Optimus sighed. The fight with Aaron cost him four Chaos Emeralds and Prowl had a bit of a time getting Aaron to cooperate. The trial concluded in a life sentence for Aaron with no chance of parole. Optimus sat at his desk, listening to Prowl. “With that, Station Square should be fixed in a week,” he finished.
“What about Shockwave?” asked Optimus. “Has Teletraan found her yet?” Teletraan then popped up on the view-screen on Prime’s desk.
“That’s a negative,” he reported. “Even my recent defrag hasn’t helped.”
“SLAG!” shouted Optimus as he slammed his hand on the desk.
“Hey, easy!” protested Teletraan. “No need to take it out on me!”
“She blindsided us!” hissed Optimus.
“You mean Shockwave?” asked Prowl.
“Who else?!” confirmed Optimus. “She was biding her time to steal our emeralds!”
“That’s not the case at all,” argued Teletraan 1.
“Oh no,” snapped Optimus, “I’m positive that’s the case! She…!”
“Had no idea there were four Chaos Emeralds,” interrupted Teletraan. “While I couldn’t intercept her Ground Bridge, I did get into her files.”
“…What?” quizzed the young Prime.
“While I couldn’t get the location of their base, I did find something that was the plan she wanted to initiate today,” explained Teletraan.
“…Again, what?!” yelped Optimus.
“She and Metal Sonic were trying to build a mass reducer, a shrink ray, if you will. Cliché though it is, she almost perfected it and wanted to test it on you guys. She has no means of detecting Chaos Emeralds. She was the one blindsided.” Teletraan then chuckled. “Shouldn’t be too hard for a Cyclops to be blindsided!” he joked.
“Bad joke aside,” remarked Optimus, “did you get anything about why she wants the emeralds?”
“Only something that would confirm our suspicions of her needing them as batteries for something,” answered Teletraan. “Anything from that, I don’t know. G.U.N. DID discover something that made me recheck my knowledge on Metal Sonic.”
“Oh?” asked Optimus.
“It looked like a previous body that Metal Sonic had,” elaborated Teletraan. “On top of that, it’s connected to other bodies. My guess is that the bodies have a hive mind, and that mind is Metal Sonic’s.”
“A hive mind?” mused Optimus. “Like Ultron from the old Earth Days?”
“I think so,” theorized Teletraan, “but I need a master coder to help.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere in this instance!” cheered Optimus.
“What about the property damage?!” protested Prowl.
“I’m sure six bots can fix it,” dismissed Optimus. “I’ll catch up. See ya!” He headed out of his office and walked towards the tech room.
“But! But!” was all Prowl could get out before a look of stark confusion crossed his face. He then called up Jazz. “Last chance to watch him,” he called when Jazz picked up.
“No!” snapped Jazz.
“Okay, if you say so,” sighed Prowl.
Optimus had the Metal Sonic body taken down to the technical room, where all the various instruments to examine hardware and software was located and cracked said body open at the head. He had taken a probe and put it into the brain to start examining code on the screen next to him. While that was going in, he waved some sort of wand device with a green light and four prongs over it. When the analysis on the probe was finished, he flicked the wand in his hands and looked at it. “Ah HA!” he said.
“What?” asked Teletraan. “What’s it saying?”
“I have no idea,” replied Optimus. “I’m just waving my sonic screwdriver around it as if I knew how it worked.” Teletraan’s avatar facepalmed. “But,” continued Optimus, “I knew what I was doing with this probe. Your suspicions were right, Metal Sonic’s a hive mind like Ultron. However, there was something interesting.”
“I just ran through the results of the probe,” reported Teletraan. “It looks like their power source is different from conventional power sources.”
“Run it by power frequencies we’ve encountered,” directed Optimus. Teletraan’s eyes turned into code for a few seconds, a la The Matrix trilogy, before his face showed surprise.”
“Is that…Chaos energy?” he gulped.
“Exactly,” confirmed Optimus. “These guys are practically saturated with the stuff. But, it’s their connection to our own race that interests me.”
“Our own race?” repeated Teletraan. “How? They can’t transform. They don’t even have t-cogs.”
“Not the connection I was referring to,” answered Optimus. “I was thinking about our fuel source.”
“The only one who runs on Energon out of the two of them is Shockwave,” recalled Teletraan.
“Really?” asked Optimus. “Run a match on usual Energon with the stuff found on Mobius.” Teletraan blinked, then did so. The results were similar, but not exact.
“What?” muttered Teletraan. “That doesn’t make sense. It should have stayed the same. Same planet, same readings. I’ve even run them past Energon found during the old Earth Days. It should be consistent.”
“Ah,” interjected Optimus, “but there were no Chaos Emeralds in that era, were there?” Teletraan got the idea and ran a simulation of exposing Energon to Chaos energy. That’s when the readings changed to match that of Modern day Mobius.
“So, that’s why you guys short out!” realized Teletraan. “Chaos energy supercharged the Energon deposits left on the planet after the war was over!”
“And there’s a mechanism in this body that takes in Chaos energy in the atmosphere,” continued Optimus. “I’d say some particles of Energon are wandering inside Metal Sonic as he fuels up.”
“Will that make him a big enough threat?” asked Teletraan.
“I don’t think so,” mused Optimus. “It’s the amount of bodies Metal Sonic has that concerns me. A durability test shows that the bodies aren’t that strong, so we won’t have a problem crushing them individually. It’s when he decides to attack en masse that has me on edge. Teletraan, I want you to start adjusting our Energon sensors on all our equipment. Coordinate with Ratchet on that department and see if you can get Energon sensors on both Arks.”
“Got it,” confirmed Teletraan. “An idea just came to me. An alternative method is to track Energon signatures. Spark signatures can be hidden, but the radiation you guys put out has yet to be cloaked. If we use Energon signatures…”
“We can locate Shockwave! Good call!” praised Optimus. “In the words of a great man, make it so!”
“Aye, aye, Captain Picard!” confirmed Teletraan. “You go take care of the property damage. I can handle things here.”
“Very well,” replied Optimus. “Have a Ground Bridge ready.” Optimus made his way to the Main Command Center and bridged out to Station Square. Alexis was already there to give him a job while the other Autobots did theirs.