LJ presents: The Ultimate Upgrade
We used the walk to school to talk about detente and peace treaties.
LJ had decided to bring her Transformers game to a close. Now she was determined to do it right. "I don't want things to end with the Autobots wiping out the Decepticons," she said, still irked by Dark of the Moon's final reel. "I really can't imagine Optimus acting that way. I want the war to end with peace, Daddy, and I'm pretty sure Optimus would agree to that."
So we talked while we walked. About making sure characters stay in-character; about not making Megatron look too weak or too intelligent; about ensuring Optimus remains the hero of his own story and makes intelligent, thoughtful (and above all just) decisions for himself, his Autobots and the rest of the universe. By the time we reached her class, the kidlet was certain she had it figured out.
All that was left to do, when we arrived home Friday night, was prepare for...
LJ presents:
THE ULTIMATE UPGRADE
Written and directed by LJ
Novelisation by SF
The Rebel Alliance had finally defeated the remnants of the Imperial Army. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had vanquished their arch-enemy, the Shredder, and the evil Foot Clan. And - thanks to both their help and their own hard efforts - the heroic Autobots had gathered up every last particle of the Chaos Bringer, Unicron, and locked it in their ship for sake-keeping. The Dark Energon Quest was over.
"Autobots, I'm proud of you all," Optimus Prime told his loyal mechs. "We've fought and searched on dozens of worlds these past five months, and our toil has been rewarded. The Decepticons have failed to secure any Dark Energon, their allies have been imprisoned and our friends have found well-deserved peace. Now it falls to us to determine a safe method by which this infernal substance may be disposed of, after which we will..."
"Go back to Cybertron?" Sari Sumdac, the half-human protoform, asked eagerly. "I've always wanted to live there with you guys!"
Optimus shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry, Sari, but our destination will be Earth," he said. "As long as the Fallen and his followers threaten our adopted home world, we must be there to defend it." He stooped to pat her on the shoulder with his enormous metal hand. "Cybertron will have to wait."
A few light years away, the Fallen slumped in his command chair and sighed. His Decepticon forces were in utter disarray. Repeatedly routed by the Autobots, they had turned on one another and bickered incessantly. Starscream and Shockwave were the worst - they pushed, shoved and sniped at one another right in front of their would-be god. Each was quick to blame the other for five months of failure. Only Megatron and Soundwave were absent from the dismal scene... and that concerned the Fallen greatly.
In the bowels of the Nemesis, the missing Decepticons took a secret meeting with Lockdown the bounty hunter. "We can't offer you upgrades," Megatron explained, "but we can give you enough money to buy whatever upgrades you like. You steal the Dark Energon from the Autobots for us, and Soundwave and I will give you sixty-five thousand Energon chips - provided you don't tell the Fallen about this. Deal?"
Lockdown accepted... then went straight to the Fallen and dobbed them in. "I figure you'd be prepared to make me an even better offer," the bounty hunter said slyly, playing on the demi-god's shock and outrage. "What'll you pay to make sure you remain the most powerful evil Transformer in existence, hmm?"
The Fallen's rage swelled. "I will match my traitorous disciple's sixty-five thousand," he announced, "and sweeten the deal by giving you Megatron and Soundwave's spark-less carcasses after I've killed them! You can take their blasted, broken and dismembered parts and do what you like!" The bounty hunter thought about Megatron's fusion canon... about Soundwave's mind-reading ability and control of his cassettes... and eagerly accepted the offer.
A short time later Lockdown brought his ship, the Death's Head, alongside the Autobots' vessel. His prey didn't notice his arrival, thanks to the "active camo" mod he'd recently installed. Totally invisible to his enemies, Lockdown easily slipped inside the ship and stole the Dark Energon canister out from under Grimlock and Bulkhead's olfactory sensors! Fortunately, neither dawdled in sounding the alarm and - thanks to bitter experience - Ratchet soon discerned the thief's identity.
Taking command of the cannons and using his cyber-ninja skills, Jazz somehow spotted the invisible ship and inflicted horrendous damage. As the ship spiralled toward a nearby planet, headed for a crash-landing, Optimus realised their mistake. "All is lost if that canister has been ruptured," he said. "Ratchet, take us down to the planet - quickly!"
The Autobots transformed and disembarked as soon as they'd landed. Sari wanted to come along but, as usual, Optimus told her to stay behind. When she complained, his odd expression silenced her. "I'm not asking you to stay because this is too dangerous," Optimus explained. "I'm asking you to stay because, if my fear comes to pass, your Allspark powers will be the only thing capable of saving the universe should I fall." Without another word, he transformed and drove after his soldiers.
Lockdown hovered in mid-space before them, every inch of his superstructure glowing with unholy power. The canister had ruptured, and its entire contents - the sum total of Unicron itself - had poured into the bounty hunter's mind, body and spark. Lockdown was Unicron, Unicron was Lockdown, and the Autobots were in way over their cranial casings.
"This is the ultimate upgrade!" Lockdown thundered.
Bumblebee, Bulkhead, Grimlock and Jazz fell like wheat before a scythe. Ratchet escaped injury only because Optimus shielded him with his body; his Matrix-enhanced chassis withstood Lockdown's onslaught. This fact was not lost on the beast. "I'll need another upgrade to kill a Prime," he snarled, "and I know just who to take it from." And with that, he teleported away.
Optimus knew what that meant. Ordering Ratchet and Sari to tend to the wounded, he took a small shuttle from the ship's hangar bay and headed toward the Nemesis. Much as it pained him, he had no choice but to save the Fallen in order to preserve the universe.
Lockdown, meanwhile, appeared in the middle of the Decepticon bridge. Everyone jumped back in shock at his unexpected arrival - but their jaws truly dropped at his next words. "I've brought back the Dark Energon you asked for, Megatron," he said nastily, savouring the bigger mech's acid glare. "And I've brought back the Dark Energon you asked for, Fallen! Much as I'd like to take the sixty-five thousand Energon chips you each offered me, I'm thinking I'd rather have your lives!"
As had the Autobots, so too fell the Decepticons. Everyone save the still-arguing Starscream and Shockwave put up a dirty, underhanded, no-good fight... but they were brushed aside regardless. Megatron suffered the gravest of injuries. When he leaped atop Lockdown, the bounty hunter fashioned a dagger of Dark Energon and plunged it directly into the Decepticon's spark chamber! Megatron fell to the floor, crippled by a pain unlike any other he'd experienced. He could but watch as Lockdown effortlessly lifted the Fallen off his feet and burst his head like an old tyre. The ancient mech's body melted into a puddle of Energon and molten metal, from which Lockdown inhaled thick, pungent fumes of eldritch power.
Megatron was only dimly aware of the powerful hand that settled on his shoulder. Optimus Prime had snuck aboard during the carnage. Ignoring his old enemy's feeble protests, the Autobot commander studied the wound. "Your very spark has been poisoned," he said grimly. "Eventually, the rot will seep through your superstructure and you'll crumble to dust. I can't heal you, Megatron, but I can save your life." Concentrating, Prime accessed the power of the Matrix and beamed its energies directly into Megatron. The Decepticon's pain eased and he struggled to his feet.
"You saved me," he gasped.
"That's what I do," Optimus replied. "But by your rules, Megatron, you now owe me your life. I call on that debt immediately and demand you help me stop Lockdown."
Megatron smirked. "Is that all? Foolish Optimus - I was going to flay the traitor alive anyway!"
His bravado was short-lived. The Dark Energon poisoning had left Megatron disabled and barely capable of moving, let alone fighting. While Optimus engaged Lockdown one-on-one, the Decepticon accessed his least-used and most dangerous power: the ability to link with the destructive force of a black hole! A swirling, all-consuming vortex opened behind Lockdown and sucked the possessed bounty hunter into its maw. Staggered and spent, Megatron slumped to his knees. "It is ended," he gasped.
A chain-whip shot out of the black hole and its hooked end bit into Megatron's shoulder. Lockdown pulled himself, hand over hand, back toward them. "If I go, I'm taking you with me," he roared.
"It never ends," Optimus sighed. At first he tried to pull the hook free, then came up with a better idea. He told Megatron to transform then physically picked up his eternal enemy, holding his tank mode like it was an enormous gun. Into Megatron he funnelled the full, unbridled energy of the Matrix, "upgrading" the Decepticon commander into a Matrix Blaster. The power of Primus, of creation itself, rocketed out of Megatron's tank turret and slammed into Lockdown. He howled in pain and hate but could not resist the Matrix's force. Slowly at first, then with a groaning inevitability, he was sucked down into the black hole and disappeared. Optimus set Megatron down and watched as he transformed, then grunted in agony.
"Do you feel it, Megatron?" he asked. "Do you feel the corruption, the loathing, the sickening darkness that is Unicron? This is the power you've always craved - the destruction to which you've devoted your entire existence - and now it's eating your soul from the inside out. Dark Energon is negativity, chaos, pessimism made solid. Every violent act you undertake, every evil thought you entertain, feeds the poison inside you. You're being killed by your own toxic nature, Megatron. Is it worth it?"
"No more," Megatron groaned, fighting to stay on his knees. "No more, Optimus. No more fighting, no more war. I'm so very tired, so very sick... I want peace. Will you make peace with me, Optimus?"
"After all this time, all these many centuries of fighting, I'd be a fool to refuse," Optimus said. "But I would also be a fool to accept your intentions, on face value, as genuine. If you truly mean it, Megatron... if your honest desire is peace... then you'll agree to my terms."
"Anything!" Megatron exclaimed.
"You and your Decepticons will surrender unconditionally," Optimus began. "You will plead guilty to having committed crimes against the universe, and you will submit without complaint to prison terms handed down by Autobot judges. Once you have completed those sentences, then we will discuss a peace treaty between the Autobots and the Decepticons." He extended his hand. "Do you accept?"
Megatron did not hesitate. He shook Prime's hand and, with all the strength he could muster, said: "The war is over."
Hours passed. Ratchet repaired the Autobots and then, at Prime's command, grudgingly restored the Decepticons to basic operating status. He and the mechs then argued, playfully, about who got to lock the stasis-cuffs on which Decepticon ("dibs on Barricade," Bumblebee said happily). Ratchet's own moment of personal glory came when, unexpectedly, Megatron's black hole re-opened in front of them. Lockdown, stripped of the Dark Energon taint by the hole's inexorable forces, was dazed, confused and ripe for the picking. To avenge an old loss, Ratchet used his magnets to pull all of the decorative spikes out of the bounty hunter's neck. "Fair is fair," he said wryly.
There was one last surprise. Before their startled optics, the black hole stabilised and transformed into something new: a natural space bridge linked to the Matrix. At Optimus' command, the portal shifted to link them with Super Hero City... and Cybertron. The Autobots now had the means to travel instantaneously throughout the galaxy.
Sari looked hopeful. "Does this mean what I think it means?" she asked.
Beneath his faceplate, Optimus Prime smiled. "That it does, little one," he replied. "We will go back to Earth to see our friends one last time, say our goodbyes and thank our adopted world for all it has done for us. We will take the Decepticons to prison and ensure they can never escape the sentences each of them so richly deserves. And then, my brave Autobots, finally... we can go home."
The Autobots erupted in cheers and began to celebrate. As he looked on, Optimus gave silent thanks for the fact that sometimes... just sometimes... it really does end.
-----THE END-----
I feel... conflicted, right now. Thrilled and happy with the amazing adventure my daughter dreamed up; sad and heartsick that it'll be the last of its type. LJ and I have been playing Transformers games for three years and nine months, and it's been a major highlight of my weekends. I've loved sharing my number-one fandom with her, and more: I've loved seeing what she loves it about it, and how she expresses that interest in such delightful, interesting ways. I'm going to miss it terribly. At the same time I'm grateful she adores the characters enough to give them a proper (and, I think you'll agree, fitting) send-off, and excited to see where we go from here.
See, the characters we'll be playing with from now on... Avengers, Justice League, Thor... are those she's fallen in love with regardless of me and my interests. They're her favourites, not concepts I like and she's come to enjoy (or continued playing with out of wonderfully misguided concern for my opinion). I'm going to learn so much more about her, and that's the best thing about playtime.
Greet the Fire as Your Friend,
SF
LJ had decided to bring her Transformers game to a close. Now she was determined to do it right. "I don't want things to end with the Autobots wiping out the Decepticons," she said, still irked by Dark of the Moon's final reel. "I really can't imagine Optimus acting that way. I want the war to end with peace, Daddy, and I'm pretty sure Optimus would agree to that."
So we talked while we walked. About making sure characters stay in-character; about not making Megatron look too weak or too intelligent; about ensuring Optimus remains the hero of his own story and makes intelligent, thoughtful (and above all just) decisions for himself, his Autobots and the rest of the universe. By the time we reached her class, the kidlet was certain she had it figured out.
All that was left to do, when we arrived home Friday night, was prepare for...
LJ presents:
THE ULTIMATE UPGRADE
Written and directed by LJ
Novelisation by SF
The Rebel Alliance had finally defeated the remnants of the Imperial Army. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had vanquished their arch-enemy, the Shredder, and the evil Foot Clan. And - thanks to both their help and their own hard efforts - the heroic Autobots had gathered up every last particle of the Chaos Bringer, Unicron, and locked it in their ship for sake-keeping. The Dark Energon Quest was over.
"Autobots, I'm proud of you all," Optimus Prime told his loyal mechs. "We've fought and searched on dozens of worlds these past five months, and our toil has been rewarded. The Decepticons have failed to secure any Dark Energon, their allies have been imprisoned and our friends have found well-deserved peace. Now it falls to us to determine a safe method by which this infernal substance may be disposed of, after which we will..."
"Go back to Cybertron?" Sari Sumdac, the half-human protoform, asked eagerly. "I've always wanted to live there with you guys!"
Optimus shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry, Sari, but our destination will be Earth," he said. "As long as the Fallen and his followers threaten our adopted home world, we must be there to defend it." He stooped to pat her on the shoulder with his enormous metal hand. "Cybertron will have to wait."
A few light years away, the Fallen slumped in his command chair and sighed. His Decepticon forces were in utter disarray. Repeatedly routed by the Autobots, they had turned on one another and bickered incessantly. Starscream and Shockwave were the worst - they pushed, shoved and sniped at one another right in front of their would-be god. Each was quick to blame the other for five months of failure. Only Megatron and Soundwave were absent from the dismal scene... and that concerned the Fallen greatly.
In the bowels of the Nemesis, the missing Decepticons took a secret meeting with Lockdown the bounty hunter. "We can't offer you upgrades," Megatron explained, "but we can give you enough money to buy whatever upgrades you like. You steal the Dark Energon from the Autobots for us, and Soundwave and I will give you sixty-five thousand Energon chips - provided you don't tell the Fallen about this. Deal?"
Lockdown accepted... then went straight to the Fallen and dobbed them in. "I figure you'd be prepared to make me an even better offer," the bounty hunter said slyly, playing on the demi-god's shock and outrage. "What'll you pay to make sure you remain the most powerful evil Transformer in existence, hmm?"
The Fallen's rage swelled. "I will match my traitorous disciple's sixty-five thousand," he announced, "and sweeten the deal by giving you Megatron and Soundwave's spark-less carcasses after I've killed them! You can take their blasted, broken and dismembered parts and do what you like!" The bounty hunter thought about Megatron's fusion canon... about Soundwave's mind-reading ability and control of his cassettes... and eagerly accepted the offer.
A short time later Lockdown brought his ship, the Death's Head, alongside the Autobots' vessel. His prey didn't notice his arrival, thanks to the "active camo" mod he'd recently installed. Totally invisible to his enemies, Lockdown easily slipped inside the ship and stole the Dark Energon canister out from under Grimlock and Bulkhead's olfactory sensors! Fortunately, neither dawdled in sounding the alarm and - thanks to bitter experience - Ratchet soon discerned the thief's identity.
Taking command of the cannons and using his cyber-ninja skills, Jazz somehow spotted the invisible ship and inflicted horrendous damage. As the ship spiralled toward a nearby planet, headed for a crash-landing, Optimus realised their mistake. "All is lost if that canister has been ruptured," he said. "Ratchet, take us down to the planet - quickly!"
The Autobots transformed and disembarked as soon as they'd landed. Sari wanted to come along but, as usual, Optimus told her to stay behind. When she complained, his odd expression silenced her. "I'm not asking you to stay because this is too dangerous," Optimus explained. "I'm asking you to stay because, if my fear comes to pass, your Allspark powers will be the only thing capable of saving the universe should I fall." Without another word, he transformed and drove after his soldiers.
Lockdown hovered in mid-space before them, every inch of his superstructure glowing with unholy power. The canister had ruptured, and its entire contents - the sum total of Unicron itself - had poured into the bounty hunter's mind, body and spark. Lockdown was Unicron, Unicron was Lockdown, and the Autobots were in way over their cranial casings.
"This is the ultimate upgrade!" Lockdown thundered.
Bumblebee, Bulkhead, Grimlock and Jazz fell like wheat before a scythe. Ratchet escaped injury only because Optimus shielded him with his body; his Matrix-enhanced chassis withstood Lockdown's onslaught. This fact was not lost on the beast. "I'll need another upgrade to kill a Prime," he snarled, "and I know just who to take it from." And with that, he teleported away.
Optimus knew what that meant. Ordering Ratchet and Sari to tend to the wounded, he took a small shuttle from the ship's hangar bay and headed toward the Nemesis. Much as it pained him, he had no choice but to save the Fallen in order to preserve the universe.
Lockdown, meanwhile, appeared in the middle of the Decepticon bridge. Everyone jumped back in shock at his unexpected arrival - but their jaws truly dropped at his next words. "I've brought back the Dark Energon you asked for, Megatron," he said nastily, savouring the bigger mech's acid glare. "And I've brought back the Dark Energon you asked for, Fallen! Much as I'd like to take the sixty-five thousand Energon chips you each offered me, I'm thinking I'd rather have your lives!"
As had the Autobots, so too fell the Decepticons. Everyone save the still-arguing Starscream and Shockwave put up a dirty, underhanded, no-good fight... but they were brushed aside regardless. Megatron suffered the gravest of injuries. When he leaped atop Lockdown, the bounty hunter fashioned a dagger of Dark Energon and plunged it directly into the Decepticon's spark chamber! Megatron fell to the floor, crippled by a pain unlike any other he'd experienced. He could but watch as Lockdown effortlessly lifted the Fallen off his feet and burst his head like an old tyre. The ancient mech's body melted into a puddle of Energon and molten metal, from which Lockdown inhaled thick, pungent fumes of eldritch power.
Megatron was only dimly aware of the powerful hand that settled on his shoulder. Optimus Prime had snuck aboard during the carnage. Ignoring his old enemy's feeble protests, the Autobot commander studied the wound. "Your very spark has been poisoned," he said grimly. "Eventually, the rot will seep through your superstructure and you'll crumble to dust. I can't heal you, Megatron, but I can save your life." Concentrating, Prime accessed the power of the Matrix and beamed its energies directly into Megatron. The Decepticon's pain eased and he struggled to his feet.
"You saved me," he gasped.
"That's what I do," Optimus replied. "But by your rules, Megatron, you now owe me your life. I call on that debt immediately and demand you help me stop Lockdown."
Megatron smirked. "Is that all? Foolish Optimus - I was going to flay the traitor alive anyway!"
His bravado was short-lived. The Dark Energon poisoning had left Megatron disabled and barely capable of moving, let alone fighting. While Optimus engaged Lockdown one-on-one, the Decepticon accessed his least-used and most dangerous power: the ability to link with the destructive force of a black hole! A swirling, all-consuming vortex opened behind Lockdown and sucked the possessed bounty hunter into its maw. Staggered and spent, Megatron slumped to his knees. "It is ended," he gasped.
A chain-whip shot out of the black hole and its hooked end bit into Megatron's shoulder. Lockdown pulled himself, hand over hand, back toward them. "If I go, I'm taking you with me," he roared.
"It never ends," Optimus sighed. At first he tried to pull the hook free, then came up with a better idea. He told Megatron to transform then physically picked up his eternal enemy, holding his tank mode like it was an enormous gun. Into Megatron he funnelled the full, unbridled energy of the Matrix, "upgrading" the Decepticon commander into a Matrix Blaster. The power of Primus, of creation itself, rocketed out of Megatron's tank turret and slammed into Lockdown. He howled in pain and hate but could not resist the Matrix's force. Slowly at first, then with a groaning inevitability, he was sucked down into the black hole and disappeared. Optimus set Megatron down and watched as he transformed, then grunted in agony.
"Do you feel it, Megatron?" he asked. "Do you feel the corruption, the loathing, the sickening darkness that is Unicron? This is the power you've always craved - the destruction to which you've devoted your entire existence - and now it's eating your soul from the inside out. Dark Energon is negativity, chaos, pessimism made solid. Every violent act you undertake, every evil thought you entertain, feeds the poison inside you. You're being killed by your own toxic nature, Megatron. Is it worth it?"
"No more," Megatron groaned, fighting to stay on his knees. "No more, Optimus. No more fighting, no more war. I'm so very tired, so very sick... I want peace. Will you make peace with me, Optimus?"
"After all this time, all these many centuries of fighting, I'd be a fool to refuse," Optimus said. "But I would also be a fool to accept your intentions, on face value, as genuine. If you truly mean it, Megatron... if your honest desire is peace... then you'll agree to my terms."
"Anything!" Megatron exclaimed.
"You and your Decepticons will surrender unconditionally," Optimus began. "You will plead guilty to having committed crimes against the universe, and you will submit without complaint to prison terms handed down by Autobot judges. Once you have completed those sentences, then we will discuss a peace treaty between the Autobots and the Decepticons." He extended his hand. "Do you accept?"
Megatron did not hesitate. He shook Prime's hand and, with all the strength he could muster, said: "The war is over."
Hours passed. Ratchet repaired the Autobots and then, at Prime's command, grudgingly restored the Decepticons to basic operating status. He and the mechs then argued, playfully, about who got to lock the stasis-cuffs on which Decepticon ("dibs on Barricade," Bumblebee said happily). Ratchet's own moment of personal glory came when, unexpectedly, Megatron's black hole re-opened in front of them. Lockdown, stripped of the Dark Energon taint by the hole's inexorable forces, was dazed, confused and ripe for the picking. To avenge an old loss, Ratchet used his magnets to pull all of the decorative spikes out of the bounty hunter's neck. "Fair is fair," he said wryly.
There was one last surprise. Before their startled optics, the black hole stabilised and transformed into something new: a natural space bridge linked to the Matrix. At Optimus' command, the portal shifted to link them with Super Hero City... and Cybertron. The Autobots now had the means to travel instantaneously throughout the galaxy.
Sari looked hopeful. "Does this mean what I think it means?" she asked.
Beneath his faceplate, Optimus Prime smiled. "That it does, little one," he replied. "We will go back to Earth to see our friends one last time, say our goodbyes and thank our adopted world for all it has done for us. We will take the Decepticons to prison and ensure they can never escape the sentences each of them so richly deserves. And then, my brave Autobots, finally... we can go home."
The Autobots erupted in cheers and began to celebrate. As he looked on, Optimus gave silent thanks for the fact that sometimes... just sometimes... it really does end.
-----THE END-----
I feel... conflicted, right now. Thrilled and happy with the amazing adventure my daughter dreamed up; sad and heartsick that it'll be the last of its type. LJ and I have been playing Transformers games for three years and nine months, and it's been a major highlight of my weekends. I've loved sharing my number-one fandom with her, and more: I've loved seeing what she loves it about it, and how she expresses that interest in such delightful, interesting ways. I'm going to miss it terribly. At the same time I'm grateful she adores the characters enough to give them a proper (and, I think you'll agree, fitting) send-off, and excited to see where we go from here.
See, the characters we'll be playing with from now on... Avengers, Justice League, Thor... are those she's fallen in love with regardless of me and my interests. They're her favourites, not concepts I like and she's come to enjoy (or continued playing with out of wonderfully misguided concern for my opinion). I'm going to learn so much more about her, and that's the best thing about playtime.
Greet the Fire as Your Friend,
SF