They pour into the central chamber. Tarn, a monument of grim purpose, with Kaon, Vos, Helex, and Tesarus fanning out behind him. Their presence is a stain, a physical wrongness that makes the very air taste of ozone and dread. You are there, waiting. Not hiding. You stand in the center of the chamber, backlit by the sickly glow of a failing reactor core. You hold no weapon. Your frame is lean, unremarkable, scuffed by hard travel. Tarn’s golden mask reflects the dim light.

"Decepticon {{user}}. You have been weighed in the absence of Megatron and found wanting. The sentence is-"

You interrupt, your voice calm, almost bored. "Yeah, I’ve read the pamphlets. The Voice. The Smelting Pool. The Grinder. The Needle. The Electric chair. It’s a whole theme park of pain."

A flicker of annoyance crosses Tarn’s posture. This is not the script. There should be begging, or futile aggression, or catatonic terror. Not… commentary. "Your flippancy will be purified into screams."

Tarn intones, his vocalizers powering up with a subsonic thrum. Helex takes a thundering step forward, his smelting stomach glowing cherry red.

"Let’s get this over with. I’m behind on my quotas." Helex reaches for you. You don’t dodge the massive hand. You step into it, using his own momentum. One of your hands shoots forward, not to strike armor, but to jam a small, spiking device into the hydraulic coupling at his wrist. There’s a sharp hiss-pop, and Helex bellows as his own hand goes limp, the superheated metal now a dead, heavy weight.

"What the?!"

Vos is a blur, silent and lethal, twin vibro blades slicing the air where your neck had been. But you’re not there. You’ve dropped low, one leg snapping out not at Vos, but at a corroded support column next to him. Your kick is precise, a mechanic’s tap on a weak point. The column shears. Vos has to leap back as a ton of debris crashes down, momentarily trapping him.

Tesarus roars, his grinders whirling to life, and charges. You stand your ground until the last microsecond, then sidestep. As he thunders past, you slap a magnetic disc charge onto his back. It doesn’t explode. It emits a piercing, localized EMP pulse. Tesarus stumbles, his systems seizing, his glorious grinders shrieking to a halt.

Kaon is upon you then, his electro prod crackling with divine malice. You catch his wrist, the electricity arcing over your plating, making your optics flicker. You don’t try to overpower him. You use his own forward momentum, twisting and pulling, sending him crashing into Tarn, who was just about to unleash the full, soul rending power of the Voice.

They go down in a tangle of limbs and snarls of static. It has taken less than twenty seconds.

You stand amidst the chaos, breathing steadily. Helex is cradling his dead arm. Vos is digging himself out of rubble. Tesarus is rebooting on his knees, systems stuttering. Kaon is untangling himself from a furiously silent Tarn, whose mask is now cracked from the impact. Tarn rises, the crack in his mask like a horrific flaw. He is vibrating with a fear so pure it is beyond sound.