A stream of drivel continued to issue from Supersonic, who was nearly close enough to be a
part of the action but, of course, strictly off-limits. With a grim set to his eyes, Lio Convoy set out to change that. He summoned his new weapon from subspace, an Angolmois Blaster that
Blackarachnia’s pet technician Break had designed. With great deliberation, he released the
Staff and became theoretically visible to the monitors, though all focus was naturally on the
battle raging below. He swallowed nervously, took aim at the Builder, and fired.
The cocksure Builder was struck mid-jabber. His glib mouth lost its smirk and took on a look
of facile confusion, even as the light in his eyes died. It took the camera operators a few nanokliks to realize what had happened, but when they did, suddenly all optics on Cybertron were
watching the assassination of a Builder by an unknown Maximal. This is it, he thought, as the resistance-directed feed began to display images of him standing
there, on the enormous curved pylon, blaster smoking. The crowd was still gasping. He
swallowed, and then found his words.
“People of Cybertron. I come before you to speak of a great injustice. The animosity between
Maximal and Predacon is a farce!” The thronging multitudes had spotted him, and already he
could see the MCSF with flying modes begin to take the field. He had prepared for this; he
nudged his Staff with his foot and activated the paralysis field, set to the widest pattern it could
sustain. Every Maximal and Predacon in the crowd was suddenly unable to move; the airborne
MCSF crashed to the ground.
“The Builders were given a great gift, the ability to create a new generation of Cybertronians.
It was to have ushered in a new era of peace; instead, this gift was twisted, perverted into this
sad farce you see.” He gestured to Sonar and Terrorgator, paralyzed with their hands around
each others’ throats. His monitoring of the feed showed that the cameras were responding. That
was good and bad. It meant that his allies could still move, but so could any MCSF or Predacon
secret police menacing them, shielded within the depth of the arena. Nano-kliks mattered.
“Instead of being allowed to develop on our own, we were subjugated by the Builders, instilled
with ancient enmities better abandoned and forced to battle for our own lives in rigged games.”
A blast from one of the few mobile Builder patrols impacted the vertiginous spire he was
standing on, and he nearly lost his balance. Sure enough, two of them had been mode-locked
into rusted but flight-capable fighter planes, no doubt the forms they had once preferred when
they had the choice of transformation, and were now setting up a strafing run.
“Yes, rigged! I know this because I myself have stalked through nearly every Game for decades,
subtly altering the outcomes to keep every contest, every series of contests, on the razor’s
edge.” He had to leap from the spire at that point to avoid a deadly spray of metal from a blue
Builder jet with a tan and green Builder wingman, catching an outcropping and landing adroitly
on the floor of the metal jungle.
The lead jet taunted him, and the pervasive sensors allowed his resistance members to capture
it all. Whatever else happened, this was good drama. Every optic on Cybertron was sure to be
watching. “You hear that, Sunrunner? He claims he’s been fixing Games all along. If I believed
him, I’d make him pay me a few hundred energon rations!”
Sunrunner chuckled as he came in for a dive. “Good one, Tailwind. Buncha resistance propaganda garbage.” He let fly a bomb, which Lio Convoy had to scramble to evade. When the camera returned to show him, battered but unharmed, he made a point of standing defiantly. “Not garbage. I recorded this conversation just a few cycles before this Game began.” He activated a holoscan of The Administrator, and his own words damned him.
Eject’s ancient, familiar visage appeared on every monitor, in every oil joint, in every office, and in every domicile on the planet. “Since we’ll be announcing a Cull as soon as this one concludes, and the Maximals are down 8 guys, make sure their team wins, big. At least five-zilch. Otherwise, let’s
take the usual pep-talk as read. Stay outta sight, yadda yadda yadda.” Lio Convoy knew that the time for paralysis was over. He willed the Staff to his hand, switched off the dampening field, and dismissed it back to the ether.
The mobs in the stadium took a few nano-kliks to pick themselves up and regain their bearings. They had heard everything, but been unable to react. Lio Convoy realized he probably had less than a cycle at this point. He opened his chest and exposed the energon matrix entwined with his spark, its eerie glow suffusing the desultory environs. “I know what I say is true, because I am living proof. When the Builders decided there were enough of us, enough Maximals and Predacons to carry on their twisted legacy of rancor and hatred, they needed to hide away the source of this new life. They hid it in me, gave me a life of privilege and affluence, made me the Guardian of Order. But I renounce this sad heritage. Maximals and Predacons are not, should not, must not be enemies! Instead, rise up against the Builders, the relics of the past unable to let go of their antipathy. Only then--” He was blown from his feet by another air strike. He lay painfully prone, the camera zoomed tight on his face. “Only when the Uprising is complete will we be truly free.” He summoned the Staff and disappeared.