The Planet of Youth

This fan fiction is long overdue - I know and I am sorry for the wait. I had to do a lot of re-reading of my previous fan fiction to even remember what was going on before I wrote this story. This is the penultimate fan fic in my Uprising series, so it is very technical and it's basically a build up to the next, extremely action packed fan fiction (which I've already started!) I do a lot of explaining in this story and sometimes, I'll admit, it can be a bit of a drag- which is why I've included some here-and-there light hearted scenes to combat the serious ones. It's largely unedited and it needs a lot of polishing, but I'm too lazy and impatient to do that, so here it is: try to look past the spelling errors and the odd redundant word and enjoy!

Tarantulas took a deep breath and entered the General’s office. He stepped inside the small, sterile room and the General arose from his seat, a grave look on his face.

“Greetings, Tarantulas. I trust, now that you are here and safe, that you will explain to me why you are here, and not in the Altron Chamber?” the General asked, as Tarantulas knew he would.

He had a lot of explaining to do. He’d snuck away from the Quantile Laboratory after hearing of Kismet’s death and of discovering whom she was searching for before her demise. He had headed towards Vixadonia, wearing the latest anti-detection shields to hide himself from both factions. He had come to Vixadonia to express a change of tactics in his obtaining of the plans for Vector Sigma. He had also come here to find the person Kismet seemed so intent on locating. Here he was now: in the innermost core of Vixadonia, having to explain everything to the Maximal General. However, Tarantulas had a way of explaining ‘everything’ without actually explaining anything.

“Sir,” he began. “When I said I was capable of getting the plans of Vector Sigma from the Altron Chamber, I didn’t exactly mean me. Vector Sigma has recently been placed off limits. I was actually intending on using someone else, who is able to enter the chamber and retrieve the codes for me, I mean us.”

“Her name was Kismet and she was a special unit…one of a kind. She can get through the highest security systems on the planet undetected. I was going to use her to obtain the plans for me. She was, however, unfortunately slain yesterday, a mere few hours before the operation.”

The General looked shocked and was about to say something, but Tarantulas cut him off.

“However,” he continued, “She was looking for someone. She used the laboratory’s scanners to locate a Maximal femme who is, I suppose, in some connection with her. This femme, I have reason to believe, is here, in this base. I need to talk to her, to ask her questions. I have a feeling that she may prove very important to our plans. If she is of no use, I will do the job myself. It will prove difficult, but I’ve pulled off some pretty impossible things before, and Vector Sigma isn’t totally beyond my reach. I am afraid I don’t know why Kismet wanted to speak with this girl, but I would like permission to go and see her, talk to her and find out what she knows.”

The General had a lot to take in, and he wasn’t happy that the deal they had with the Tripedicus had been so flimsy to start with. Their promises had been vague, and that was made all too apparent now. They didn’t really have a plan to get the codes in the first place, and were rather relying on luck more than anything. Tarantulas was their last hope, and if he needed assistance to get these codes, then he knew that it was up to him, on behalf of the Maximals, to do all that was in his power to aid him.

“All right, Tarantulas. I will let you do this. However, after you have talked with our unit, I want you to report back with more information regarding this matter and what news you have gathered from her. Her name is…?”

“Diamond,” Tarantulas clarified. “A lieutenant in your ranks, I believe.”

“Captain, take Tarantulas to Lieutenant Diamond. Wait outside until he is finished and bring him back to me.”

“Yes sir!” the captain said and guided Tarantulas down the corridor to a room.

Tarantulas was offered a seat while the Captain assured him he’d be back in a moment with Diamond. Tarantulas waited impatiently. The sun was high in the sky now, and time was not on his side.

Diamond opened the door of her room and peeked inside. Dinobot and Magnanimous looked up. She smiled.

“I must say, your newly discovered brother bears a striking resemblance to you in his manner,” Dinobot said with what looked like a small smile.

“I never said that. It is very sudden, but at the moment, everything seems to happen suddenly. I have no problem with it. In fact, I think it is good that you have found him. He seems so much like you; I think you can share your burdens with one another. He is, also, a lot more talkative than I am, so he will be taking a lot of the annoying babble I have to listen to away from my ears!”

“Yes, well, I think I shall leave you with your brother. I have to report to a colonel and receive orders,” he said, making his way to the door.

Diamond suddenly remembered what Major Maxtrel had said to her the night before.

“No, wait! I need to tell you something important,” she said softly, glancing over at Magnanimous, who was sitting and looking at her curiously in the corner.

Diamond and her father entered his quarters. He sat down at his desk and looked at her.

She told him everything Major Maxtrel had explained to her. The entire plan - the Operation and the proposed date for the operation to be initiated. He listened intently to her and sat through it all. By the end of it, his face had grown very serious.

“That was all he told me. You’re to act like you never heard this when you get your orders, was his only request.”

“And that you must remain here and perish, when you had so much going for you. What a terrible loss,” he almost whispered.

She felt a sudden pain inside of her. She had never seen him look so despondent, so defeated. She came and knelt next to him and held his arm.

The silence was broken by a knock on the door, and a loud, sharp call from a bot outside.

Megatron turned and looked at the speaker. He’d been in another one if his dazes, and much to his annoyance, he tended to mutter while he thought. It could prove to be a problem, one of these days.

“Oh, nothing. Just thinking aloud. What is it that you require of me? Orders?”

“You missed the meeting this morning. Where were you and that wasp? Neither of you were seen last night either,” he demanded.

“I…uh…I forgot. But, I was working on those Air force orders last night. Turned out I would have missed a few distress calls from Air force officers had I attended the meeting,” Megatron said coolly, although his mind was racing.

“You have Majors to do that for you so you can attend those meetings. Don’t miss another, you hear?” he growled.

The General walked off. He’d approached Megatron in the corridor, just outside his office. He’d caught him totally unawares. The truth was, Megatron was quite aware of the meeting, but he was involved last night in hearing Waspinator’s report. And this morning he sent out Vindictive to ‘obtain’ Tarantulas for him. Vindictive was first to tell Tarantulas to meet Megatron at the Crown (an old Predacon building no longer needed and left empty) and if Tarantulas refused, he was to bring him back by force. Megatron had given Vindicitve a Tixer Gun, which was basically the transformer version of a needle, filled with a fluid that shuts down a transformer’s system temporarily. It literally puts them to sleep for a few hours. Megatron had no problem in forging Vindictive a fake Messenger Unit identification card. MU’s were allowed into any building if the head of the army approved them. They were allowed into any building because the brought personal messages to individuals working in the building. Although Vindicitve looked more like a killing machine; with his fake I.D. he should be able to get into the Quantile Laboratory. The reason why Megatron wanted to contact Tarantulas was because he suspected he was following up on the same thing, and he suspected also that Tarantulas knew where Diamond was.

“Stay away from General Alesion, understand? He’s suspicious of you. And me….”

He marched off back to his office and Waspinator left to get some candy at the vending machine. Thanks goodness for the few human Predacons who worked at the Quantile Headquarters. He had no idea how he’d cope without a ton of sugar everyday.

Joe rubbed his forehead; well, at least he tried to. He sometimes forgot that he was wearing a helmet. He was working outside the oxygenated cabins, and had just finished patching up a part of the city shield. He let out a long sigh and watched the transformers working around him. They were, for the most part, ten to fifteen feet tall, big and strong and most of them didn’t require sleep and could work for long hours. He, on the other hand, had a limit, but on this planet the officers who forced their labour tried to ignore this limit and he often found himself being forced to work for eighteen hours with few breaks. Screw that, he usually stole into the cabins and got drunk in the pub until he passed out and was useless for a few hours. After doing this a few times, though, they’d now put a guard at the entrance of the cabins. Dang.

He had an itch on his arm and tried to scratch it through his bulletproof suit. No luck there.

“Man, I never thought I’d miss Earth and being naked this much,” he muttered.

He suddenly heard a noise in the distance and he squinted his eyes to see an approaching vehicle bot. A few moments later the bot drove up beside him and slammed on the breaks, somersaulting and transforming in mid air to land on his feet.

“Eh, lay off Joe. You’re just jealous cause not ever yer best gymnasts can do that!”

“Nudda. Borin’ as da ever. And you? How was yer little patchwork? Ya finished?”

“Your stinking planet. I bet there are poisonous fumes seeping into my suit and slowly poisoning my skin.”

“Well, I finished my bit for now. It’s ma lunch break. Say uh, you seen Tour anywhere or is she still snoozing?”

Joe jumped a little with the mention of her. He’d totally forgotten that she was…well, he couldn’t tell Rattrap anyway. He had promised, and he didn’t want to get on the bad side of a transformer, especially the seemingly more aggressive female transformers.

“She’s…hang, I don’t know where she is right now,” he said, which was true enough seeing as the last he saw of her was leaving Vixadonia in a stolen cyber car.

“Oh, uh, never mind. I’ll go look for her later. She’s probably sewing up some mangy human,” he grunted and walked off to the eating stall.

Joe then broke into a fit of coughing. Once he’d recovered, he made his way to another hole in the shields.

“Argh. Agh. I’ve gotta stop smoking so much.”

Blinx sighed and gazed at the sun. It seemed to gaze back down at him, like an old woman with a secret that he much desired, but would not tell.

One moment they were in the camp, and the next Magnanimous had walked away and he never returned.

Blinx had been stressing to him his need to get away from Aswade, but Magnanimous had seemed so much more accepting of the idea that they were going to die there if they stayed or they would be sent off on some lethal mission elsewhere. Yet, he was gone and Blinx simply couldn’t understand why he’d leave without him.

He was walking quietly along the border of Aswade, the glimmering sentinel shield to his left - a window into the outside world. Every now and then a shadow of a large ship would pass over him and slip through an opening in the top of the shield and come into land. He kicked a piece of rubble with a frustrated sigh. He so wanted to get out of here; he felt trapped. He watched the stone hop off and finally come to settle next to the base of the dome-like shield. For a moment, he didn’t see it but then suddenly he noticed outside where the rock had landed, there stood a figure. He looked up and saw through the watery shield a transformer standing and looking at him. He walked closer to the shield curiously and activated his COM. to the closest frequency.

He took a step back in surprise. The voice was female and she sounded honest and desperate enough, but with the new signature blocking systems the Predacons had, there was no telling whether she was a Predacon or not, unless he tuned in his wrist map to try and read her signature. He did this quickly and sure enough, a green flashing blip appeared on his map at her exact co-ordinates.

Blinx jogged off and located an officer. After she was allowed in, she was interrogated for about fifteen cycles before they were satisfied. After which she was given a chip that was inserted in her right arm as a means of registration into Aswade and identification. The whole time Blinx had kept his distance and waited for them to finish and when they did and left her alone, he approached her cautiously.

As he neared her he noticed she was a light green colour and with a slender figure. She was an attractive bot, or at least she looked like she had been. Presently, she looked extremely tired and she had numerous scratches and wounds on her. He approached her and she turned and looked at him wearily.

“Are you the bot that let me in?” she asked, near to a whisper. She looked at him with interest. He was after all a Kingfisher transformer and not a common sight.

“My name is Tourmaline and I need to get to Hashlyn. Today. If I don’t I’ll die.”

He stood and stared at her, absorbing her words. He could tell she was pulling no joke and whatever her reason, she needed to get there. And quite honestly, he wouldn’t mind leaving too.

“All right, come with me. I’m going to try and get us out of this base. I’ll get you to Hashlyn,” he said softly.

He paused and thought a moment. He knew that there was a ship leaving for Hashlyn this afternoon. He’d heard it announced on the loud speaker. Although he wasn’t supposed to be on the flight, he figured he could stow away in the ship fairly easily, as the ship was small and only meant to be carrying a few technicians.

He looked over at the airfield and tried to search for ship B17, which was the number mentioned over the speaker. He eventually spotted it and saw that its door was open for boarding in a few minutes. Ample opportunity.

“There’s our lift, but we’re no supposed to be on there. I’m eager to leave this place too, so I suggest we get on that ship there, stow away. If I remember correctly, B17 is the only ship today that leaves for Hashlyn. We’re going to have to be quick, and we mustn’t be spotted. Come, follow me closely,” he said to her.

She nodded and the two of them crept up to the ship. When most of the workers and pilots had gone or were preoccupied, the two made a dash for the ship. They got inside safely enough but as they turned to go down the aisle and try and hide in a spare compartment, they bumped into a guard on the ship.

“Hey, what are you two doing in here? This ship is for technicians only. Get-oof!”

Blinx had had enough of being ordered around and punched him in the face. He whipped out a gun from his sub space pocket and shot at the guard’s hand as he reached for his own gun. He let out a yell of pain, which was cut short when Blinx shot him with a green laser that put him into stasis lock. Tourmaline gazed at him in awe.

Blinx opened up the tiny compartment and walked in and dragged the guard in with him.

“Come in. There’s just enough space for the three of us. I’m not going to risk going outside again to drop this guard off.”

She stepped inside with him and he closed the door. The guard thankfully was not very large and lay crumpled at their feet. The compartment was usually intended for weapons but seeing as the ship wasn’t carrying soldiers, it remained empty this flight. It was very small and she found herself squashed against his feathered chest.

“To answer your question,” he whispered, “I am a transformer. My home is on Earth where I acquired this form. The weapon came with the mode. My name is Blinx and I was sent here to fight. Now, what about you?”

“I…I’m a detective. I worked in Relentrax. I came from Vixadonia and I need to get to Hashlyn for a reason that I cannot tell. I traveled by means of a cyber car that was attacked by ground troops and which I eventually needed to land a few miles away from here. I managed to escape getting killed by the Predacons. I’m weak and I don’t think I’m going to last much longer. I got badly damaged from a shot by one of the soldiers, but the others missed me and lost interest in me when a Maximal ship attacked them. The officers here were arranging me to get on the list for a CR chamber, but I knew that might take all day and time is something I’m short of.”

Blinx was amazed at how far she had come. But he was still so curious as to why.

He was about to press her for an answer when he heard voices and the sound of the ship jerking. The technicians had arrived and the ship was taking off.

“Shh. We’re leaving. The trip is short in one of these high speed ships, but we must not risk ourselves being heard,” he whispered.

She felt frightened. Her head began to throb and her sides burned. All the little scratches seemed to be lit with fire and she closed her eyes in pain and fear. She put her head against his soft chest and dozed. She needed the rest.

The officer led Diamond to a room. Dinobot was not permitted to follow and this annoyed him. He decided would get something to eat and then return to the cabin and wait for her.

“Nice to hear you know my name. I suppose your father has told you all about me.”

“I know what you are doing here. You’ve come to deliver the Vector Sigma. plans, haven’t you?”

“Why, I thought you were a lieutenant. How would you know about that?” he asked.

“Diamond, as you claim you know, I was the plan to save your future, and that of the Tripedicus. I was to go into the Altron Chamber, copy the plans and give a copy to your faction and mine. These plans would be used to rebuild a Vector Sigma for the new planet the Maximals are going to colonize with their children. However, recently Vector Sigma was put off limits to all but three Predacons. I am no longer allowed in the chamber so I came up with a new strategy. I knew a bot, her name was Kismet, who-”

“Ah, well, we’ll get to that in a moment. I had a fairly vague alliance with Kismet and I was recently trying to get hold of her. The reason being that she is a special unit with a lot of power, and she of all people would be able to steal into the Altron Chamber and copy the codes without anyone ever knowing. She…isn’t exactly a transformer. She is some sort of gifted…alien. Well, I discovered, much to my dismay, that that option was ruled out. Somehow, by something extremely powerful, she was destroyed and now we have no hope of-”

“I…she was evil, Tarantulas. She was plotting to take Cybertron for herself. Play with it like a game. You’re right: she isn’t one of us…one of you. She is, was, a fragment of fate itself, but a bad fragment. I destroyed her because I’m…I’m clairvoyant and…I’m her sister.”

She lowered her head. She couldn’t believe she had told him so much. Him. Tarantulas! But when she heard what was at stake, she knew her secret could no longer be kept. She already suspected Tarantulas was on to her. Why else would he want to talk to her?

“I guessed you were something like that to her. She was looking for you for a long time. I needed to find out why. Well, I won’t press you. What’s done is done, but I must ask you a favour. If you are her sister, and you did destroy her, you must share a lot of power. Therefore, I need you to replace her on this…crucial mission. Can you do that?” he questioned. She looked so normal, so unlike Kismet.

“I no longer have my powers. We were linked, Kismet and I. When she died, I lost all my power.”

“Thank you for your help, miss Diamond. I trust you will keep the conversation we had very quiet. I will try and retrieve the plans myself, although it will prove near impossible.”

Diamond, whose optics were blank, suddenly came alive and grabbed his claw as he passed her.

Her expression was one of desperation. She seemed to be fighting an inner emotional battle with herself.

“Yes? What is it, Diamond?” he pressed, his eyes lit with concern and curiosity.

“I have a brother.”

Vindictive walked into Megatron’s office, only to find he wasn’t there. That didn’t help matters and it made him all the more nervous. He had gone, like Megatron had ordered, to retrieve Tarantulas. He managed to get all the way there, bypass the security with his phony I.D. and make it as far as his lab, only to find he wasn’t there. And no one in the laboratories seemed to know where on Cybertron he had gone. Vindictive knew this would throw a spanner in the works of Megatron’s plan, whatever that may be. He sighed nervously and continued down the corridor, searching for his leader. He found him soon enough.

He was trying to pry Waspinator out of the vending machine. He learned that the silly wasp had paid his five cyber bucks but the machine wouldn’t spit out the sugar bar. This annoyed Waspinator and he had decided, seeing as he was a small bot, to fly under the collection box and try and pry his candy himself. He succeeded only in getting his head jammed in the machine, which decided conveniently to drop his chocolate on his head. Megatron had found him and was trying to pull him out before someone else found him. Vindictive knew this would be very embarrassing.

“For Unicron’s sake Waspinator! How did you get yourself so far into this confounded vending machine?!” he exclaimed.

“Well, now that you know the situation, come and help me pull him out, you useless canine!”

Vindictive put his hands around Megatron’s waist and pulled. The two of them together proved too strong for the vending machine, which finally decided to give up its prisoner. Waspinator came shooting out, with a face full of candy bars.

Waspinator flew through the air, hit the wall and slid down to land on his head. He remained in his headstand, propped up against the wall, a trail of candy bars behind him.

“Oooh. Wazzpinator have headache in hizz whole body…waaaiiit….Wasspinator alzzoo have two Sugar Bars in hizz madiblezzz…mmmm!”

“That is, I remind you, the last time I’m going to pull you out of a vending machine!”

Megatron turned his head sharply to give Vindictive a look that could shock the dead.

“And…Tarantulas wasn’t there. Uh…uh…no one knew where on Cybertron he had gone to.”

Vindictive turned tail and fled, screaming ‘Don’t kill the messenger!’ down the corridor.

“Well, at least he knows when he is in danger of being scrapped,” he whispered, his face blank.

The fury boiling inside of him was so terrible that he had to suppress it otherwise he’d blow. The fact that Tarantulas wasn’t at his lab did not surprise Megatron.

“So, the spider has gone to seek Diamond, has he? Well, we’ll see about that.”

Just as he was about to slink off into the shadows of the passageway, he heard someone call him on his COM.

“General Alesion here. Report to the meeting room at once. There has been a drastic change in plans. Do not delay!”

He made his way to the meeting room, putting his thoughts away for the moment.

It was the best news he had heard for weeks. He let out a sigh of relief and turned towards Vixadonia.

Cheetor had finally received permission to leave the suburb and go to Vixadonia, where he knew Diamond was.

He had finished his job: ordering humans to search for energon and useful scrap and now he was allowed to go to the main city to receive further orders.

Once he arrived, he asked an officer where Diamond was staying, got her cabin number and decided to go down and surprise her.

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The Planet of Youth