Inside the transit tunnel, the Sector Seven reinforcement units—sent by Banacheck to stem the tide—saw the mechanical panther retreat. They began to crawl out from behind their scorched covers.
The previous skirmish with Black Panther had been brutal. The tunnel was a graveyard of smoking infantry fighting vehicles and groaning soldiers. The concrete walls were honeycombed with craters from the panther's back-mounted laser.
The commanding officer waited, scanning the darkness of the Isolation Hall. When the beast didn't reappear, he signaled his men.
"Flanks covered! Armor up front! Advance on the objective!"
The order had barely left his lips when a new silhouette stepped out from the shattered doors two hundred meters away. It was taller, broader, and far more terrifying than the beast they had just fought.
"Halt! All units, cease advance!"
"New contact, twelve o'clock, one-fifty meters!"
"Find cover! Establish a firing line! Open fire!"
The symphony of war resumed with a violent crescendo. Having received fresh ammunition and manpower during the lull, the base security force unleashed a hail of lead and high explosives far more intense than before.
But to the soldiers' horror, the giant didn't flinch. He didn't even bother to take cover.
CLANG. SPARK.
Tracer rounds and heavy-caliber bullets shattered against Skygnaw's chassis, doing little more than scuffing the paint. Only when a tank shell screamed toward his face did he casually lift an arm to swat the kinetic energy aside.
It seems the Elite-Class frame can ignore most primitive ballistics...
Skygnaw stood in the center of the storm for thirty seconds, conducting a live stress test of his new body. The results were definitive: though the armor was still Cybertronian Steel, its structural integrity and density were leagues beyond his previous High-Class frame. Even armor-piercing rockets left nothing but faint silver scratches on his chest plates.
"And now..."
With a flicker of thought, Skygnaw activated a new core function.
A semi-transparent, honeycomb-patterned energy barrier shimmered into existence around his frame. Orange electrical arcs pulsed across the hexagonal grid, casting a beautiful, lethal glow through the dusty tunnel.
The moment the shield manifested, the incoming fire became irrelevant. Bullets struck the barrier and lost all momentum, falling to the floor like dead insects. Rockets detonated against the surface in brilliant flashes of fire, but the shockwaves never reached Skygnaw's armor.
This was the hallmark of an Elite-Class Warrior. The shield worked by siphoning energy directly from the Spark to neutralize external kinetic force. Theoretically, with enough energy, it could withstand a cataclysm. In practice, it turned Skygnaw into an immovable object against human weaponry—though he knew a fellow Elite or Commander could eventually shatter it.
Skygnaw looked down the tunnel, his optics cold and indifferent. The farce was over.
He leveled his right arm. The three massive barrels of his 12.6mm heavy repeater began to spin with a predatory whine.
THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD!
Heavy brass casings clattered to the floor in a steady rhythm. Down the tunnel, Sector Seven's line collapsed instantly. Jeeps were shredded; sandbags disintegrated. The soldiers were pinned so tightly they couldn't even draw breath.
Twenty miles from Hoover Dam, the Autobots arrived at a cluster of abandoned, Western-style buildings. One by one, the vehicles shifted and expanded, rising into their towering humanoid forms.
"The coordinates from the glasses place the AllSpark exactly twenty miles from here," Optimus Prime stated.
They had driven through the night from Los Angeles to Nevada. During the journey, Optimus had discovered something unexpected embedded in the data on the glasses: a string of AllSpark source code. It had likely been imprinted automatically by Megatron's navigation system when he first made contact with the Cube's energy signature.
"I can feel the Decepticons moving," Optimus said, his voice heavy. "They know the location. We must act immediately."
"What about Bumblebee?" Jazz asked, leaping down from a stone water tower. "We can't just leave him. We can't let him be a lab rat for these humans."
"If we do not secure the AllSpark," Optimus replied softly, "Bumblebee's sacrifice will have been for nothing."
Ironhide shrugged, his heavy cannons shifting with a metallic groan. "Bumblebee is a warrior. To fall during a mission... I think he would accept that fate."
Jazz flared his servos in annoyance, stepping toward Prime. "Optimus, why do we continue to protect them? They are violent. They attack us without provocation."
Optimus looked toward the horizon, where the heat shimmer blurred the desert floor. "Humans... they are a young race. Brash, primitive, and violent. In many ways, they remind me of what we once were."
"They have a long way to go, but they possess qualities we lack. Freedom is the right of all sentient beings—a truth the Decepticons will never understand. They only know the pursuit of tyranny and war."
Optimus's voice grew solemn, burdened by the ghosts of Cybertron. "You know as well as I do: if the AllSpark falls into Megatron's hands, the tragedy of our home will repeat itself here. This world will burn, and Megatron's ambition will carry that fire to the rest of the galaxy. We cannot allow it."
"Optimus," Ironhide said, stepping up to stand beside his leader. "Whatever you decide, we are with you."
"What is the plan, then?" Jazz asked, his frustration giving way to grim resolve.
"There is only one way to end this," Optimus said. He opened his chest plates, revealing his Spark—a swirling nebula of brilliant blue energy. The sheer pressure of a Leader-Class Spark made the air vibrate. "If all else fails, I will merge the AllSpark with my own Spark."
"No!" Ratchet cried out. "That's a suicide pact! No frame can contain that much raw cosmic energy. You'll be vaporized along with the Cube!"
As the team medic, Ratchet knew the mathematics of energy overload better than anyone. It wasn't just death; it was total molecular erasure.
Optimus didn't blink. "To ensure peace, sacrifice is a necessity. We cannot let the humans pay for our mistakes. We cannot let our civil war consume this world."
He looked at his team. "We lost the Cube once. We will not lose it again. It has been an honor serving with you. Now... it's time for the final battle."
"Autobots, roll out!"
Back in the tunnel, the Sector Seven forces had reached their breaking point.
"He's got some kind of energy field! Nothing is getting through!"
"Fall back! Pull back now!"
"Keep the formation! Move, move, move!"
The commanding officer screamed his orders from behind the wreckage of an armored transport. The moment the translucent shield appeared and turned his tank shells into harmless sparks, he knew they had lost.
"Deploy smoke! Get the vehicles in the rear! Get out of here!"
Unlike their fight with the panther—where they felt they had a chance to bleed the enemy—this new giant was an unstoppable force of nature. To stay was to die for nothing. They scrambled for the exit, leaving the path to the heart of the base wide open.
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