Written by DBX
The citizens were revolting. Their shouts were almost as ear shattering as that blast from earlier, I guessed Rhinox and Ballistic had something to do with that. It sounded like Ballistic's style to take out an entire building with an explosion that redefined the word "boom". Regardless of whatever was said, done, or blown up, we had Cybertron backing us up now. Destron still had influence though, that was evident by some of the Guard members who were working on crowd control. It wasn't doing much good though. Cybertron was in a very bad mood. Then again, so was Destron, and he wasn't very happy to see Prime, myself and DinobotX. In fact, given that grumpy look on his face, I was to assume that he blamed us for all of this. Hey, we weren't the ones that killed a bunch of Cybertronians and were stupid enough to tape it, he was. Orion Prime, being the diplomat that he is, decided for the subtle, non-violent approach which consisted of him asking Destron to surrender,"It's all over Destron. They're against you now, you have nothing left. Surrender so we can end this conflict." Prime said. He almost had me convinced.
"Surrender?" Destron said with a low, menacing chuckle. Now he was getting creepy-.....er, "Why would I surrender when I'm so close to achieving my goal?"
"It's your goal Destron, not theirs. Don't force Cybertron to do something it isn't willing to do. You can't reformat the planet, it can't be done!" Prime was pretty emphatic about this.
"I can reformat the planet Prime, and I will! With the help of the Oracle of course." the building started to rumble. I hate it when evil masterminds punctuate their sentences with some kind of insane act of vengeance. This one ranked pretty high on the insane factor. The roof of the Citadel was breaking apart, all of that rebuilding for nothing. Poor construction I'd say. But it wasn't something was coming out of the Citadel. We got a good look at it when it finally emerged, it was the Oracle, it was moving!
The Oracle floated in the air momentarily and then started moving away from the Citadel. Was it retreating?
"Where is it going?" DinobotX asked.
"The plan is in motion, and there's nothing any of you can do to stop it!" Destron said laughing. Below I saw the crowd breaking apart to let something through, it was Rhinox and Ballistic. Rhinox was in his beast mode and Ballistic in vehicle mode. They took off down the street in the same direction the Oracle was moving. That at least was being taken care of, that left Destron to us.
"What are you planning Destron?" Prime asked. If he could keep Destron there and talking, we could prevent him from conducting his master plan, whatever that was. Destron's eyes were filled with this insane look, like a madman who was envisioning his ultimate goal. That sounded about right.
"While you have been in hiding, I've been hard at work perfecting the organic conversion process! Using the energies from the plasma energy chamber and the organic compound I've created a device that will send out these energies, causing them to envelope the entire planet. The plasma energy will destroy the technology while the organic compound will heal the wounds and make them organic flesh! Ridding this planet of you and your kind!"
"That kind of energy will destroy the planet! You can't hope to control it!" Prime said.
"I wont have to, that's what the Oracle is going to do!" I figured it out, the Oracle was concentrating its energy on planning this whole thing out. It must have been in constant contact with the device that was going to do all of this, and with Destron. With it divided like that, it would simply teleport in and out like it normally did, that's why it was flying across the city. But where to?
"The Oracle will be at ground zero when the transformation begins! That way it can regulate the energy and guide Cybertron on its path to total organic perfection!" Destron said. He's lost his troops, he's lost his supporters, and now he's lost his mind. That meant he had nothing left to lose, that's very dangerous.
"Give it up, you aren't going anywhere." DinobotX said.
"Try to stop me!" Destron made a break for the edge of the balcony. The three of us started shooting landing several hits on him before he fell over the edge.
"Follow him!" Prime yelled.
We jumped down into the crowd below, Destron was shoving people out of the way trying to get free but most of them were trying to attack him. Others were too startled to know what was happening. The mob got out of the way for us, I guess we were their heroes now. Destron was smarter than I gave him credit for, with all of these innocent civilians around we couldn't use our weapons so we were forced to just run after him. I couldn't understand why he was escaping on foot when he could just transform to beast mode and fly. Maybe he was trying to avoid an aerial confrontation with Orion Prime. After making our way through the mob, we saw Destron heading in the same direction as the Oracle.
"We can't stop the Oracle from getting to the center of the city but if we slow Destron down it will buy us some time." Prime said, "I'll cut him off, get ready to use whatever means necessary to detain him!" with that, Prime transformed to flight mode and flew ahead of us. Once he was over Destron he started firing at him, then he landed on the ground directly in front of Destron blocking his path. DinobotX and I stopped and fired at Destron. Being hit from three side, we figured he would be pinned down but instead he lunged at Prime, hitting him high in the chest and knocking him down. Destron then took a detour down an alley. He was running and not fighting. Something was going on.
"I'm going to follow him from the sky, I'll relay directions to you!" Prime said flying into the air.
We ran in the direction Destron had gone but he was nowhere to be found,
"Prime, have you found anything yet?" I called over the comlink.
"Negative. He couldn't have gotten far though, he must be hiding nearby."
"How good are you at tracking?" I asked DinobotX.
"Better than average." he answered.
"Well then get started schitzo."
"You do a lot of hiding as a thief, perhaps you can offer some insight."
"It's not hiding it's....tactical retreat."
"Then we should try figuring out where Destron is 'tactfully retreating' to."
"Why do I always get stuck with you?" most of the citizens were still back at the Citadel plaza so the city was pretty quiet, too quiet. So quiet, you could almost hear the voices in DinobotX's head.
"I don't get it, I thought we could scan techno-organics when they were in robot mode." I said to X."He must have found a way to block our sensors." did that mean Destron was using technology again? For someone who was so pro-organic he really relied on technology as his crutch.
"Guess we'll have to find him the old fashioned way." I said, "Here, dragon, dragon, dragon. Come on out, we want hurt you."
"Oh yeah, that's going to work." DinobotX said sarcastically.
"Cut the clowning and stay sharp." Prime said on the comlink.
The last thing I wanted to do was find Destron but even I was getting bored. I wanted to end this quickly, so did DinobotX and Orion Prime. I formulated a few plans in my head and then picked one I thought might actually work. If I survive this I'm going to retire in style and never look at a battlefield again. With everything depending on us finding Destron, I used the most powerful weapon at my disposal:
My mouth."Can you believe we've got to spend the better part of our day looking for that freak?" DBX just looked at me confused, "Honestly, don't we have better things to do than to haul his ugly, flee bitten techno-organic hide in? It's bad enough the guy never shuts up about his 'destiny' and all that slag, but the smell is horrible! Don't these guys ever bathe?" realizing what I was doing, DinobotX just shook his head in doubt, "Here's an idea, why don't we use or olfactory sensors? That will lead us to him in a nano. Or we could just wait for the Oracle to call back its toadie."
"Toadie?" DinobotX asked.
"It means lackey, second banana, weakling, the guy who the mastermind orders around. Let's just say Destron could easily have been replaced by a chimp....or rather he was the one replacing the chimp."
"You are right, Destron doesn't have the know how to formulate his own plan." DinobotX said, now totally into the plan.
"Of course I'm right. You met the guy right? He's not exactly the brightest spark in the Matrix....oh I'm sorry, I mean the Oracle. He's like a Vehicon drone, only uglier." I don't know if it was my stupid plan or if Destron just picked that moment to attack, but he did. He ran out of a building and attacked us. At that point I had one thought in my mind:
What the slag was I doing?!?!From above us, Prime fired on Destron with DinobotX and I giving backup. Destron kept trying to escape but each time a burst of firepower would knock him down to his knees again. He was becoming very angry. Somehow the anger fueled him and he broke free of our hail of fire and prepared to attack us. He had become so angry that his eyes were glowing red-hot. I thought he was going to transform to beast mode but instead he collapsed to the ground and grabbed his sides in pain. Had we hit him that bad? Then I noticed that something was really wrong with him, it was like the skin on his arm was cracking. As soon as it started it stopped, leaving Destron sitting there on the ground in pain. We move in for apprehension but before we could all of us saw an incredibly bright light in the distance and in the same instant, an explosion.
"What was that!?" DinobotX asked. Orion Prime flew into the air and looked around. Then slowly he landed,
"It's gone." he said in a daze.
"What's gone?" I asked.
"The Oracle, I don't see it." Prime said.
"What do you mean you don't see it?" DinobotX questioned.
"When we were searching for Destron I could see it making its way to the center of Cybertropolis but it just vanished." I looked down, Destron had taken advantage of the confusion. He was gone.
"Speaking of vanished, our guest is gone." I said.
"Well we know where he's going. Maybe we can beat him there." then our comlinks started buzzing. Someone was trying to contact us but there was a lot of interference. The voice was Ballistic's but the static made it impossible to determine what he was saying. We could make out something about a battle and the Oracle. He may have been calling for help.
Destron had lost everything. His troops, his planet, and his support. Now he had to face billions of Cybertronians who wanted him gone. For some reason though, he refused to back down. He was still going despite losing everything he had. Now he's concentrating on completing the plan of the Oracle and to bring about either a new age, or Cybertron's destruction. This war was far from over and I knew that whatever was coming next was going to be big, and it was going to be bad. It was time to get serious about this if any of us were going to survive.
