Whew. For a while there, I didn't think I would be able to get this chapter done. Interesting things kept happening and I never wanted it to finish! Psi makes for such a fun and frustrating character to write for. I hope you all enjoy the madness!

This chapter is rather interesting because I am tying up a lot of old storylines with it, so there is reference to many other tie-in stories I have written in years past, such as Even Angels Fall. If all had gone according to plan and all of my tie-in stories were written up to the pointed I needed them to be, then all of the characters backstories would be in place... but we don't live in a perfect world, and luckily the story doesn't need to be read with the tie-ins anyways. Where You and I Collide and Surface of the Sun are just awesome bonuses.

Thanks so much to the incredible reviewers of the last chapter: Nikkie2010, Flameshield, Gamemice, Starfire201, Agent Or4ng3, Cee Marie, CNightJoy, Bluebird Soaring, femme4jack, star's dreams, Lecidre, FORD B, Prime13, Litahatchee, Shadir, and Phoenix51.

May We Never Let Go
To Ashes and Dust

Sam nervously paced the tabletop of the holographic table, afraid of stopping in one place for too long. If he stopped, the hologram would pixelate and destabilize, threatening to drop him right through it. Each side of the table was lined by seated Cybertronians, some of them following his progress, most of them looking like they did not want to be there.

"So," said the human. "Who knows what FUBAR means?"

A healthy majority of the table raised their hands.

Sam rolled his eyes. "And who just looked FUBAR up on the internet because they arrived on the planet this morning?"

Skywarp raised his hand, realized he was the only one, and slowly put his hand back down.

"Is there any reason behind your questioning, human?" Starscream drawled impatiently.

Sam ignored the human comment, because either it was an insult or a compliment, and either way he wasn't taking the bait. He levelled a flat glare on the Seeker. "I can't think of another situation that would be more Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition than this one."

"I second that motion," Rodimus claimed, faceplate down at the table like he meant to disappear through it.

Kup huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. "Maybe you should have thought of that before you went off with a stranger and got yourself turned into a Prime."

"If I even thought there was a remote possibility of this happening-"

"You probably would have done it anyways," Kup cut in.

Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. "I should have been more careful – I should have chosen someone more battle ready. It's my fault he's like that."

Ironhide rumbled like a storm cloud, looking very much the part as he leaned over the table to settle Sam with a heavy scowl. "Just because you have that power inside you, boy, doesn't mean you can go off and do what you like with it."

Sam nailed him with an incredulous glare. "It's not as if I'm taking this lightly. I haven't done anything I regret."

"I think you are forgetting that you're still human, and a dying one at that," Ironhide countered harshly. "You went off on a stupid whim, no one here the wiser where you went, and you fought with a god who could have easily killed you."

A minor shockwave passed through the air, enough to stir the motes of dust hanging in the air. "I went to Mission City because Bumblebee was calling me. Maybe you're ready to give up on him, but I'm not."

"Damn it, boy!" The weapon specialist's fist came down on the tabletop, nearly shattering the hologram. "You're not the only one fighting for Bumblebee, but we have to be smart about it!"

"He took the Allspark monument, Sam, and he tried to kill you," Ratchet reasoned darkly. "He's tried to kill you more than once."

"He never succeeded," Sam retorted hotly. "He had the opportunity, but he didn't kill me. Bumblebee is in there somewhere, he has to be-"

"You're living in a dream, Sam," Jazz cut in sharply. "We all care for Bumblebee, but sometimes ya gotta face the hard facts. The bot we knew as Bumblebee is gone; he sacrificed himself ta give us time, and the thing that took his place is just playing us by using his faceplate."

"How do we know that for sure?" Sam countered, though wavering. "Bumblebee could still be in there! I could get through to him!" He looked down at his glowing hands, bright blue whirls cutting through his skin. "I have all this power but I can't do a single useful thing with it? Fuck that! I'll get Bumblebee back somehow!"

At the far end of the table, Optimus Prime sighed a great gust of air, his shoulders falling into a tired droop. "Sam, this is hard on all of us. Don't make it any harder."

"I'm not trying to make it harder," Sam said, edging on pleading. "I am not being intentionally naive, either! What's the point of being the Allspark if I can't do anything with it? I must be able to do something for Bumblebee."

Jazz rested a single elbow in the table, balancing his chin in his palm. His blind regard weighed heavily on Sam's shoulders. "What if Bumblebee doesn't want you to do anything for him?"

Searching the towering faceplates around him, Sam failed to find support in a single bot. There was pain there, deep regret, but also the resignation that in the end someone needed to die. Even Ironhide, who had raised little Bumblebee from a tiny sparkling, carried an expression carved of stone. None could meet his eye, save for the Neo-Decepticons; they looked on, but with pity in their optics.

Fists clenched so tight his nails bit into his palms, Sam gritted out, "I'll still fight for him."

Jazz's dark visor glinted, expression morphing into a frown. "Will ya still fight for him when he hands you over ta Nemesis? Or when the barrier between our two universes collapses? How about when there's nothing left of this world ta fight for, will you still fight for him then?"

"He's my brother!"

"He was our brother for a lot longer than he was yours," the saboteur reminded quietly, the sound of his claws clacking against the holographic table echoing ominously. "The difference between you and us is that we've been fighting long enough ta know when it's time ta say goodbye."

Sam's lip curled as internal fury festered. "I don't need to waste lifetimes on a useless war to know how to say goodbye. Weeks from now, days even, I'm going to have to say goodbye to everything. Forever. The one thing I won't do is give up, not on Bumblebee. Not until the end."

Jazz held his regard for a long pause, breaking it only to shake his head on a long sigh. "The end is coming faster than ya know."

"You don't have to tell me that."

Starscream slid a covert glance at his trine mates, and then to the wider scope of the few Neo-Decepticons at the table with him. They each sported the bewildered, uncomfortable looks of bots trapped in an emotional situation they never wanted to be found in. Several bots down the length of the table, even Jetfire shot him a trapped look, silently begging for any kind of segue into other pertinent topics.

It was times like these that Starscream wished it did not fall to him to be the designated glitch, despite the fact that he played the part disgustingly well. Clearing his vents loud enough that the sound carried down the holodeck, he propped his elbows on the tabletop and drawled, "This is all very emotionally stirring, but don't we have more important things to discuss?"

If looks could kill, it was a good thing he couldn't die. His various supporters, those most relieved to have something else to focus on, jumped on the opportunity with alacrity.

"Not to be a wrench in the gears," Thundercracker all but rushed to say, "but there is the matter still to consider of The Fallen looking over our shoulders. And Unicron." He tugged restlessly at a sheet of armour around his neck, like he meant to let off excess heat. "They are the reason we came to this planet, after all. And why we have an army waiting for us on the other side of that Space Bridge."

Skywarp nodded along. "He has a point. They are what we've been preparing for, not your Bumblebee getting some glitch and going off the deep end."

Sunstorm sputtered, looking between the two parties collected at the table. "This matter of... of extra-dimensional gods invading bears some discussion!" When a whole line of Seekers glared with the intent of silencing him on the end of their null rays, Sunstorm brought his hands up and verbally backpedalled. "Not our previous discussion, as... important as it was. We have yet to talk of who and what these beings are and if it is even possible to defeat them."

"Not that I want to agree with a bunch of ex-Cons," Kup intoned reluctantly. "But those are very good points. It's a losing battle if we fight something we know nothing about."

Looking faintly impressed, Ultra Magnus had to accede to the Seekers.

The least interested in all of the proceedings, Acid Storm finally deigned to sit up straight in his seat, though his expression remained in the range of utmost boredom. "You know what I want to know?" he drawled, conveniently speaking during a lull of noise so that his voice carried and he caught attention. "That bot down there." He flicked a claw in Rodimus's direction. "How do we really know he's a Prime? Before we all accept yet another impossible thing, shouldn't we make sure?"

A diamond smirk curled the edges of Starscream's mouthplates, glad for the very real distraction. "Good question."

Acid Storm inclined his head. "There is more to being a Prime than simply looking the part, is there not? His contact with... what did you call it again? The Allspark's death? Contact with the artifact may have simply warped his outsides. We've seen no evidence of internal changes. Nothing about him tells me he's a Prime."

Rodimus glared miserably at the Seeker, about to open his mouthplates to spit something caustic, only to think better of it when Kup gave him a warning jab with his elbow.

"Well?" Acid Storm pressed, tossing an impudent optic ridge in the air.

Optimus Prime was the picture of reasonableness nodding to the Neo. "I have actually been wondering the same thing myself."

His statement, though quietly given, caught the interest of more than a few lining the table. Even Sam paused long enough to cast a surprised look upon the Prime, but then hurried back to pacing when the hologram beneath his feet faltered.

Seeing that he was the centre of attention, Optimus smiled faintly for the crowd, placing his elbows on the table and lacing his fingers together. "What Acid Storm says is very true, and he's given us one of the few questions we can find an answer to quickly enough. Yes, us Primes have a very distinct look to us-"

Elita One coughed delicately into her hand, a disguised laugh more than anything else.

"But it is what is on our insides that makes us quite different from everyone else," Optimus finished, casting his sparkmate an amused look. "Physically on the inside," he amended, turning to Rodimus. "There is one very quick way of determining if your change is true or if it is purely aesthetic. Stand up, please."

Stunned, Rodimus stayed in his seat until Kup nudged him out of his shock. "Go on, Roddy. He's not going to bite. We need to know, don't we?"

Rodimus's sour expression as he scooted from his seat said he did not need to know. In fact, the only thing he needed was a large rock for him to crawl into. Or for a hole to open up in the floor and swallow him whole.

"It's okay," Optimus assured, clapped strong hands on the second Prime's shoulders. They were nearly the same height, Rodimus's design proving the smaller and slighter of the two. "I was just as nervous as you are now when I was first upgraded to Prime. I may have known it was coming all my life, but it does not change the shock of it when it happens. It takes some getting used to."

Behind blue optics, it was the young and scared Hot Rod who stared out pleading for freedom. "I didn't want this."

Optimus leaned in, so no other could hear. "There were some orns when I didn't want it either. Some orns, I still don't want it." He leaned back again, his smile still calm and knowing. He dropped his hands from Rodimus's shoulders. "The one way to see if you're a full Prime is to open up."

Rodimus stood there blankly. "What?" He looked down at himself, then at the table.

Optimus chuckled, tapping Rodimus's chest. "Open up. Just the chassis, if you will."

Rodimus let his chassis open, shivering when a cold draft of air came whistling through. He looked down at himself, at the new arrangement of internal machinery. He was not a mechanic and had very little training on the internal works of his own species, so he could not say if anything inside was truly different. Only that there appeared to be more equipment in there than there normally would have been.

"Hmmm," Optimus mused, optics flashing. He tipped his head, subtly shifting so no other could see into Rodimus's chest. "I wasn't expecting that." He reached in to tap the compartment just below Rodimus's sparkcase. The touch was so unexpectedly intimate it caused the second Prime to startle away, nearly tripping over. Optimus drew back with a laugh. "Sorry, I should have warned you; that part of your anatomy is a little sensitive-"

Again, Elita One coughed delicately behind her hand.

Optimus shot her an admonishing look before trying reassure poor Rodimus. "At least we have that cleared up." He straightened to his full height, fixing his faceplate not to betray his troubled throughts.

"What's cleared up?" Rodimus croaked. "What's in there?"

"A lot of hot air," Skywarp muttered.

"Too much exhaust fumes," Acid Storm coughed.

Starscream whacked one and kicked the other. Thundercracker coughed loudly enough to disguise the noise.

The other end of the table remained serious. Optimus grasped Rodimus's shoulders, meeting his optics. "You have rather more in there than I was expecting."

Withering, Rodimus croaked, "Is it a tumour?"

Kup clapped a disbelieving hand to his faceplate.

Optimus weighed his options for an answer, only to decide the unguarded truth would probably work best: "The Matrix. It appears you have an actual Matrix in there."

Rodimus's reaction was curiously delayed, the news so beyond his already stressed tolerance levels that he stayed blanks for several seconds. And then his left optic twitched. A large, shuddering gasp of air suck in through his vents. In a sudden flurry of movement, his own hands were digging into his front, blunt fingers ripping into all sorts of machinery. "Get it out of me! I don't want it! Get it out of me!"

"Oh," Jetfire intoned, half-raising from his seat. "Maybe you shouldn't do that. Roddy, you're going to hurt yourself-"

Ratchet reached up and eased the large jet back into his equally large seat. "Let him be. We'll fix whatever he breaks later."

Now fully up to his own elbow in his own internal mechanics, Rodimus verged on a new panic attack. "I can't have one of those in me. You can't just make a new one, can you?" He spun to the singular human-shaped form in the room. "You didn't tell me I had one of those inside me!"

Sam's eyebrows went up. "I don't know everything."

"You don't?!"

Optimus fought to keep his mask in place, or else make the situation with the younger Prime worse. "Rodimus... Roddy! Calm down. It isn't the end of the world." The keening noise that erupted from the bot said otherwise. Optimus was forced to tighten his grip on the bot and give him a firm shake. "Rodimus Prime, I know that this is a lot to take in all at once, and I realize you have had a very short amount of time to adjust to the change, but are going to work through this."

Over the din of the new Prime, Mirage settled back in his chair and gave a rather dispassionate harrumph. "How can there be two Matrixes?"

"How can there be two Primes?" Jazz shot back impatiently. "Today is just full of fragging surprises. Shut your mouthplates before ya make it worse."

"Quiet, the both of you," Elita snapped, cutting off any acerbic retort Mirage might have bitten out. Both Master Spy and saboteur forced their mouthplates shut under her severe glare. She settled back in her seat, keeping a stern optic on them and anyone else who dared pipe in with their thoughts. "I never did like it when you bickered like sparklings."

Optimus finally managed to get a grip on Rodimus, enough to be able to be able to speak again without the bot flying off on a new tangent. "If you are okay with me reaching in there, I am going to pull the Matrix out." He made sure to keep optic contact, meeting the wild blue fire flaring in the new Prime's optics. "Are you okay with me taking out your Matrix to see it?"

"Yes?" Rodimus choked, then dragged in air. "Yes. Take it. I don't want it." His hands twitched, rising and then dropping heavily back to his sides. "Take it away."

"Okay." One steady hand gently stroked Rodimus's audio. "All I was looking for before was the compartment that houses the Matrix. All Primes are constructed with it, but I guess I should have expected more."

It was with steady, reverent hands that Optimus reached into Rodimus's chest. Rodimus himself was not yet familiar enough with his new internals to move things around by thought; he wouldn't know which mechanisms to activate to push the Matrix forward. Optimus manipulated the machinery manually, moving structures back, pulling others down and forward, until a shining light glimmered to the life under the stark glare of the holodeck lights.

"Ah, there you are," he murmured, taking the curiously familiar yet alien object into the cradle of his hands. Whereas the touch of his own Matrix, the one that had been passed down for generations, was warm and welcoming, radiating a sense of knowledge and awareness, the Matrix in Rodimus's possession lacked presence.

Instead of looking at the treasure pulled from his frame, Rodimus tipped his head back and refused to countenance it at all.

Turning it over in his hands, noting the jaggedness of the crystal inside and the haphazard means of the metal constructing it, Optimus surmised the artefact must have formed from the shard of Allspark diamond Rodimus had been stabbed with. The sense of emptiness emanating from it lent to the theory. But was it a real Matrix or a mere copy? He knew of one way to find out. He turned without warning and exposed the Allspark to the Matrix.

Sam immediately froze as the Allspark within him rose up and seized control, head cranking around, eyes flaring bright to fixate on the object.

"That answers that," Optimus sighed. "It seems we have a fully authentic Matrix to go along with our genuine Prime." He turned to offer the Matrix back to its rightful owner.

"No, I can't," the second Prime choked out, hands up to ward off the offering.

"It's yours now, Rodimus. You have to take care of it."

Faceplate crumpling, Rodimus took the Matrix in trembling hands, fumbling numbly with it while he figured out how to finagle it into his chest. The artifact itself possessed a mind of its own, snapping home so quickly it jumped from Rodimus's fingers. Automatic mechanisms took over, drawing the Matrix in, ensconcing it within a protective cocoon beneath Rodimus's spark.

The moment the Matrix was out of sight, Sam snapped back to himself. "Warn a guy before you do that."

"I had to be sure," Optimus said, moving back to his seat. "And we've confirmed it, Rodimus is indeed fully a Prime."

Rodimus's expression turned sour, itching at the seam down his front. "I wish I was Hot Rod again."

An empty chair at the opposite end of the table scraped back, creaked as if someone sat in it, and then scooted itself back in. Though no one could be seen, a reedy voice intoned, "Be careful what you wish for, my pet. Some hungry god might hear you and give you exactly what you want."

Like the Cheshire Cat, The Fallen's smile was the first to appear, followed by the rest of him. "Sorry I'm late. I had business elsewhere."

"Fallen!" Sunstorm exclaimed, scrambling into subspace for his charms and figurines.

Acid Storm scrambled to stop him. "Don't embarrass me like this! Those stupid things are not going to work on him!"

"I see I came at just the right time," Psi announced cheerfully, making a show of checking his wrist as he would have if he wore a watch. "Half past crazy, not a minute later! Perfect time for me!"

Prowl surged to his feet, stayed only by Jazz's clawed gripped wrapped like a vice around his wrist. "You have some explaining to do."

Psi propped his elbows on the ledge, hanging his chin in the hammock of his hands. "I just got here! I haven't done anything to anyone in this room. Yet."

"Only hours ago, you did something to Sunstreaker," the tactician pointed out frostily.

Unrepentant, The Fallen let his head loll about on his shoulders. "I would much rather talk about something important." He picked up a hand and waved it dismissively. "Besides, I didn't do anything Sunstreaker didn't ask me to do first."

It was rare form to see the lauded Head Tactician under Prime show his agitation, but it was on display in full view as Prowl flared his doorwings. "I don't care if he asked you to stick your foot in your mouthplates and swallow yourself whole-"

"I tried that once, it's harder that it looks."

"You destroyed them, you filthy, cowardly, little god!" Prowl snarled, banging his free fist on the table. His other hand remained trapped in Jazz's vice grip, the saboteur's claws digging into him offering a spike of pain to keep him grounded. Be damned how Sideswipe twisted his words, it was not only the tactical advantages the Twins offered that Prowl cared about. "You broke them!"

"Oh, don't be getting your little robot panties in a twist. If you pulled your head out of your exhaust pipe for longer than it takes to make snap judgements about me, you would have noticed that I freed them." Psi lifted his head, mouthplates curling. "Sunstreaker asked of me to save his brother, to ensure that Sideswipe did not go throw himself into the dark and drag poor Sunny down with him. I did exactly as he asked, and all for a very fine price."

"We're familiar with your prices." Jazz intoned, his tone more of a threat than anything else.

"I don't doubt that you are." From between his fingers a bright flame flickered to life, bright blinding white like burning magnesium. He pinched his fingers, snuffing it out. "Sunstreaker feared the dark; he might have asked for me to save his brother, but deep down he was only asking to save himself from what he feared." He absently shook sparks from the tips of his fingers. "The only reason to fear the dark is because there is light to oppose it. If the dark is all there is, you have no other recourse but to accept it. So I took the light away from Sunstreaker, freeing both him and his brother of all fears."

"All love," Elita One said gravely.

He shrugged unconcernedly. "Same difference, really. Both are rather miserable things."

"You wouldn't know love even if it stabbed you in your cold, black spark," Elita spat.

"On the contrary," Psi murmured, deceptively calm of voice while shadows writhed around him. "I know love all too well. Why do you think I take it from others so readily?"

"You are all too happy to take what you want, be damned the consequences of the bots you hurt," Prowl snapped before Elita could spit something even worse. "You are nothing but a damned parasite feeding off the misery you cause!"

"How easily you forget that I am a god, irrespective of what side of the light spectrum I prefer!" Psi snarled back, flames flaring in the shadows of his movements. "What I did or did not do to Sunstreaker, it was nothing he did not ask for first. Can I help it if the price was steep? Is it my fault you don't approve of his choices? I took only what he was too willing to throw away."

"You tricked him somehow," Prowl hissed.

Psi regained his calm, huffing a mirthless laugh. "Sunny prayed and I answered; do not blame the god for the sins of the prayer."

Prowl made a move like he meant to come down the table at the god, once again stayed by Jazz's piercing grip on him.

"Prowl, ya can't fight him." Jazz's claws clenched so tight they dug into the tactician's armour.

"No, you can't fight me," Psi sighed, settling back in his seat, looking around himself in remembrance of his reasons for being there. "And I don't want to fight you right now. I am here for an entirely different purpose."

Surprisingly, it was Elita One's outburst that next rocked the holodeck. Loud, bordering on savage, it was enough to take even The Fallen by surprise. "How dare you think you can do what you did to Sunny and think we would lower ourselves to help you in the aftermath!" Her fist hit the table hard enough that it pixelated, threatening to shatter.

Psi shot her a flaming glare. "What would you have me do? Be as every other god in this universe, spitting on mortals as they cry out for someone to fix their insignificant problems?" A shockwave blew down the table, knocking Sam to his ass, pushing back the Cybertronians seated around. "I may be sold to the dark side, but I have never turned a single one of you down when you cried out for me. I have never ignored a single one of you. I listen to your problems as you snivel and bleat them at my feet, and then I give you exactly what you want and am forced to listen to you bitch about it when my gifts don't measure up."

"With gifts like yours, who needs poison?" Elita sneered.

"It goes both ways," Psi said darkly. "I am a beggar taking scraps, forced to wait until you are the lowest of the low before you even deign to whisper for me. Blame me if you will for doing as my nature demands, but do not slap me away when I lower myself to help you." His fist came down on the table, rocking the entire room. "If I did not take what Sunstreaker freely offered, I would have faded out completely and you would have been left with no clue as to how to defeat Nemesis."

Optimus settled a hand on his sparkmate's arm when she would have snapped on another tirade. "Those clues you can give us," he said, drawing The Fallen's burning amber gaze solely to him. "That is why you are here – to trade with us, information to kill a god in return for carrying out the deed."

One smooth obsidian optic ridge curved up. "It's a fair price, wouldn't you say?"

From around the table, outrage stirred until bots could not remain seated in peace.

"You mean to negotiate with that – that thing?" Mirage exclaimed incredulously.

Sunstorm splayed his hands on the table, half rising in a panic. "Prime, you can't possibly mean it!" Small figurines fell from the creases of his armour, religious totems he had hidden on his person in protection. "The Fallen is a proven liar, he works for Unicron himself!"

"Optimus," Elita begged, her small fingers gripping his hand tight enough to stress the metal. "I know what this would mean for our side, but-." She winced, pained by the screaming within her head that proximity to The Fallen always inspired. "Think carefully about this."

"I have thought carefully about it," Optimus sighed, patting her hand, casting a heavy glance down the table at the rest of the Cybertronians. "We've been at a standstill for months, Nemesis attacking us without much retaliation on our parts. As loathsome as the idea is, The Fallen may be our one advantage."

"Call me Obi-Wan Kenobi," The Fallen chimed cheerfully. "Because I'm your only hope."

Sam raised a hand, his palm flickering with blue lightning in warning. "Do not make me hurt you for ruining Star Wars."

"Bad quotes are the least of our problems, Sam," Jazz said coolly, betraying little of the seething fury carefully reined just beneath the surface. Unexpectedly, his visor flipped up to reveal his empty gaze, the glare made disturbingly potent by the parts of him missing. "He took mah optics, Prime. He took your sparkmate."

"Correction," Psi intoned pointedly. "Shockwave took your mate, Prime. Technically, my ship was an accessory to her kidnapping."

"But not her torture," Optimus said darkly. "I haven't forgotten. As soon as Nemesis is gone this alliance will be null and you will be the next god we kill."

"Well, as long as we have that clear."

"There was never any question of it," Optimus confirmed. "Now, shall we get on to the business portion of this exchange? Nemesis Prime; what is he and why did you bring him to this world?"

Psi picked absently at his claws. Need for truth, straightforward and ungarnished, took its toll as it passed his mouthplates - he grimaced with each word, clearly pained by his efforts. "As a member of an otherworldly pantheon, I am limited in my movements and power on Earth. I needed a plaything that was not bound to the same rules I was."

"Rules?" Sam wondered, quite clearly poleaxed by the concept. He was not alone in the revelation, as most others exchanged disbelieving looks with their neighbours. If The Fallen was incapable of following a straight line drawn in the ground, it seemed beyond him to even attempt following any sort of rules.

"Everything is bound by rules, even me," Psi drawled, rolling his optics. "Things I can't break, but if I'm clever enough I can bend them. That's where Nemesis comes in – as something not of this universe, the rules do not apply to him." He stopped picking at his claws to inspect them nonchalantly. "I never would have thought of it were it not for Bumblebee- he was a pure stroke of inspiration. One look at him and anyone with decent Sight could see what he was." He cocked an optic ridge at Jazz, who sensed his regard and scowled blackly. "In any case, it was a lovely sentiment to pull a beast out of a hole and stick it in a cage, hoping it will do pretty tricks for me."

"But the beast you pulled out had teeth," Optimus countered.

"Teeth and claws, and a bad attitude to match," Psi agreed with a put upon sigh. "I was looking for a pawn and I happened to have pulled out a king instead – known where he comes from as Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos." A cube of energon appeared in midair at his elbow, which he snatched up, drained, and tossed behind him where it disappeared. "Bad luck on my part, I suppose. He was mine for a time, until he woke up from the dream. Now he has his own agendas, as you have probably noticed."

"What is he?" Chromia asked, her prized energon dagger flashing between her fingers. "Obviously a god, but is Nemesis killable? Does he have weaknesses? How are we suppose to exploit him if we hardly know what he is?"

Unexpectedly, Psi shrunk into himself, his expression vaguely turning haunted. Sam was forced to shiver as a cold breeze blew over him, and he realized with a start that he could feel the god's fear.

"The Dead Universe was once only a bad story amongst Others like me, but I guess it is as much as story as I am to you – and my stories never have happy endings," Psi began, hitching one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. "A place where mortals stopped looking up at the stars in wonder and no longer feared the shadows at the edges of a campfire. Gods, belief in gods, was no longer necessary." That haunted look of his grew more pronounced. "The Others in that universe grew so mad with hunger that they began to devour the mortals that once worshipped them. As the story goes, they ate but only grew more starved until everything turned to ashes in their mouths and their hunger set in like a festering wound until it ate them alive. One by one, the stars blinked out, light turned to dark, until all was silent and dead."

"They ate everyone?" Sam exclaimed, flares of light igniting in the air from his unguarded alarm.

"Every last one," Psi replied solemnly. "I don't doubt that part of the story is very, very real."

Sam weaved on his feet. "Bumblebee... he wouldn't...?"

Psi canted his head, optic ridges slowly arching up. "Given how long he's been locked away? He would likely be the first to the trough, my dear."

Sam's expression crumpled, turning away.

"How is that any different from what you and your master want to do?" Sunstorm asked.

A strangled laugh cleared The Fallen's mouthplates, echoing for too long in the holodeck. "There is a very big difference between what Nemesis wants and what my master wants."

"You serve a god called He Who Devours Worlds," Sunstorm countered, finding a thread of confidence to stand up under The Fallen's regard. "Explain to me how it's different."

"Nemesis Prime and his pantheon want to open a hole between the universes, bring their reality here, and devour every last living soul and spark they can. They'll leave everything else, including shades of your existence. You'll be trapped in an everlasting nightmare that will never end, and Others like me... We'll be lucky if we end up like the Dead Universe gods." He tucked his mantle closer around himself, as if seeking comfort. "Unicron wants nothing of the sort. He won't simply devour your sparks and leave the rest to suffer. He won't leave behind scraps that will fester in an unawakable nightmare."

Sunstorm's optics flashed as realization dawned. "He'll devour everything."

The corners of The Fallen's mouthplates quirked up waveringly. "I supposed it sounds rather ludicrous to you to think Unicron is the lesser of two evils. If you could see what I see, if you knew what I knew, you might change your tune about him being evil at all." The burning amber of his optics flickered, inviting Sunstorm into their depths. "When my master is fully awakened, he will devour mortals, planets, and stars alike. Everything will come under his dominion, and in the end nothing will be left. There will be no pain, no sadness, no fear – all you know now will cease to be." He shuttered his optics, briefly captured by a wistful thought. "The dream will finally end."

Starscream scoffed, sitting back with his arms crossed. "How is destroying this universe any better than leaving it to the whims of the Dead Universe?"

"All things must die, Starscream," Psi murmured, meeting the Seeker's red gaze. "You especially."

A chill clawed down Starscream's back.

Thundercracker moved closer to his trine mate protectively. "You won't harm him."

"Me? Oh no, I wouldn't do that. I'm here on a completely peaceful mission," Psi laughed, mocking them with a salute. In a sudden turn of mood, he picked himself up and shook himself off, swinging off on a completely different tangent. "Now, how about we get back divvying up our little battle plans? I haven't even gotten to the best part – killing Nemesis Prime! I even have an assistant coming to help with a demonstration." He checked his wrist again, still sans a watch. "Any astrosecond now." He put his wrist to his audio, then shook it. "Any astrosecond now..."

"Wait," Starscream bid, rising from his seat. "Wait, you know what I am. You know how I got like this, don't you?"

Seeming surprised, Psi cocked his head to the side. "Of course I do. I was there when you got like that. Don't you remember?" He tsk tsked his naked wrist. "Looks like my assistant is running late. Isn't that typical? The undead are so unreliable."

"How?" Starscream demanded. "How am I like this?"

The Fallen finally stopped fiddling with his imaginary watch. "That's not in the terms of the deal of why I'm here. If I tell you, it'll cost you."

Jaw clenching tight, the need to know was written clearly across the deep furrows of Starscream's faceplate. "Name your price."

Acid Storm threw his face back to the ceiling. "And the award for the dumbest decision made today goes to..."

Starscream loomed over his fellow Seeker. "I need to know what I am, Acid Storm. I'm not stupid - I know what The Fallen is, I know what the risks are, but this might be my only chance."

Elita One stirred, not quite able to force herself to look down the table. "What if we split the price?" She ignored the shock that rippled through the ranks.

"Elita-"

"Hush, Optimus," she murmured, a gentle hand atop of his. "Many of you have wondered about me for these past years, wondered of my... unusual quirks. It is nothing I have not wondered about myself. I want to know why I am... different now, as well." She looked as if she might be sick, forcing her optics to rise, meeting Psi's dancing gaze. "You know the answer, The Fallen, don't bother to deny it. If we split the price between us, we should be able to pay."

"Split the price, eh?" Psi murmured, tapping his chin. "It's... doable. The truth is a costly thing. If I tell you right now, everyone in this room will hear it, therefore the price must be spilt between everyone."

"We're making deals with him now?" Prowl asked incredulously. "Did we not just get finished discussing the stupidity of the last deal an Autobot struck with him?"

"Oh, relax," Psi bid with a wave of his hand. "Because I'm doing my best to be all goody-goody, I'll cut you an excellent deal." In his excitement, the lines defining his manifestation lost their sharpness. Little fireworks of sparks popped in the air, bursting out between his clapping hands. "I'll ask for something entirely innocuous, something you have plenty of, and it will still be equal to the price of the truth I'll tell you."

"Name it, then," Starscream commanded.

"Time," Psi replied gaily. "One Earth year of it, to be exact. Simple, yes?" He leaned forward, optics stretched wide - though failing in all pretenses to appear innocent. "When this little engagement of ours is over, I am going to return to my proper frame and take my master far, far away from this mud ball. You are going to let me. You will not leave this planet for one year after my departure. Do we have a deal?"

"Can we risk it?" Ultra Magnus cautioned. "If he leaves with Unicron..."

"Unicron is incapacitated at the moment, isn't he?" Sam intoned, looking up at the towering commander. "The Fallen needs the Allspark to reactivate Unicron, and since I have no plans on handing that power over..."

"Alas, I can't simply take it," Psi lamented. "The Allspark is simply too powerful. It must be freely given."

"There's a snowball's chance in hell of that," Sam jeered.

"One full Earth year, we'll be stuck on this planet while he goes off and does what?" Acid Storm snorted. "He can't take the Allspark energy. The Allspark is dying, with a very good chance he'll be dead by the end of this, right?"

"Thanks for reminding me," Sam sneered.

Acid Storm ignored him. "There doesn't seem any harm in letting a washed up bottom-feeder like him take his empty husk of a master and run off with his tail between his legs. He just told us he has to follow certain rules, which means he can't go off hurting other planets – not without Unicron backing him up. He's got nothing. He can't hurt anyone."

Psi thumped his chest lightly with his fist, over the spot where a spark might lurk. "The truth stings deep."

Starscream shared a speaking glance with Elita, who nodded. "You have a deal. One year of our time for the truth."

"Excellent!" The Fallen's optics flashed bright and he sat up a little straighter. Did his outline look a little more defined? He definitely appeared more solid. The only thing to dampen his mood was the foul taste of the truth coming up - which was a small price to pay for the boon he just collected on. "The simple truth is that mortals are insignificant to Others. You live, you die, we find other pawns to play with. The cycle begins anew." He tossed a casual shrug, hiding his personal grimace. "But sometimes... sometimes we need someone special to do something for us. A bot needs to be in a certain place, at a certain time, doing a very specific certain something." He laid his chin atop his twined fingers. "Sometimes we need to make someone special in order to get that particular something done."

A puzzled silence permeated the air.

Psi stared at them like they were all truly stupid. "Come now. That doesn't sound familiar at all?" He put his palms up, motioning to them. "Bots with unusual abilities, gifts...?" He huffed a disgusted sigh. "Honestly? You would have thought of them as rather peculiar? Special bots."

"Elita One and I, we're... special?" Starscream asked cautiously.

"No," Psi replied simply. "Dead End is special - in more ways than one, really. He's perhaps one of the odder mortals I've had the pleasure of meeting," he mused. "I gave him the gift of Sight the orn he was pulled from the Allspark; he sees death. Worships, actually. It was given to him to perform very specific acts for me, which he has done admirably."

"So what are Elita One and I?"

"Accidents. Aberrations." He pursed his mouthplates, thinking it over. His head tilted one way, and then the other. Amber optics slowly slid around until they focused on the femme at the end of the table. "I highly suspect that Elita One is able to hear... stuff."

"Stuff?" the femme repeated disbelievingly.

"It's a technical term," the god huffed. "Threads of fate being plucked, singing their tunes in her audios; it's what I can hear, what the other Original 13 can hear, what Others can hear." He settled a bemused look on the femme. "Nightbeat gave it to you before he died. I've never heard of a transferable gift... I can't even say who gave it to him. Someone was playing a very farsighted game with him. But now you're changed, Elita One. I think it suits you." He winked.

"Can I be changed back?" she inquired, putting on a brave face.

"Can a butterfly be put back in its cocoon?"

"What of me?" Starscream persisted.

Psi gave a small chuckle. "You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, I'm afraid. I was only aiming for Megatron to follow my invitation to come out and play. You were rather persistent in following him out into deep space after that strange anomaly, even when I tried chasing you away."

Deeply repressed memory fluttered to the surface. "That orn, in deep space – there was something in the dark-"

"I was in the dark," Psi cut in. "Unicron had bid me to find a vessel through which he could be revived. Megatron was ultimately the best choice, but when the time came for him to accept his lot in life, you were too close. The power given off on the event horizon was considerable, which you absorbed." This time, he looked unexpectedly embarrassed. "A little unintentional godly molestation."

"You hear that, Starscream?" Acid Storm drawled. "You're the product of godly molestation."

Sunstorm kicked him beneath the table hard enough to leave a dent.

Starscream clung to what dignity he had left. "Can I die?"

"You already did. A couple of times, actually. The condition just never took."

"Don't play games," the Seeker bid. "Something changed. Dead End said he could see my deaths before, but now he sees nothing. I'm apparently immortal, a condition I was not aware of before. Something obviously changed."

Psi pondered the matter, drumming his claws to a discordant tune that had chills racing down many spinal columns. "Well, yes, something did change," he finally said, slowly, as if testing the words.

"What?"

The Fallen waved a dismissive hand. "You were alive before - the... ah, gift, I supposed you could call it, laid dormant within you. But one can't simply absorb that much power from Unicron and not see any effects from it - you might have noticed some changes. Rashes? Unusual itching? Personality adjustments...?" He nodded, making sense to himself. "The living have never handled pure evil very well. Now you're dead! Mostly. Almost entirely. You seem to handle your evil better, as well that handy little pocket of power you snatched from Unicron woke up and latched on, ensuring it did not die." He stopped, thought about it, then wondered, "That makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah, that makes sense." He snapped his fingers, looking satisfied. "Hard to kill things that are already dead, you see. Hence how hard it is to kill things from the Dead Universe." Out of habit, he checked his watchless wrist. "Still waiting on that demonstration to get here."

"I don't feel dead."

"I don't feel evil, but you people keep telling me otherwise." He stood, giving himself a shake that inspired flames to dance along his dark armour. He cocked his hip on the ledge of the hologram. "My best guess as to what activated your inner Unicron? Someone in my favour tried to kill you recently. My power is, by extension of my contract with Unicron, drawn from Unicron himself; any favour I grant is also connected to the same font." He pushed the tips of his two index fingers together. "Unicron power to Unicron power would have been enough of a spark to wake you up. You draw directly from Unicron himself, not dead, not alive, merely preserved as you are as a means of keeping the power inside of you whole. Now I wonder who would have the ball bearings to kill you?"

When no Seeker looked like he had the answer to who killed Starscream, Psi heaved a long sigh. "Oh come on, you can't guess? She's this tall." He held his hand over the table, not much higher than Sam's head. "Green. Creepy. She's been worshipping Unicron in the form of Megatron since the orn she was created."

"Virus," Starscream said automatically. Her and her stupid viruses.

"Bingo."

"That explains so much about her," Ratchet grumbled.

"I'm going to kill that little glitch!" Starscream exclaimed.

"She killed you first. No take backs." Psi pointed out flatly. "If you are looking to die properly, you'll have to sever your connection with Unicron. Good luck with that."

The lights overhead flickered.

Sam grunted lowly, suffering a sudden tugging in his chest. Black spots peppered his vision.

"Finally!" Psi burst, bustling to the door to whip it open. "Took you long enough."

Dead End promptly fainted over the threshold, most of his armour turned a deathly grey. Behind him was Gloom, hunching up in a moaning bundle. Behind the leech, the entire underground Cybertronian base was suffering its first blackout.

The Fallen stuck his foot under the downed Stunticon and flipped him over. "He's fine," he announced. "This isn't how he dies. He just needs to walk it off."

Dead End wheezed a terrible death rattle, similar to the sound of the energy leech.

Acid Storm was already calling for Motormaster to come pick up his luckless gestalt member.

Gloom was ushered in. The lights flickered one last time before promptly going out. The leech neared the holographic table and it lost power, disappearing – along with the chairs. The holodeck trembled under the weight of several tons of robot alien crashing to the floor. Sam gave a garbled cry as he plummeted through the air, finding himself caught in an outstretched hand of smoke and flame.

"Wouldn't want you to go splat," Psi chuckled, setting him down. In the darkness, he looked transformed, no longer a solidly defined being by an undefined presence that bled out into the darkness. Only his amber optics stayed sharp, dancing with burning light.

Blue and red optics dotted the shadows, blinking dazedly from their fall.

Jazz, hit worst by the unexpected power outage without the ability to see it coming, relied on Prowl's commentary to orient himself.

"The Fallen let Gloom in," the tactician murmured, his voice carrying oddly in the dark. "Power went out."

The saboteur creaked to his knees, then levered up to his feet. "Bright idea to let the energy leech into a room where all the constructs are made out of energy."

The Fallen shooed Gloom to stand approximately around the place where the head of the table used to be. "That's not my fault that you all gathered in a room where everything is made out of energy. I didn't make you gather in this room, did I? That was poor planning on your part."

"Gloom is dangerous to have out like this," Ratchet warned, the emergency lights on the front of his frame flaring bright to illuminate his unimpressed faceplate. "Is there a particular reason you let out the highly dangerous mutated zombie energy leech and trapped it in a room with us?"

"Because I watched Resident Evil and thought it was a good idea?" Psi quipped, but when relented reluctantly when no one laughed. "He's the demonstration I was waiting for. It's not as if you have spare Dead gods lying around to practice killing, so I had to improvise." He gestured to Gloom. "Lucky for me, my frame was the site of unspeakable experimentation and the holding tank for the results of said experiments. Let it not be said that Shockwave didn't make something useful. Ta da!" he chimed. "Here is a being that has been turned inside out, trapped between life and death, and consumed by an unquenchable hunger for energy."

"Which is your fault," Elita One bit out.

"Shockwave's fault," Psi corrected. "I was just the accessory to his experimental crimes. Nevertheless, the end result is this – a gifted leech." He ran a claw beneath Gloom's chin. "Nightbeat may have given his gift to you, Elita, but there was enough left to make him just a little different from your typical Cybertronian. Different enough to make him interesting. Useful." His claw dug in and left a furrow down Gloom's grey front. "I have enough power in reserve for one last trick."

Without warning, his claw pierced through Gloom's armour. Like a knife through liquid mercury, he passed through solid metal until he was embedded up to his elbow, fist choking around the cold cage where Gloom's kremzeek had been shoved seven years before in the battle with Shockwave. Gloom's agonized wail ricocheted off the walls. There was a brief flash of light. Then nothing.

"Phew," Psi breathed, withdrawing his arm. "That should do it. One godly endowed leech, now the closet substitute you'll get for a Dead god."

Gloom collapsed to the floor in a smoking heap. The moaning stopped. Sam blinked ineradicably, his vision clearing of excessive black spots. Overhead, the lights flickered back to life. What was illuminated on the floor was no longer dark grey, but a very deep shade of blue.

"Nightbeat!" Elita One cried, racing to the downed bot. She hesitated for all but a moment over him before falling to her knees and dragging his head into her lap.

For nearly every bot in the room, their daily quota of impossible things had long been filled. It was nearly impossible for them to show any shock for his new event. Most accepted it were weary coolness, emotionally exhausted otherwise.

Unfocused blue optics cracked open a slit. A crooked smile worked its way weakly across his mouthplates. "So I'm dreaming again, am I?" One shaking hand reached up, framing the femme's faceplate. "Not the worst dream I could have."

"You saved me," she said breathlessly, staring down at him in wonder. "Do you remember? You saved me when I had given up and I never got to thank you." Her voice cracked, trembling fingers smoothing down his faceplate. "Thank you so much."

"All part of the plan," Nightbeat assured her, appearing not the least bit surprised to find himself resurrected on the floor of a holodeck on Earth, surrounded by Autobots and Decepticons alike. He blinked, turning his faceplate up to Psi. More softly, he frowned and murmured, "All part of the plan."

Psi pressed a single finger to his mouthplates.

Elita rounded on the god. "If you can bring him back you can bring the others back! You can bring them all back to life!"

"Hey now," The Fallen countered, warding her off with his hands up, palms out. "It's a little more complicated than that."

Nightbeat stayed her with a gentle hand to her arm. "This is temporary," he said, heaving to sit up. "He doesn't have the kind of power to bring me back to what I was, just enough to let me dream one last time." His hand moved up her arm, knuckles caressing her cheek. "I'm just a memory that has yet to be forgotten."

Jazz leaned heavily on Prowl's arm, shaking his head. "Ah never should'a let ya go from Special Ops."

"You never could have held on to me, Jazz, but I appreciate the sentiment," Nightbeat replied warmly, looking at his arms, his legs, taking inventory to see if everything was still there. "I'll admit, you were one of the better commanders I served under. You understood my need to follow the puzzle." He shuttered his optics. "All the pieces falling into place."

"Like now," Jazz said softly.

"Yes, like now," Nightbeat confirmed. He touched one of his audios – the left one that was always a little bit loose. It rattled its familiar tune, inspiring a distant smile. "It's been a long time coming; The Fallen works for Unicron, who is trapped in Megatron, who commanded Shockwave to find a way to create sparks without the Allspark. He used The Fallen's ship as a lab, abducting bots, which led me to him, so I could find Elita to give her my gift so she could help you. I was turned into an energy leech, released on the battlefield and found by Punch – he shoved my kremzeek half inside me, creating Gloom, giving Punch someone to talk to while he sorted out his traumas with Counterpunch. You experimented on Gloom, finding ways to fight the leeches so that you all would survive up to this point. Elita had my gift, giving you the edge you needed to fight." He nodded briefly to The Fallen, lurking quietly to the side. "The Fallen needed a way to show you how to kill something like Nemesis, and here I was, sitting right beneath your feet. A little prod and I'm temporarily godly, giving you the means to destroy a monster and," he turned to Elita fondly, "to give you closure. Someone was playing a very long game."

Jazz laughed breathlessly, shaking his head. "Ya were always better at figuring out the puzzles than Ah was. Now Ah know ya were cheating the whole time."

Nightbeat cracked a knowing smile. "You were always better at thinking up the puzzles, not figuring them out. It's something you should definitely work on." He wobbled to his feet, legs creaking, joints still acting like they belonged on a dead mech. "Everything worked out so that I'd be here. I'm only sad that I can't stay for long."

"You're already fading out," Psi warned, nodding to the greyness setting in around the bottoms of his feet. "I couldn't risk giving you a bigger dose."

"It's fine," Nightbeat said. "There's enough time to do what needs to be done." He turned to Sam with a friendly nod. "I'm sorry we had to meet under these circumstances."

"I'm sorry I have to kill you," Sam replied numbly.

"Don't be. I'm not really here, I won't feel a thing." He looked to Optimus. "You will need to help conduct the energy. I don't think the Allspark is practised enough to do this by himself."

"Whatever you recommend. You seem to be the expert on these matters" Optimus acceded, the seam of his chest hissing open. "Sam."

"Got'cha," Sam acknowledged, waiting for the Matrix to appear. His body went lax, consciousness being subsumed under the command of the artifact.

Nightbeat patted his chest, over his spark. "Aim for here. Nemesis's true form is caged inside his frame, trapped in his sparkcase. If you want the best shot at destroying him, aim for where he is most vulnerable."

Psi sat back in midair. "I created the frame that houses him; I meant for him to be invulnerable to an attack like that, so I made the armour around his chest extra thick. You will have to pour as much power as you can into the attack when you go after him."

Nightbeat watched the god for an astrosecond, quiet, contemplating, but then turned back to Optimus with a hand over his spark. "It will not simply be that you hit Nemesis here and he dies. You have likely noticed that direct attacks do not have that much effect on him; The Fallen has already explained that he's been turned inside out by hunger. He'll absorb whatever negativity you throw at him." He patted his hand over his empty sparkcase. "Strike as if you mean to create, not destroy."

He fell to one knee, greyness now encroaching on his knees, up his thighs. Elita rushed to help him.

"No, it's alright," he assured, warding her off. "You might not want to touch me now." To Optimus, he said wearily, "Strike me as if you mean to create something incredible, even if the end result is only ashes. I'm an energy leech, I absorb energy; fill me to the brim with as much Allspark energy as you can and I will begin to breakdown." He rested on his fists, head bowed for a second. "Nemesis was created out of darkness. Fill him with light and it will corrode him like an acid."

The lights flickered overhead. Sam, still in a trance, nevertheless grunted when energy syphoning started up again. Nightbeat was leaving them, fading more by the second.

Optimus turned the Matrix over in his hands, activating Sam like the boy was on puppet strings. "I can never thank you enough for everything you've done, everything you sacrificed. You were there for Elita when she needed someone."

"You don't have to thank me, Prime," Nightbeat chuckled, optics focusing on something faraway. "It was always meant to be this way. Make it quick, though. You only get one shot at me, make it count."

Under the watchful optics of an awed crowd, Optimus manipulated the Matrix with knowing fingers. He twisted and turned it, connecting with ancient artefact, letting its presence burrow inside of him, becoming part of his will. By extension, both of them reached out to Sam, connecting to the Allspark, causing the boy to jerk up, gasping loudly.

A riptide of power exploded through the room, blowing bots back as if caught in a fierce wind.

Psi tilted his head back in the powerful wind, gladly absorbing the dregs of the Allspark. Before he could be caught doing worse, he faded from sight. His deal with the Autobots was done; in his mind, he needn't suffer their company any longer. He left, and no one noticed he was gone.

Optimus moved Sam like the boy was on puppet strings. Each turn of the Matrix, almost by thought alone, the boy stood straighter, glowed brighter, charging the air until energy prickled down armour. His arms raised, the patterns in his skin writhing.

"Not too big. This is just a practice run," Nightbeat reminded, basking in the warm light flowing over him. He had been in the dark for far too long.

Attack as if creating something. Optimus could only picture the countless times he stood in the Emporium of the Allspark; standing on the great pillar where the Allspark was kept, holding out the Matrix in offering to bring forth a spark from that mysterious, unseen well beyond the threshold of the Allspark. He pictured himself on that threshold once more, reaching into void, smiling faintly when the old feeling of welcome radiating through him.

Ten thousand voices whispering welcome to him.

Power reached to a fever-pitch, released in a sizzling bolt. Nightbeat was hit directly, throwing him back into a wall. He was blue again, so over-charged with energy that his leech side subsided. It would have been heartening, if not for the gaping hole now piercing his chest. No energon flow, no spark flickered. It was merely an empty hole through which his consciousness escaped.

Elita gave a strangled cry and ran after him, gathering him up in her lap once more. True to his command, he had been filled to the brim with energy, enough that he did not syphon from her when they touched. His shining blue optics glowed only faintly as he stared up at the femme, a wavering smile appearing.

"Good shot. Nemesis won't stand a chance," he coughed, visibly breaking down in her arms. His frame disintegrated around the hole, working outwards steadily. His gaze turned unfocused. "I never noticed how quiet the world was before. How do you all manage to live in a world so quiet?"

"We manage," Elita One said, forcing her voice not to waver as the bot in her lap disappeared.

As if surprised to find her hovering over him, Nightbeat's head snapped her way. Then he smiled waveringly, remembering her. "Elita One, I can't hear them anymore."

"I know. Shhhh, it's almost over."

"What are they saying?"

She paused in petting his head, listening, and then smiling sadly. "Goodbye."

Nightbeat coughed a rough laugh. "No, what are they really saying?"

Elita One's optics flashed. "Good... morning?"

The smile Nightbeat gave her was happy, sad, glorious, and dying. "That's exactly the sort of thing you say to someone who's about to wake up from a very long dream."

He closed his optics and crumbled to dust.