Cambreaker reclined in his command chair, on a high dais over the aft bridge of the Netherspite. Kicking his massive hydraulic fluid stained feet up onto the console in front of him, he began to feel restless. He glanced over his shoulder to his consort, Minerva.
She sat nearby, tinkering with a remote actuator she had grafted to a severed hand. It twitched and grasped as she pressed the keys on the remote. Sparks flew from the stump of a wrist, and smoke started to emanate from within the hand.
He glanced over his other shoulder to Blackjack, who was fiddling with something on his private data pad, his eyes darting nervously about to the couple other Decepticons loitering here.

BLACKJACK!

Yes? He choked, startled by Cambreaker's intrusion.

Why are you here? You should be reporting back on Autobot recovery activities by now. We have an assault to mount!

Ah've already gat the data you was lookin' foah, Cambreakah.

Blackjack slithered over to Cambreaker's side and handed him the datapad. Cambreaker looked at it intensely for a moment, then shoved it back in Blackjack's hands. He picked up the ship's intercom, and bellared:

Decepticons! Assemble battle-ready in shuttle bay 2. You have one breem. All not present will not be accounted for in tonight's energon rationing, excepting dedicated ship crew.

Blackjack, you had best make your self scarce. I expect inside information with the megacycle.

An aggravated glare sent Blackjack scurrying, before hitting the hallway with all four wheels turning, throwing up clouds of smoke and emitting a resonating screech.

Where is that Blackbolt? Blackbolt! Cambreaker demanded on his wrist comm. Blackbolt, return to base and arm for assault operations. Cambreaker turned back to Minerva, with a sudden calm and placid look on his faceplates.

Come, my dark companion. The time has come to spill and drink Autobot oil for all the crimes they have wrought upon us. We will fill your laboratory with bodies upon which to perfect your science, so you will herald in a new age for all Transformers.

OOC: Sorry honey, but I figured since Cam and Minerva are usually too professional to do anything other than keep their feelings on the down-low, DeceptiCam should be very out about it... to the point of snubbing less important soldiers

_________________

Minerva pauses in her work and watches amusedly as Blackjack scurries off like cyber-rat she found him to be. She liked him as much as she did cyber-rust and didn't trust him as far as she could throw him. He tended to be quite useful from time to time though, so she tried to accept his occasional prescence.
As she hears Cambreaker gather the troops and then gets up from his chair, she puts her small experiment aside.

Hmm yes, it's about time they pay she says, meeting Cambreakers optics with a wicked smile, and accepts the arm he's offering her.
This time though, she continues, I would appreciate if you and the troops could leave some bodies worth salvageing. I need more raw material for my experiments.

Cambreaker returns the smile. Certainly, whatever you wish.

Minervas smile grows wider. I know I can always count on you, my evil one.

They both head to the shuttle bay where the Decepticons are assembling, ready for Cambreakers orders.

_________________

Gone but not forgotten - Menasor

My King and Queen, what be ty orders?

Sideways enters the room, watching Blackjack leave the room in a hurry. He looks back at Cambreaker and Minerva, with a dead look in his eyes. There is no fear in his voice - Sideways is not afraid of anything or anybody.

Ah, Sideways. I presume you have completed the upgrade to the ship's computer- Bravado (OOC: Opposite of Paranoia? tee-hee.) As I have requested?

Sideways nods, and Cambreaker gets a pleased, evil gleam in his crimson eyes.

Eeexcellent. We're staging the attack I'd explained to you earlier. I will assign you a couple of troops once we are assembled, and you will set to work taking some captives at the beginning of the attack. Once you have a few you feel we can extract some information from in custody, you will help finish out the attack. Head back when reinforcements are no longer needed, and do what you do best with our.... guests. But, I want their physical structures largely unharmed- no disintegrations. You will turn the bodies over to Minerva.

Cambreaker looks to Minerva with a twisted, loving smile.

Of course, if you collect enough prisoners to be surplus of requirements, the remainder are yours to do with as you wish.... Where IS that Blackbolt? He hasn't reported in yet.

Cambreaker demands of the ship in general, his voice booming over the comms so that any who know may answer, and to alert three other bots on the ship in specific...

_________________

The Small patrol vessel enters the atmosphere of the large planet. The planet is much larger than Cybertron or Earth. It's composition is largely water. It has a single large land mass on the northern hemisphere. While aware of it's existance, Cybertron has largely ignored it due to it's lack of harvestable energy sources. (aside from whatever it is that keeps the climate a constant 38 degrees C) at it's distance from it's nearest star, it should be a lifeless iceball. Instead it is lush with giant trees, the average size of which would make a large transformer feel like a human on earth. A lost paradice.
Blackbolt sat the vessel down in a flat area near a piece of the thousands of miles of shore. He and his team, Fireflight Airraid and Skydive step out onto the planet's surface. Without a word they transform and takeoff towards south, the last known location of the deserter Slingshot.
Blackbolt looked at the blue sky above him and wished it was the blackness of space "the higher the better". He mused in a whisper just loud enough so he was the only one to hear it. His conversations with himself grew in a shocking manner since
Slingshot had fought his way out of the aerial assault team. This had left him down a right hand in more ways than one.
Bolt was jarred from such musings by Cambreaker's voice on the main com channel
"what is it now?" bolt quipped, the disgust in his voice was evident
"you need to come in, now blackbolt"
"i'm busy"
"you've been busy for three weeks, Bolt. I don't want to force your team in but I will if needed"
"if you have someone fast enough then bring it on, Bolt out."
Fireflight flew up to sight range of Bolt.
"maybe you should do what he says bolt he is decepticon high commander"
"you're right he is high if he thinks i'm coming back without sling, even if I have to bring him back in a tiny sack."
Above them, in the clouds, now in robot mode Skydive looks at
Airraid. "Well?"
"Cambeaker has authorized deadly force"

_________________
Wanted: Brainstorm.

Drewtube Amazing Adventures

Blackbolt awoke, his head hurt. He was stasis cuffed to a wall. :I must be really weak or these cuffs are extra strong: he could barely move his optics. When finally looked down he saw his battered torso.
Dents
holes
burns from gunfire. He figured out what had happened. He had been captured by his own team and returned to that tyrant, Cambreaker.
He decided it would be best to save his energy reserves for the beating that was surely coming. "time to pay for my sins"

_________________
Wanted: Brainstorm.

Drewtube Amazing Adventures

((If Silverbolt will forgive me for controlling his characters just a little bit, what i'm about to say means that Blackbolt was NOT captured by his own team. i think something interesting could be done with the fact that Blackbolt's first/best guess as to what happened to him was a betrayal by his closest teammates... especially since that guess was WRONG... at least this time.))

"Yes, indeed," says the little old lady known simply as "Gran". "Time to pay for your sins."

Gran--one of the Decepticons' Human recruits--has Blackbolt's team aboard her enormous Transtector/starship, which is called Ximus. ((Ximus resembles the starship Enterprise, transforming similarly to Universe/Legends/Henkei/Gentei/whatever Cosmos but with the Enterprise's engines becoming over-the-shoulder cannons in robot mode. Ximus also has a crab mode, with the Enterprise's engines becoming the crab's main claws/arms and the crab's legs unfurling from sections of the circumference of Enterprise's saucer. In robot mode, the crab's legs can wrap surreptitiously along the edge of the robot's arms or flare out to serve as guns or blades. Note that Ximus is a Triple Changer like G1 Scorponok, with a robot mode, a beast mode (inspired by a creature with claws, many legs, and an exoskeleton), and a battle-ready, city-sized mode capable of space flight--at least, Scorponok flew while in city/base mode in "The Rebirth".))

Ximus is one of Gran's two Transtectors; at present, she is only combined with her more normal-sized Transtector, Grandma. ((About the same size as G1 Mirage in robot mode, Grandma resembles Tonka's GoBot Pathfinder, and possesses its own secondary head/face even when Gran is absent, similarly to Energon Omega Supreme without Omega, or Armada Sideways without Crosswise or Rook. Gran combines with Grandma the way a Brain Robo combines with a Brainmaster Transtector rather than the way traditional Headmaster heads and bodies combine.)) In combined form, Gran, Grandma, and Ximus are called "Grandma Ximus". (("Grandma Ximus" is pronounced like the phrase "grand moxie muss". Ximus has her own head, like a Powermaster Transtector instead of a Headmaster Transtector, but Gran and/or Grandma can become ornamentation on Ximus's helmet. As a not-to-scale analogy, imagine if the antennae on the helmets of Cab, Hosehead, Minerva, Nightbeat, Shuta Go, and Siren could also transform like Targetmaster weapons.))

Standing next to Grandma is Grandma's Pretender shell, "Annie" (or "Granny", as it is called when Gran and/or Grandma is inside). ((Annie's appearance is based on Josie "Circuit Breaker" Beller and/or the "Star Trek: Voyager" character Seven of Nine when she was still a Borg drone. An irrelevant coincidence i found amusing: After i named Granny/Annie, i remembered that before Seven of Nine was assimilated by the Borg, she was named Annika Hansen.)) Speaking now through Annie, Gran says, "You did tell Cambreaker to bring it on... but you brought this on yourself. And now, I'm going to bring you in."

What Gran does not tell Blackbolt is that he and his minions never even flew out like they thought they did. Instead, Gran tricked them into a flying aboard Ximus, where Ximus's holodeck team created a simulation--holomatter illusions by Hound, and (when necessary) with NiteBeat7 supplying the sound effects, Windcharger using his magnetic powers to simulate the effects of gravity, inertia, and so forth, Safeguard providing heat (using Jetfire's ability) and wind (using Jetstorm's ability), and the Twins (Mudflap and Skids) providing cold (using the refrigeration systems of their combined vehicle mode, an ice cream truck)--all designed to make the planes think they were following Slingshot's trail. Under orders from Gran, Omega Supreme (who's useless as a warrior anyway and therefore far less likely to be noticed missing than Blackbolt and company) continued on the same course Blackbolt had been taking, sending back sensor data to Ximus for the holodeck team to use as a basis for their holographic cage. The simulation showed Blackbolt and his cohorts what they would have seen, heard, felt, or otherwise detected had they actually gone where they believed they were going; whenever they responded to any such stimuli, Omega Supreme responded accordingly so that the holodeck team would receive the data necessary to continue creating an accurate illusion for the captives.

Even without Slingshot, Blackbolt's team is too valuable in combat to let them fly off on some wild gizmo chase, and Gran knows that. But if one of them does know where Slingshot has gone--or knows how to find out--Gran wants that information... and preferably
A) before Blackbolt or any of his minions get that information,
B) without Blackbolt or any of his minions knowing she has that information, and
C) with Gran in a better position to do something with that information (via Omega Supreme) than Blackbolt or any of his minions.

Thus the holodeck trickery. But Blackbolt and his underlings have no way of knowing that they were fooled by Gran and her team. Cambreaker might discover what Gran and company have done, but from the transmissions he keeps sending asking where Blackbolt is, telling Blackbolt to get himself and his men to their stations, Gran can tell that the Decepticon leader is, at least for now, ignorant of Gran's scheme. Keeping him that way would be a simple matter of blasting the four jets unconscious, dropping the illusion in which they had been immersed, locking them up, and letting them awake in Ximus's brig thinking that Ximus followed and captured them.

Ximus's crew puts Blackbolt, Fireflight, Air Raid, and Skydive each in their own cells. Gran assigns Hound to guard Blackbolt, NiteBeat7 and Windcharger to guard Fireflight, Skids and Mudflap to guard Air Raid, and Jetstorm and Jetfire to guard Skydive. Gran, through her mental connection to Ximus, watches all of them, as well as more visibly watching Blackbolt via Grandma and Fireflight via Annie.

Gran sets Ximus a course for the Netherspite. As Ximus approaches Cambreaker's flagship, Gran activates Grandma's communications systems. (Although Ximus has its own powerful communications array, Grandma transforms into Ximus's primary communications array, in addition to transforming into a sort of shuttle pod.) "Gran to Netherspite," Grandma says. Looking Blackbolt straight in the optics, Grandma says, "Inform Cambreaker that I have Blackbolt and the three goons he has left in custody and under guard here aboard Ximus."

_________________
One shall stand; one shall fall; and the one who stands shall help the one who falls to stand once again.
--Rhymus (also known as STARS Commando 539, also known as transit)