Part 3

Part 3

I never did like Autobots. In fact during my first life, I dispised them with a passion. Now I remember why.

Outskirts has betrayed me and stalled my star ship through sabotage. What makes matters worse is the other two dilinquents of my group seem to emphisize with the Autobot.

It’s been ten minutes now and I am trapped in a force sheild set up by Darkseed, watching while Destrons and Predacons fire missiles and lasers at our ship. I am helpless and soon we will all be hot burning slag.

Primus save us all...

-excerpt from Harbinger's battle log entry.

God Neptune picked up the last remaining sharkticon, having thrown the rest at the ship in a futile attempt to breach the ship’s sheilds, and threw the reluctant quintison-spawn at the sheilds, only to see him bounce off and be engulfed by the lava surrounding the ship. The sharkticon’s last cries were ignored like the transformer himself as he was melted and engulfed by the earth.

Injector flew around the ship, hitting strategic points of the ship with his missiles in hopes of disrupting the sheilds. "Why isn’t it working?" he said angrily. "That sheild should be collapsing and the ship melting by now!"

"Someone must have improved the sheilds. Keep firing!" said Terragator as he continued to aim at the ship’s engines.

God Neptune snapped off the peak of a small under-sea mountian and threw it at the ship. The rock shattered on the sheild and was quickly melted and joined the other melted rocks being swallowed up by the earth. Bluebeak flew in closer to the ship, but was hit by one of these huge shards of rock and shared it’s fate by being engulfed into the lava.

Inside the ship sparks flew and pillars fell down. Outskirts was interfaced with the main computer, his Phalanx-covered arm covered in wires constantly repairing and improving the sheild still under constant assault.

"How are you doing this?" asked Harbinger, trapped in a force sheild on the bridge.

"I control the Phalanxed parts of my body. I am the real reason why they are after us; noone cares about you or Darkseed or Firefly, but I am a prize that would bring in a good bounty. If we left we would be tracked and catured, here they can’t risk destroying us," Outskirts explained as the ship was hit by another group of missiles and a small hole formed in the brigde’s hull, letting water seep in.

"What do you think they are trying to do now?" yelled Harbinger as the force shield containing him was lowered by Outskirts.

"The Phalanx parts of my body can withstand the heat; just we will be destroyed. We need to get out of here but first we must get rid of them," said the Autobot, pointing towards the veiwscreen showing their Destron assailants.

Eradicate entered his cave and was greeted by his spawn, three insecticon clones infected with his takkalmaggot spawn; which has been slowly turning them into clones of himself. It is in his nature, or his beast form’s nature, to propogate and his evil goals only stand to prophit from such procedures. Now the three insecticon clones looked more like clones of him than their original insecticon molds. The only difference was they were black instead of gold; truly insecticon takkalmaggots.

His plan is simple: release these, his new servants, on the world and infect numerous transformers. Before anyone can stop him, he would have an army of magical transformers that would make him a major force in the universe. Having no ties to Earth, or other transformers, he and his spawn could travel the universe raping planet’s of their resorces and making him ever more powerful.

Shrapnel, Kickback, and Bombshell landed outside the cave, each transforming into their robot mode and raising their weapons at the cave. Their plan was simply to blow up the cave and Eradicate and to retreive their errant clones. They did not fully comprehend what Eradicate had done to their clones, nor did they care. Revenge was their motive, pure and simple.

Vampire Prime landed on a large tree right behind the insecticons, unnoticed by the villians. He was planning to attack the Predacon he was hunting, then would destroy any unnatural spawn he created. The insecticons were no problem and any Autobots that got in the way would serve a simmilar fate, he thought, as his weapons tracked the the Decepticon insects.

Rollbar and Chase were still following the insecticons, sneaking behind trees, nearing the point where their Decepticon quarry had stopped. Chase drew his gun, followed by Rollbar, and both snuck up behind the Decepticons. Unfortunately Kickback decided to look around at that very moment, spying the Autobots.

"Autobot spys!" yelled Kickback.

"Destroy them..them..." said Shrapnel as he and Bombshell turned to fire. Seconds later Kickback, Rollbar, and Chase were all firing and making a noticable ruckus outside Eradicate’s cave.

The evil Predacon peaked outside his cave, finding the confusion of battle as he spied the Throttlebots calling for backup and firing from behind a rock. The insecticons had taken cover behind various trees and were equally shooting at the autobots and calling in their insecticon hordes.

"Smelt them all," whispered the Predacon, as he transformed into his robot mode and called forth his ‘children’. "Cover my escape, while I head for the maze of caverns a half a mile away," said Eradicate as he began to crawl unnoticed onto the battlefeild. His sacraficial children chargeded into battle, attacking both the insecticons and the throttlebots. Strategically disadvantaged, they were caught in the crossfire and soon destroyed by the opposite forces.

"Those were our missing clones. Eradicate must have snuck off!" said Bombshell as he ran to the cave to check for the Predacon.

"Cease fire!" shouted Shrapnel as he spotted five more Autobots driving into the forest, Coldspell and Blackwit with the other throttlebots. "Insecticons retreat!" he said, transforming and flying away. Both Kickback and Bombshell also took their insect modes and flew off.

"How do you plan on getting rid of our attackers?" asked Harbinger, still trapped in Outskirt’s forcefeild.

"The zombie’s right, we have no more working weapons on this ship; The fusors and God Neptune have seen to that," said Darkseed. "Outskirts dear, we are in a sinking ship with noplace to go."

"What kind of screwed up metafore was that?" asked the triple changer as he interfaced with the ship again, this time accessing the self destruct sequence. "The simplest solution is that I escape whil letting you three perish..."

"That isn’t very Autobot of you, now is it!" interrupted Harbinger.

"Ahem, as I was saying...But since that is not going to happen, I suggest we send the ship’s main engines, along with the self destruct device armed, into the crack in the ocean’s floor. The explosion will distablize the ocean floor, allowing us to navigate on impulse away from here while the destrons and Predacons are worried about the geologic dangers...and the lava. Then we can teleport Rampage into the holding cell so I can...study him."

"Why do you want Rampage?" asked Firefly, beginning to worry about his Autobot companion.

"He is unique among transformers...an imortal spark that repairs the body after it is damaged. Such a spark is what I need to live foreever and will emiminate my need for such repairs to my person," said Outskirts pointing at his Phalanxed arm and other scavenged bodyparts on his person.

"Finally, the enterence to the caves!" said Eradicate as he transformed into his robot mode and bent to throw a boulder to the side, uncovering a secret labarynth of caves underneah the forest.

"Sacraficing your own converted children to escape, how sick!" said Vampire Prime as he jumped from a tree to meat Eradicate. "There will be no banishment this time, you will die by my hands!" said the prime clone as he gripped Eradicate’s golden neck with transmetal 2 vampire claws.

"Slagging clone, get off me!" shouted Eradicate, pushing Vampire Prime off him, flying itno a nearby tree. "I think you’ll change you’re tune soon!" he said as he transformed and bit the Vampire’s neck, infecting him with a fledgeling takklemaggot spawn. "Soon you will become my slave!"

Just then Eradicate heard three jets flying overhead, then turning to transform and land.

"I am Tiger’s Eye, now back away from that clone!" said the lead cyberjet, pointing his right arm missle launcher directly at the Predacon.

"He is MINE!" shouted Eradicate as the magic wars Predacon transformed agian, firing at the lead cyberjet with his shoulder cannons. Tiger’s Eye exploded when hit by this assualt. The two other cyberjets took cover behind large trees as Eradicate fired blindly, hoping to hit the two remaining Decepticons.

"Molt, what should we do?" asked Air Conditioner as he loaded a white missile into his launcher.

"We retailiate my friend!" said the red and grey cyberjet as he jumped from behind the tree and fired a lava missile at Eradicate, hitting the Predacon with exploding molten rock. Air Conditioner then jumped out and fired his freeze missile, encasing the Predacon in ice.

"I can not be stopped so easily," said the chilled Eradicate as he bust free and transformed into his wurm-like beast mode. His tail knocked a boulder towards the two jets, who dodged it easily, while he turned and crawled into the caverns below the forest.

The throttlebots drove to the scene just in time to see Eradicate’s tail dissappear beneath the ground and a small explosion seal the cave’s enterence.

"What’s going on here?" asked Coldspell as he transformed, noticing the two Decepticon cyberjets.

"Well, we caught that Predacon fighting Vampire Prime," said Air Conditioner, pointing at the paralized clone laying against a tree nearby.

"Yeah, he then slagged Tiger’s Eye," said Molt, picking up their leader’s head. "You six take the clone back to base while we salvage Tigger here," pointing at the wrecked peices of the cyberjet, "then notify Terrorform we have captured Vampire Prime and want the reward."

"Reward?" asked Coldspell, looking at Blackwit.

"Fine fine," said Blackwit, turning from Coldspells sight and examining Vampire Prime. "Coldspell, radio headquarters for a ship to pick up this clone. I need to examine him before we move him."

"I’ve finished installing the explosives in the remote probebot," said Firefly to the female Predacon. He lowered the probe from the workstation in the weapons bay into the ship’s torpedo launcher.

"Is this going to work?" asked Darkseed.

"If there is one thing I know, it’s explosives," Firefly said, "and it could work...if the conditions are right inside the rift. But I don’t think the probe can be dirrected to find the specific conditions with it’s limited sensors and remote hookup. It is a standard probe, probably accedentally left in your ship since it was first built. Even with the advanced hookup to the ship I’ve installed, it’s little more than a bat with a hearing aid, unless we get really lucky, there’s a good chance we’ll just end up trapped further inside the fissure until our sheilds fail..."

"And we are all reduced to hot burning slag together..." Darkseed finished the Decepticon cassette’s thought.

"Basically, yes." Firefly sealed the launcher’s door and readied the firing mechanism.

"Just when I thought I met a bot I could relate to...That scavenger has a death wish and delusions of imortallity to boot!" Darkseed transformed into her beast mode, her smaller atog body crouching to brood as she watched Firefly work.

"Lighten up. He may hate Preds and Cons, but deep down he’s a nice guy. Really. O.K., maybe not. But he’s no fool, he’s got something up his mind. I may have only known the lugnut for a short time, but I know he cares for us too much to let us all die," Firefly defended the rouge Autobot.

"Faith is not my strong point Firefly. I like Outskirts, but don’t rely on him to save my skin," said the necratog as she rocked back and forth in her crounched state.

"So where’s you’re escape pod?" asked Firefly, feeling pride at his cleverness.

"Wouldn’t you like to know!" said Darkseed as she stood up and left the room. As she passed the Decepticon, he felt a little magic lock stiffen his left arm enough to pause what he was working on.

"I’ll never get used to cramping up after spending too much time with those magical freaks of Primus," he whispered to himself and then went back to work.

"Planning for immortality?" asked Harbinger from his makeshift prison on the atog vessel’s bridge.

"Just planning for the future," replied the Autobot.

"What do you hope to accomplish? Even when you escape, there will still be a price on your head and the only group opposing Terrorform, the almighty leader who ordered your exicution, is lead by Megatron and what they say is a Prime clone."

"I have seen Prime...and the Matrix...and I beleive. He may be working with that Decepticon murderer, but it is the Autobot’s true leader. He may not be perfect, but he wants peace. Terrorform has beguiled the transformer populous into beleiving that Megatron finally killed Prime and destroyed the original matrix for good. And to further back his claim, he has destroyed the "Leige Maximo", the creator of the Decepticon Generation 2 transformers, and has freed the Cybertron-Destron dimention of their G2 invaders sent from this dimension.

"Yes, and now he controls the Autobots because he prays upon Prime’s overexagerated death, he leads the Decepticons due to Megatron’s implied involvement in Prime’s false demise and fragrent use of Prime clones that are really the original Prime still very much alive, and he controls the G2 Decepticons by right of conquest. The Cybertrons and Destrons as well as those of the other "freed"dimensions follow him because he "saved" them. But what can you do about it?"
"Nothing but survive, my undead friend, nothing but survive..." Outskirts turned from the ship’s controls and walked towards the triple changer Decepticon. "Can I release you, or will you just try and stop me?"

"It’s better to die free than a prisoner. Just one condition though."

"What?" asked the Autobot.

"Once we capture Rampage, I too want imortality. Before I was Harbinger, I was Megatron’s treacherous tank commander, equal in rank to Starscream, but I was too overzealous and was destroyed by Megatron not once, but twice. Emergency stasis lock is nothing compared to unrecoverability. My spark was exstinguished and did not return to the matrix to be reborn. It is a hell so terrible that it makes being a walking corpse seem like a blessing," said Harbinger.

Outskirts released the forcesheild by waving his infected arm.

"Only when that black sorcerer reanimated me in this fashion," Harbinger transformed into his zombie mode, a giant rotting corpse, "Did I regain full conciousness and I realize I will never return to the matrix. The transformer race has grown to widespread and corrupt to save every spark with the matrix, and I am one of those not chosen. I am forever to be tortured with this horible undead exhistence, but I will never go back to nothingness. Never!"

Just then Darkseed walked into the bridge. "The Probe is ready to Launch Outskirts dear," she said.

Outskirts felt odd for a second and thought he felt the box Darkseed had planted on him vibrate softly. But his internal sensors did not pick up anything, so he turned and interfaced with the computer. "Excellent!"

"What are they doing?" asked God Neptune as his weapons recharged. "And where are our reinforcements?"

"I don’t know," said Octo as he fired another missile at the ship.

"You fools!" Rampage yelled at the gestalt and the cassettes. "They are up to something, we must board the ship and claim our prize!" Having said that Rampage transformed from tank to crab and jumped high off the seafloor and started moving towards the ship, still protected by the forcefeild.

"That crab is loopy! Injector lets get out of here. My weapons need a recharge," Terrorgator told the larger fusor. "And I havea bad feeling things are going to change real soon..."

"Well let’s go then. If I don’t recharge on premium energon every three hours it’ll hurt my complection. Besides a guy neds his beauty sleep!"

"Whatever keeps you going," said Terrorgator as the two transformed and left.

With the tow fusors gone, there was only God Neptune, the Destron cassettes, and Rampage left attacking the ship.

"Fire the probe!" commanded Outskirts as he interfaced with the computer.

to be concluded...