waiting for her to move. He was growing impatient and was just about to ask her to come back and sit down when she suddenly spoke.

"Uncle Rhinox, do you think I'm pretty?"

That caught him by surprise, and he found himself lost for words for a few seconds. He regained his poise, though, and cleared his throat.

"Emerald, beauty comes in many forms. Your youthful vivacity is what makes you special, and your desire for adventure."

She turned and looked at him miserably.

"So I'm not physically attractive, then. Is that what you're saying?" her voice threatened breaking.

Rhinox was still, calmly trying to allow some kind of response to come to mind.

"No, I'm not saying that...all I'm saying is-"

She covered her face with her hands.

"Don't go on! You've said enough. I'll never be beautiful!!"

She let out a muffled little sob and he sighed and looked to the heavens. Why him, why now?

"Emerald," he tried, but she cut him short with a sudden movement to the rock she'd previously been sitting on, and flumped down sourly.

"Let's get on with lessons," she said flatly.

Rhinox shook his head slightly, but decided he might as well not drag this on. He had a suspicion as to what it was all about, but now wasn't the time to be delving into the situation.

"All right. The Predacon base lies in the middle of an opening in the earth, and hot lava pits swirl about it. So for goodness sakes, don't try and pull that stunt over their base. If the autoguns don't get you, the lava pits will..."

That evening, Megatron took a walk. It wasn't much of a walk, since he was only three hundred meters away from his base. Yet he needed to get out, feel the wind on his face. The lava spirals were behind him, and he leaned against a crisp, burnt old tree and stared into the distance. It was somehow easier to think out here, his head felt clearer. His mind drifted over the events of the past few weeks. Dinobot stole the disks, the Maximals gained a new team member and Tarantulas had a pod which was the key to unlock the mystery of the strange signal he'd received on his computer a few nights ago. So, where did he stand in all this? Well, he certainly wasn't in the best possible position right now. The only advantage he had was that he knew that something was coming. He wondered lazily if the Maximals had picked up the same reading as he? No doubt Tarantulas had.

He tilted his head back and focused on the stars. Somewhere out there was Cybertron - the place that, if he just managed to get his ship working and choc-full of energon, he'd be able to conquer.

"Blasted Maximals," he murmured, without really hearing himself speak. Something was aggravating him...grasping with slippery fingers at his attention. But what?

He narrowed his optics and rustled forward a bit, when something appeared to move in the sky. Yes...something was moving. One of the stars was getting steadily brighter and before he fully realized it, he heard the distant noise of the alarm going of inside his base.

"That was quick," he said breathlessly, and turned back hastily.

Optimus rubbed his head gingerly. A coconut, of all things, had fallen on it when he went out looking for Emerald and Rhinox, since they hadn't come back before nightfall. He'd landed at their last co-ordinates, a little way into the jungle, when bang! An animal shook the tree above him and a coconut hit his head.

"Primus, but those things are hard!" It had been a little humiliating when it bounced off his head and landed into two halves at his feet. The least he could do was enjoy its contents, only it was a very sour coconut. He'd found Rhinox and Emerald a few minutes later. They had been out of comm-range in the dense jungle and were covered in sticky plants and a few confused leeches.

"Sorry. It's my fault," Rhinox had said, "I let her trick me into playing a 'quick' game of hide and go seek. It went on a bit."

"Hmph."

Now everyone was safely inside the base and he and Rhinox were back in front of the monitors.

"How's your head?" Rhinox asked.

"It's fine, thanks."

Rhinox felt he had been foolish. It was just that Emerald brought out a little of his old spirit. He was so used to being rational and calm that when given the opportunity to play an innocent game with his only niece presented itself, he'd given into the temptation without much protest. The truth was, he was getting a little tired of the routine he had committed himself to. The computers were his familiarity, but he needed the occasional break from them.

Rattrap entered the room.

"Yo! Big banana, how're ya feelin'?

Optimus groaned inwardly. Matrix! Did everyone know about the coconut?

"It's all right, Rattrap. Have you finished those repairs yet?"

"Ah, no. I came inta get a 'lil more oil. Da weapons hatch is fixed, it just needs dat squeaky hinge ta be oiled. You know how irritating dat gets afta' a while?"

"I do. My quarters are just down the hall. I hear it whenever it's opened."

Rattrap dug in a cupboard and found a small container of what he sought. He stood up, his body glistening from all the oil that had dripped on him when he'd fixed the faulty escape hatch. Rattrap was relieved that next time they had to make a quick escape, they wouldn't have to struggle to get the door open.

He walked out of the control room. It was one of those rare occasions Rattrap longed for a wash. He felt terribly sticky. He returned to the weapons hatch and carefully started oiling the hinges. The hatch used to be an automatic sliding door, but after so many attacks and base-break-ins, the area had seen its fair share of damage and soon they were forced to start repairing parts of the Axalon with make-shift doors and panels.

He was so absorbed in what he was doing, that he didn't hear someone come up behind him.

"What are you doing?"

His body jerked a little from being startled, and he looked over his shoulder from his crouched position on the floor. There was Emerald, standing hands behind her back, swaying slightly from side to side.

"Oh, hey," he grunted and got back to work.

"I'm just fixing dese hinges."

"Oh."

She bit her lip and looked at the ceiling, kicking the ground lightly.

"Rattrap?"

"Yeah?"

She paused, her eyes wide, her mouth open but filled with no words to speak.

"I...uh...nothing." She felt silly.

She stood watching Rattrap oil the hinges for the next five cycles until he was done. He opened and closed the hatch a few times.

"Not a squeak!" he said triumphantly and started packing up his tool kit for the night.

"Let me help."

She knelt and started packing the tools into a box. Each tool had a specific slot and it took her a little while to work out where each went. Rattrap put them back automatically in the right place. He was finished packing up and Emerald suddenly became aware that he was watching her fiddling with the last object.

"There doesn't seem to be a...spot...for it..." she stumbled, looking into the open box.

Rattrap took it gently from her hand.

"Emmie, it's the oil can. It doesn't have a spot in my toolbox."

She felt a heated flush rush through her cheeks as she realized what she'd been doing.

"Oh, yes, of course."

He closed the lid and picked it up as he rose to his feet.

"Thanks fer helpin'," he said with a cheerful smile and started down the passageway.

"No...prob," she whispered, staring at her feet. She felt like such a blundering idiot.

Why am I acting so weird? I used to be so bubbly and relaxed around him. Nothing's changed...has it?

She sighed shakily, but the turmoil of unpleasant emotions inside of her culminated in a shock of panic when the Axalon's alarms started blaring.

"Eeee!" she squeaked and spun around and ran down the hallway. She caught up with Rattrap, who was frowning at the red lights.

He looked at her.

"Somethin's up, we'd betta haul our butts ta da control room." She nodded and the two jogged down the passageway.

"An' by da way, was dat you squeaking or dose slaggin' hinges again?"

She laughed.

"No, it was me."

* * *

When they met up with everyone else, there seemed a general air of panic.

"What's goin' on?" Rattrap called to Optimus.

Optimus switched off the alarm sirens so the Maximals could hear him.

"The Axalon just got hit by a seriously large alien signature pulse. There's a charge of unknown entities heading towards midland."

Midland was the area between the Predacon and Maximal area perimeters. Whatever they were, they wanted both factions to get there at roughly the same time.

"So, what are we gonna do?" Cheetor asked.

"Isn't it obvious? We're going to meet our foes at their chosen landing site," Dinobot snarled.

"Are you sure that's a good idea, Optimus? I mean, if we all go we could all get vaped at once." Cheetor said worriedly.

Optimus' headache suddenly worsened.

"No, we have to face this together. Rhinox will stay and protect the base, you, Dinobot and I will take lead, with Rattrap, Tigatron and Airazor coming in further behind."

"What about me?" Emerald cried.

"No, Emerald, you're staying here with your uncle," Optimus said firmly.

"But Optimus..."

Optimus just gave her a look and she backed down immediately. She sat down on the table, grumbling. She looked up at Rattrap who was grabbing a few bombs from the slide-down weapons panel.

He glanced at her and shrugged.

"See ya soon, kiddo. Hopefully," he called and then followed the others into the elevator. It descended and suddenly the frenzy was gone and all went quiet.

She turned to Rhinox.

"What do you think is gonna happen?" she asked timidly.

Rhinox sighed, immediately weary with concern.

"I'm not sure. All I know is that the aliens are dangerous, and we'd better be prepared for them."

Emerald looked down sullenly, and for the first time since she'd arrived, she felt really afraid.