Tales of the Intermezzo - Sky Link A Transformers Universe Story copyright 1998 by Dave Van Domelen based on properties owned by Hasbro ============================================================================= "intermezzo - n. A brief entertainment between two acts of a play." - American Heritage Dictionary Excerpt from "Memoirs: A Life Extraordinary" Cybertron Press, Anno Cybertronia 23 M.E. (Maximal Era) EPILOGUE - A Fall From Grace Someone on [censored] once said that the history of the world is the history of war, that all important events could be seen as either leading up to a war, occurring during a war, or resulting from a war. As an Autobot warrior, I must say that my own history was largely defined in this way, as much as I would prefer otherwise. My elegant form was roughened to meet the needs of the nigh-eternal war on Cybertron, altered again by the necessities of operating on the planet [censored], and finally ruined completely in order to fit in with the new Pax Cybertronia. I like to think I still have a certain style and elan, as those are qualities of the spirit that no small-minded diplomat can forbid me, but my body no longer fully expresses my soul. It was nearly a vorn after the "end" of the Great War, which I had missed the climax of, having been stranded in another part of the galaxy by the events I have just related to you, gentle reader. Somewhat reluctantly I bid my farewells to the poet-people of Seneca VI and boarded the Maximal craft that searched for scattered survivors of the Autobot-Decepticon war. I knew something was wrong when they seemed to avoid looking me directly in the eye...who would look away from one so handsome as myself? After all, my cosmetic damage had long since been repaired, I needed only a single component to restore my stardrive to full operation. But when I asked for that component...I was refused it. Oh, I was given a runaround about incompatibility between Maximal and Autobot technology, but I knew full well that those descendants of the Micromasters were fully compatible with my systems. I may not be a scientist like Perceptor, but I am no fool. We returned to Cybertron in a sort of shamed, slinking manner. I knew then that while we had won the war, we had also lost it. A brutal conflict, it had reduced the ranks of Autobots and Decepticons alike to mere hundreds even before I was stranded, and no doubt it was fought to the last Decepticon. The Maximals were in many ways like the Autobots, but they were not us. They owed us their freedom and newfound political clout, but they also feared our size and power as much as the organics I often met did. Even the poets of Seneca VI were overawed by my size for some months before they learned to be more properly overawed by my wit and elegance. But I digress, and wander dangerously close to topics I have been forbidden to communicate. As I said, the Autobots won the war, but we lost the peace to our own successors. We were war heroes, but also liabilities. The Predacons used our presence as an excuse to resist disarmament treaties, claiming that they needed heavy weapons to defend against the possibility that an Autobot might try to take out old hatreds on the former Decepticon allies. Not that I was able to participate in this debate and attempt to sway the people with the cool voice of reason...the decisions had been made and the treaties had been signed while I was still on Seneca VI. My life had been bargained away for political expediency. My "crimes" were not confined to sheer bulk, however. No, if that had been the only issue, I might have accepted my rebuilding with more equanimity, becoming perhaps a sleek minirocket or dragonet. No...they had to take the ocean of stars from me as well. All because I knew of a small blue planet called [censored]. For reasons I cannot fathom, and which they refused to explain to me, the Maximals wished to erase all knowledge of that world from Cybertron's collective memory. With their own simpler minds, it could simply be erased from their datatracks. But none remained alive with the skill needed to perform such delicate mental surgery on a mind as complex and splendid as my own. If any did, as was occasionally rumored, they remained well-hidden. So...I am doomed to never leave Cybertron's shores again, exiled from the rest of the universe so that I never am tempted to return to a single planet out of the hundreds I have visited. My new bipedal form does have its uses, advantages over the body I assumed during the wars...but I cannot fly among the stars. I have taken up dance to try and recapture some mote of the feeling I had before...the Maximals offered to grant me an atmospheric form, and I may one day accept, but for now anything short of the seas of space is a poor substitute. I dance, bringing to Cybertron the culture of a hundred worlds I have visited, telling stories in motion that I would never be allowed to tell in words. The dance I am most famous for is that of an avian creature known as a swan. A swan that dies of a broken heart, as some day I must too...if this swan cannot fly free. The dance is all I have left of the heavens, and all I can express of hell. ============================================================================= Author's Note: While this has elements in common with my earlier tale "Decoy," it need not exist in the same exact continuity. These two, and possible future vignettes in the "Tales of the Intermezzo," are just ideas about what might have happened between the Great War and the Beast Wars. So don't sweat it if there's contradictions.