Fabled Kaon

# # #

Breakdown slunk out of the hostel, checking over his shoulder to make sure Motormaster hadn't noticed him leaving. He didn't think the truck cared if he left as long as he came back, but if Motormaster noticed, so would all the others. And then Wildrider would try to go with him, and he'd shove the Ferrari into one of the canals, and nothing good could come of that. He just wanted to spend some time away from his brothers, enjoying the leave he arranged for himself, dammit!

Slag it, he corrected himself. He had to lose all the Earth slang from his vocabulary; it kept attracting attention he didn't want.

He'd still arranged the trip to Kaon for himself. Except he'd made the mistake of telling Dead End about it, and Dead End had actually done something proactive. The Porsche had mentioned it to Drag Strip, who complained about it to Wildrider, who let it spill in front of Motormaster. The next thing Breakdown knew, he had to expand his travel plans to include the other four Stunticons. There was no way he could have half as much fun as he had planned to with Motormaster, Drag Strip, and Wildrider around. People noticed them; they earned reputations just by standing in one place for too long.

He didn't want to be noticed. He wanted to explore.

Outside the flickering radiance cast by the hostel's badly maintained exterior lights, the street got a lot darker. Sure, there was a streetlight at each corner, but they had barely begun to brighten to their 'day' setting. The tall, crammed-together buildings kept most of the light from the rest of the city out of this neighborhood.

Breakdown kept to the building side of the street as he walked to the corner. The soft sound of the liquid moving in the canals disturbed him. Was that just the wash of the pseudo-tide created by those interconnected labyrinthine waterways and the boats moving through them, or someone weighted down and struggling under the surface?

He really didn't like the opaque liquids of Cybertron. But fabled Kaon, the south polar city of the canals, was too much to resist.

It was all Dead End's fault, really. Dead End's taunt to Drag Strip about not knowing his own culture made Breakdown realize that he didn't know much of anything about Cybertron himself. So he started reading Shockwave's terse files on the culture of Cybertron, and that branched into looking up the cities, and by the time he discovered the neutral who sold city-guides written by another neutral, he was thoroughly lost.

Shockwave's files had nothing on Cinder's Guides, and he was discovering that Cinder's Guide to Kaon couldn't cover a third of the sights. No wonder people kept calling it 'fabled Kaon'.

The city was old. It had already been ancient when Megatron rose to power, the sprawling megapolis covering the south polar region for hundreds of miles around. The vast shipping canals that came down from Iacon flowed through to the heart of the city, each of them sprouting millions of branches as they entereed the city. Everything went through Kaon, and Kaon forbade nothing within its borders. It had always been that way- Breakdown remembered reading how riots had broken out when the first Decepticon governor tried to change that.

Taxes, they didn't object to, he'd noticed. Kaon paid the highest taxes on the most variety of items in the Empire. Yet there was never any complaint about that.

A small, swift boat cut through the canal off to his side, so quiet he hadn't realized it was coming until he saw it. There were a lot of boats like that in Kaon, he'd noticed.

As he rounded the corner, Breakdown caught his first sight of the Starspire. It rose over the sprawl of buildings and canals to the south, a vast spiral tower that had been built directly over the southern pole itself. Once it had held the rulers of Kaon, but now it was an incredible museum with miles and miles of galleries. There was an observation point at the very top of it, so far off the ground that a mech could see from one end of Kaon to another... If he had good enough optics.

Up there, he could see all of the magical city, could watch people go about their lives and no one would look back at him, would even know he was there. It would be wonderful.

All he had to do was get there without getting turned around in this maze of canals and sidewalks.

Off to Breakdown's left, a canal divided the street neatly in half. It was a sluggish red-brown color and just full of little boats that moved up and down it. Some of them seemed to be Transformers themselves, but most were run by scrawny neutrals who cheerfully shouted invective at each other.

"Hey! You, Decepticon!" A voice with the local accent called out. "You need a ride? Cheap!"

Breakdown instinctively turned to see who was yelling and found himself looking in the optics of one of those scrawny neutrals. This one was a dull blue color, with the extremely angular lines and sharp wings of a needle-jet. He lounged against the wall of one of the many tall buildings crammed into the street, keyrings decorating his hands.

The optic-gaze on him made Breakdown shift uncomfortably. He'd left early so he'd be out among them when the crowds crept up! No one was supposed to notice him! "I can fly. I'm okay. Don't need anything. Really."

The neutral snorted. "Sure you can fly. You're a Decepticon! Any Decepticon can fly. But Polyhex boys don't come to Kaon to fly. They come to ride in the boats."

"I didn't come-"

"Bah!" The neutral flicked a spine-sharp wing in his general direction. "Anything worth seeing in the city is worth six times as much by boat. City was built for boats, not for fliers."

The commotion was attracting attention from passerby, and Breakdown shrunk away from their stares. Oh Megatron, couldn't the neutral jet just shut up? People were staring!

"Look, I'm just going to the Starspire," he somehow got out as he darted glances all around him. "I'm fine, I don't need a ride."

"And I suppose you're just going to fly up to one of the balcony entrances and fly up the center of the spire to the viewing platform."

"Yes, yes, that's exactly what I'm going to do." Why was he even standing here and arguing? He was a Decepticon, he owned this place. Never mind the nagging little voice that said no, what he owned was Earth, and this city was so much further than Earth than just physically. He didn't have to stand here and take this.

He didn't lift a foot to walk away.

"Bah," the neutral enunciated, scorn in his voice.

There were people looking

"They probably think you're trying to pick me up," the neutral commented. "Even though I don't have a whore's spirals. Idiots. You can wind up in the canal for that kind of thing."

Breakdown looked at him blankly, then flinched as the needle-jet met his own optics squarely.

"No one's going to look twice at someone in a boat," the jet said quietly.

Breakdown dropped his gaze to the scarred sidewalk. Maybe if he just stared at this, he wouldn't feel all of the people staring at him. The neutral had knee-spikes. Sharp ones. "A-all right."

He thought he heard a sussurration come from the needle-jet, and then a thin blue hand slid into his view. A crooked finger beckoned him to follow, and he dragged his feet as the neutral led him to his boat.

# # #

"See that great hulking barge off to the left in the bay? That's the governor's pleasure boat. I say governor's, not Blazerider's, because the boat goes with the office, not with the mech. There's been some that have tried to take it, but it's not like you can use it anywhere else but Kaon. Not with the Sea of Mercury drained."

"The Sea of Mercury? I thought Cybertron only had two seas." Breakdown asked quietly, optics focusing on the massive barge. Spindledrop really did know the city very well, and he could point out such fascinating things.

Out over the water, the jewel-colored lights of the barge were dim. Bright light from the lighthouse lamps along the shore of the bay lifted Cybertron's endless night to a pale grey twilight. It grew dark the farther away from shore, and in the distance, Breakdown could see the running lights of ships in the center of the inland sea that no one called a sea.

A pavillion covered the upper level of the governor's pleasure barge, done in expensively lush velvet. The side-panels hung down right now, stirring gently in the breeze, but he thought he could just make out ties that would let them be tied up and away so that all anyone had to deal with was the roof over their heads. Gaily colored flags hung high atop long poles at the prow, midpoint, and rear of the barge, chains of jewel-colored lantern-lights winding down the poles to the canopy top.

Breakdown thought he could just make out some sort of patterns on the hull, but it was too far away to make out clearly at this zoom-level. He could zoom in, he supposed, but he'd rather sit back and let Spindledrop tell him more about the city.

"Sea of Mercury was before your time. Before mine, really." Spindledrop guided his boat through the mess of larger ships, weaving in and out and somehow managing to not get himself sunk. "Used to be the most beautiful sea on Cybertron, up just above the equator, west of Perihex. The sea where boats frolicked and Atalantix the Fair rode the waves."

"I've heard of that," Breakdown interjected. "The decadent sailing city."

"Atalantix was a lot of things, yeah. Decadent, sure. If you had the money, you could hire a bauble-maker to make you an artist to entertain you, and they were indentured to your service from creation."

A shudder ran through Breakdown at the thought of such people. Who could sell their own creations, all but enslave them?

Spindledrop gave a bark of laughter. "Don't like that much, do you? Heh. When did you get a choice of what you were doing with your life, Decepticon?"

Breakdown bit back on a protest that it wasn't the same for him at all. He didn't think Spindledrop could understand that - he'd given up being a Decepticon, or so he claimed. Someone who could do that couldn't understand what it really meant to be a Decepticon.

The jet guided his boat partway around the bay before ducking into a channel going deeper into the city. Here, the architecture was graceful and pleasing, though the designs on them tried to outdo each other in gaudiness. The one with the dome of flashing red and red-purple left strobe spots on Breakdown's vision, and he had to hastily turn away.

Strings of red lights passed like fireflies over the side-canals, strung between buildings and twinkling in the gloom. He spotted a handsome white jet'former standing under one of the soft red streetlights. The jet smiled invitingly when he noticed Breakdown's stare and blew a kiss at him. The Lamborghini ducked his head and looked away.

His gaze landed on a building that seemed almost simple compared to everything else here. The entire front was done in a mosaic that he made out as a reclining pink jet accented in gold. Written in a flowing silver script, turned bloody by the red lights all around, was "Dame Rumour's".

"Nice place, that," Spindledrop commented, waving a hand towards the building. "Dame Rumour serves some of the best drinks you'll ever have, and all the girls are delights. Not a place to go if you're looking to party, but if you want good drinks and better company, there's no finer place to go. Which is why the Dame can charge as much as she does."

"Where do you go if you want to party?" He had to ask.

The jet gestured towards the flashing dome. "Dame Dionysia keeps the best party house in the city. He's always got live music, even gets Kilroy and his band in when they're in the area. Drinks aren't cheap, but they aren't trying to gouge out optics with the prices either. You can usually find a few additives if you're into that. Nice girls, but they aren't spectacular. Dame Dionysia makes his money off a different kind of experience than Dame Rumour does."

Breakdown nodded and turned his gaze up to the Starspire. It loomed much closer now, so big that he thought it was just behind the next block of buildings. But he'd been thinking that since before they'd slipped through the harbor. The sheer size of it kept fooling him.

It was going to be so incredible up there.

"Tell me about the Starspire," he said quietly, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Spindledrop wasn't looking at him.

The nicest thing about the scrawny jet was that once he'd gotten Breakdown into his boat and separated him from a small measure of his money, Spindledrop just kept his gaze on the canals. Breakdown hadn't once caught him looking at the Stunticon except insofar as the Stunticon was sitting between Spindledrop and the canals they still had to go through.

"What about it? The foundations were laid back before the end of the Second Great War, if the historians are to be believed. Got used as a fortress for a while, until Grievous and his mechs got burned out by the Autobots. That's all in the files they've got up at the gift shop, you know. Pit, you can learn more about Kaon's history by buying gift shop files than you can by reading some of the dreck they've got for public access. The official reports of what's-his-glitch's assassination, the third governor ago, is a complete load of static. I should know, I was there."

"Dreadgate," Breakdown muttered, looking off at the Starspire once again. It had a gift shop? He'd never heard of anything in Polyhex with a gift shop, but Polyhex wasn't really known for it's history and culture. "His name was Dreadgate."

"Yeah, him. Dangerous glitch, and everyone knew it. Some as thought he'd take over from Shockwave if given half a chance. And if that Autobot wench hadn't holed his laser-core, he'd be the one sitting in Polyhex now and not old One-Eye. But the official reports blame it on Blazerider's predecessor even though she wasn't doing anything worth half a gram of energon before then. Not that she did anything worth half a gram after, either. No surprise Blazerider took over in the most bloodless coup anyone's ever seen."

Breakdown frowned and turned to look over his shoulder at Spindledrop. "But the Autobots didn't have anything to do with Dreadgate-"

The needle-jet stepped to one side of the boat, making the whole thing wobble precariously before he settled back in the center. "Sure, they did. No smart Autobot wants a real Decepticon warlord running around, and that's what Dreadgate was setting out to be. Besides, I was there. I know what happened even when the official reports lie. You read what they say in the Starspire, you'll see I'm telling the truth."

The Lamborghini made some noncommital noise of agreement. Maybe Spindledrop had been there, but Breakdown found that he didn't really want to look at the histories and find out that his guide was a real person. There was something a little bit intoxicating about the idea of being boated to the Starspire by someone who knew the city and that he'd mysteriously never see again.

"Tell me more about the Starspire," Breakdown commanded, gaze turned back to the tower once more.

"You ought to consider being more specific sometime," Spindledrop griped before starting to detail the history of the building through the Golden Age.

# # #

Spindledrop let him off at the indoor quay that filled much of the base of the Starspire. Breakdown didn't look back at the neutral as he walked away, determined that the jet should just disappear and never be seen again by him.

He slipped through the thin crowds until he reached the hollow center that stretched almost all the way to the top. It was alive with jets darting between levels or just playing in the vast open space with an unguarded delight. But there were no non-jets in it, and he couldn't stand the idea of everyone turning to stare at him if he stepped into it. So he transformed into car-mode and drove up the winding, endless ramps.

Countless side galleries curled off from the main ramp, each promising pricelessly beautiful art to the visitor. He'd never had much of a taste for art, not after going with Dead End and Drag Strip to a few exhibitions. Everyone looked around too much, and they paid especially close attention to people who stupidly admitted to not knowing about art. No, art was definitely for other people, not him.

Up and up he went, driving for hours. Megatron, this was even faster than flying for him- How could anything be so huge?

But it was, and he loved it. Loved the way no one looked twice at him, loved the way the crowds just vanished when he reached a certain height, and how almost all the people vanished when he got higher still.

And then he came to the top.

The vast, star-spattered heavens opened up above him, crisp and clear from an almost non-existent atmsophere. Faintly below him, he could see the glow of the city rising up, but it was nothing next to the endless open sky. He thought he could just fall into it.

He ambled to the edge of the tower, and gaped as the city spread out below him. Such a beautiful jewel-glow of lights that went on and on forever. Some of them moved, flitting and darking from larger collections of lights, and some moved along with a stately urgency down lighted paths.

It was so much more than he'd expected, and it made everything about the trip wonderfully worthwhile. This was fabled Kaon, the greatest city in the world, and it belonged to the Decepticons.

It belonged to him. Just like Earth.

End

Author's Notes: Well, in 2006, I finished my twenty-eighth Reflector ficlet in December. This last year, I finished my twenty-eighth Breakdown ficlet in December. I am hoping to finish my twenty-eighth Blitzwing ficlet before December '08, I really am.

I'd like to thank all of the people who've read these stories, especially here on At least on my Livejournal, people have been able to get individual headers for each ficlet. So thank you to everyone who has read this collection of stories that jump from genre to genre. I hope you've enjoyed what you found here.