The heavy blast doors of the Earth headquarters groaned as their hydraulic locks slid into place, sealing the survivors inside a tomb of reinforced steel and suffocating silence.Outside, the night wind howled across a courtyard that had been miraculously rebuilt by a single slash of a frost blade, yet inside the dimly lit command hall, nobody felt safe.
The victory over Knightmare Tarn had cost them their greatest shield. Mirage was gone, vanished into the cold, unmapped void of a distant galaxy, leaving behind an alliance held together by exhaustion and dread.
Across the wide metallic floor, the battered remnants of two warring factions sat in quiet clusters.
Galvatron rested his massive silver frame against a scarred support pillar, his crimson optics dimmed as he stared at the concrete beneath his boots.
Around him, the former enforcers of Earth CISA, Stinger, Brawl, Blackout, and Bonecrusher, sat atop heavy ammunition crates with their weapons powered down, looking like soldiers who had woken up from a war only to realize the sky itself was falling.
Near the central holotable, Optimus Prime stood beside Megatron Prime, Ratchet, Hound, Crosshairs, Bumblebee, and Hot Rod, while Original Megatron lurked near the far shadows of the wall, his arms folded over his chest as he studied the room with cold amusement.
Yet it was the figure standing alone in the darkest corner of the chamber who drew the eyes of everyone present.
Ever since they had stepped back through the freezing portal from the Glacier Shrine, Drift had not moved.
He stood rigid beside a dead monitor, his shoulders pulled tight and his metal fingers wrapped so fiercely around the hilts of his twin swords that the internal knuckles of his gauntlets were groaning under the pressure.
A faint, rhythmic clicking sound echoed from his corner. It took Ratchet several seconds to realize that the sound was the armor plating of the calm, disciplined swordsman trembling uncontrollably.
Hot Rod shifted uncomfortably in his seat, the silence finally pushing him past his limit.
Hot Rod: Alright, I am going to say what everyone else in this room is staring at. Drift, you have not said a single word since we walked off that freezing mountain. Back at the shrine, you hid behind the back row like a fugitive, you refused to meet the eyes of their leader, and your spark has been racing like an overloaded engine for the last hour. What is wrong with you.
Every optic in the hall turned toward the shadows in the corner.
Bumblebee took a slow step forward, his vocal processor soft and filled with concern.
Bumblebee: Back on the steps, you told us you were forbidden from speaking about the Holy Shrine of the Swordsman. Are you afraid they will punish you for bringing us there.
Drift did not raise his head. A long, uneven vent of heated air escaped his faceplate, carrying a tremor that none of the Autobots had ever heard from the stoic warrior before.
When he finally lifted his optics to look at Optimus Prime, there was a hollow, haunted look burning behind his lenses.
Drift: I am not bound by an oath of secrecy, Bumblebee. I stayed silent because even speaking his name brings back the suffocating weight of the day my pride was butchered.
Drift: You all walked into that main hall today and looked up at Bludgeon sitting on his stone platform. You felt the chill in the air, and you judged him by the standards of the enemies we have fought on Earth. You think because we survived a demon who crushed planets that we understand what sits at the peak of this universe.
Original Megatron let out a low, mocking laugh from the edge of the room, leaning his scarred shoulder against the pillars.
Megatron: Oh, spare us the theatrical dread, traitor. I looked right at your grandmaster and told him to his face that I was unimpressed. He is an old fossil sitting in an ice castle with a rusty sword. What could a relic who hides on an island possibly do that compares to a monster who swallowed the power of primes.
Drift turned his gaze slowly toward the silver warlord. There was no anger in his expression, only a chilling pity.
Drift: You are only breathing right now, Megatron, because Bludgeon possesses a patience as vast as the ocean outside his walls. If he had decided that your disrespect warranted a response, your spark would have been extinguished before the final syllable left your vocal processor, and none of us in that room would have even seen him move.
Megatron: Spare me the Pity of My Old Decepticon, But I am interested so keep talking.
Drift released his white knuckled grip on his scabbards and walked slowly into the dim light of the central hall, his voice dropping into a low, haunting cadence that held the entire room captive.
Drift: Cycles ago, when I cast off my Decepticon insignia and wandered the stars searching for a way to wash the spilled energon from my hands, I was found by a warrior named Wing.
Drift: He brought me to the Glacier Shrine when I was still arrogant, reckless, and blind to the true scale of the cosmos. Wing was the purest, most noble soul among the swordsmen. He took me under his wing, treated me as his own blood brother, and tried to teach me the quiet humility required to survive in that sacred place.
Crosshairs tilted his head, resting his boots on the edge of a steel crate.
Crosshairs: Knowing you, I am guessing humility was not exactly on your daily schedule back then.
Drift: I was a fool. Because I could slice through a squadron of standard troopers in a blink, I believed I had reached the pinnacle of swordsmanship. I watched the ancient master of the shrine, Bludgeon, from afar.
Drift: He is the oldest, wisest master of the blade to ever exist, a leader who demands absolute, unwavering discipline. Beneath that calm exterior lies a terrifying temper, yet he temperates his wrath with mercy, always giving his broken enemies a chance to reform and submit. Back then, I mistook his quiet stillness for weakness. I thought he was just an old man clinging to outdated traditions.
Galvatron narrowed his crimson optics, leaning slightly away from the pillar.
Galvatron: Don't tell me you actually challenged him.
Drift: Worse. I stood in the center of the blooming courtyard during morning meditation and insulted his teachings to his face. I called his patience cowardice, drew both of my blades, and demanded that he face me in combat to prove who was superior.
Drift stopped walking, staring down at the metal floor as if the pink blossoms and bloodied snow of that day were still lying beneath his feet.
Drift: The moment my challenge echoed off the ice walls, the entire mountain went dead silent. Even the wind seemed to freeze in terror. Windblade and Slipstream stood by the pillars, their frames locking up as they watched without daring to breathe.
Drift: In the back archway stood Wheeljack and Sunstreaker. In that entire sanctuary, only Wheeljack and Sunstreaker exist on a higher dimensional plane capable of actually cutting Bludgeon and walking away with their lives, yet when they saw the cold fury rising in the optics of the old master, neither of them dared to utter a single word or step into the scandal I had created.
Ratchet frowned, glancing around the quiet bunker.
Ratchet: If he is truly that powerful, how are you standing here today. Did he hold back his weapon.
A bitter, hollow laugh escaped the throat of Drift.
Drift: Hold back his weapon. Ratchet, if Bludgeon ever draws his Green Energon Blade from its scabbard, the battle is already over before it begins. That sword is forged from his absolute willpower. It does not cut metal, it slices straight through time, space, and fourth dimensional tesseracts, 5 dimensional Pentaracts And if this already wasn't Enough 6th dimensional Hexaracts as if they were wet paper.
Brains: You mean to Say he Exists on the 6th plane or beyond it wouldn't make much sense. What's his ability ?,
Drift: Exactly He did not touch his hilt for me. He did not even activate his Devil Eyes, a terrifying visual power that allows him to rewrite reality with a single glance and dictate the exact level of strength his opponent is allowed to have.
Brains: Understood clear enough i guess now it makes.
Stinger leaned forward, his optics blinking rapidly.
Stinger: Wait. If he didn't use his sword and he didn't use his powers, how did he fight you.
Drift raised one trembling hand, holding his thumb and index finger barely an inch apart.
Drift: At his absolute lowest baseline, when his power is completely suppressed and he is not trying at all, the physical frame of Bludgeon carries enough raw force to shatter a planet with his bare hands. If he had tapped my chest with his knuckle, I would have been reduced to atomic dust.
Drift: So instead, the old man slowly knelt down in the dirt, reached into the garden bed beside his boots, and plucked a single, tiny blade of green grass.
The silence in the Earth bunker became so heavy that the hum of the overhead lights sounded like a roar.
Brawl and Bonecrusher exchanged a stunned glance, while Hot Rod stared at Drift with his mouth slightly open.
Hot Rod: A blade of grass. You mean like... lawn grass. From the ground.
Drift: Out of what he called fairness, Bludgeon infused that tiny speck of grass with just enough durability to match the steel of my sword, simply so he would not accidentally kill me in the opening second. And then, he told me to come at him.
Drift closed his optics, his chest plate rising and falling rapidly as the trauma of the memory washed over him.
Drift: You cannot comprehend the psychological horror of swinging a lethal steel katana with every ounce of your speed, rage, and strength, only to have it stopped dead in the air by an old man casually holding a leaf between two fingers. It was not a fight. It was an execution of my sanity.
Drift sighed, from all that PTSD he received from this one match up.
Drift: Bludgeon did not take a combat stance. He simply walked toward me at a casual stroll while I swung wildly like a panicked child. He played with me as if I were a soft clay toy in the hands of a god. With effortless flicks of his wrist, he used that single blade of grass to parry my heaviest strikes, shatter my footwork, and slice clean through my armor plating. Every time that tiny leaf brushed against my frame, it hit with the weight of a falling mountain. My joints ruptured, energon poured from my mouth, and I was dog walked across the courtyard in front of everyone.
Optimus Prime watched his warrior with deep solemnity, sensing the phantom pain in his voice.
Drift: Yet in my pathetic stubbornness, I refused to yield. Lying in a pool of my own energon, I crawled back to my knees, spat curses at his name, and swung at his legs again. That was when I saw it.
Drift: For the first time, the calm discipline of Bludgeon vanished, and his dark anger took over. The sky above the shrine turned pitch black. The atmospheric pressure dropped so violently that my internal organs began to crush inward just from him looking at me.
Bumblebee and Hot Rod and look at each other in Disbelief.
Drift: Bludgeon raised that tiny blade of grass above his head to deliver a real death strike. In that microsecond, my processor shut down from pure terror. I saw my own death rushing toward me, and I knew nothing in the universe could stop it.
Bumblebee whispered into the quiet room.
Bumblebee: Wing stopped it.
Drift opened his optics, a look of profound sorrow glistening in the blue light.
Drift: A blinding flash of silver stepped right in front of my broken body, followed by a sound that shook the entire island to its bedrock. Wing had leaped between us and caught the downward strike of Bludgeon on the flat of his broadsword.
Megatron Prime tilted his head, his optics narrowing in respect.
Megatron Prime: To block a strike from a being of that magnitude requires immense cosmic authority.
Drift: That is what made his defiance so legendary. Wing possesses an insane ability that allows him to see into the future and schedule astral projections of his attacks at future coordinates. Yet when he stood before the wrath of our master, Wing did not turn on his power.
Drift: He relied entirely on his pure spark and his sacred weapon, a blade that carries the literal Weight of the Heavens. By cosmic law, only a completely worthy, selfless spark can lift that sword. Without activating his reality warping Devil Eyes, not even Bludgeon himself is capable of lifting the sword of Wing off the ground.
Drift swallowed hard, his voice trembling as he spoke the words that had haunted his every waking cycle since that day.
Drift: With the snow turning red around his boots and the pressure of Bludgeon cracking the stone beneath his heels, Wing did not beg for mercy, and he did not back down. He looked straight into the burning eyes of the grandmaster and spoke softly.
Wing: No one gets to harm him as long as I am here, and it does not matter if it is you, Sire. He is my brother, I am his mentor, and this is wrong. Calm down, Sire.
Drift bowed his head, staring at the floor.
Drift: Those words only poured fuel onto the fury of Bludgeon. The frost across the entire mountain shattered into mist when the old man spoke two final words.
Bludgeon: One has to go today.
Drift: Wing did not argue. He did not even hesitate. With absolute grace, he lowered his heavenly blade, slid it into the scabbard on his back, and bowed deeply to the master he had served for millions of years.
Drift: Then he turned around, placed a gentle hand on my shattered shoulder to keep me calm while Wheeljack immediately stepped forward to repair my broken frame, and walked down the steps into permanent exile. He lost his home, his title, and his brotherhood because of my arrogance.
Nobody in the Earth bunker dared to speak. Even Original Megatron had lost his smirk, staring thoughtfully at the floor as he recalculated the terrifying monsters hiding behind the veil of this timeline.
Suddenly, every computer monitor and proximity sensor across the headquarters exploded in a blinding flare of crimson alarm lights.
The steel floor vibrated violently as three massive orbital signatures tore through the clouds directly above the base, bypassing Earth defense satellites without triggering a single outer warning until they were yards from the roof.
Brains leaped across the control board, his voice shrill with panic.
Brains: Red alert, red alert.
Three massive signatures dropping straight into the courtyard. They are already on the ground,Optimus Prime drew his sword instantly as Megatron Prime, Original Megatron, and Galvatron surged toward the main blast doors.
Ratchet: Everyone out into the courtyard before they bring the roof down on our heads. Move.
The alliance burst through the wide doors into the cold night air just as three craters erupted in the center of the smooth stone pavement.
Standing amid the rising black smoke were three of the deadliest hunters from the warship of Lockdown.
In the center stood Scourge, thick furnace smoke pouring from his rusted smokestacks as his glowing orange optics locked onto Optimus Prime.
To his left stood Battletrap, spinning his massive spiked wrecking ball on a heavy chain with a savage, mechanical laugh.
To his right stood Nightbird, her sleek ninja frame low to the ground as twin katanas slid silently from her wrist sheaths.
Scourge: Lockdown sends his regards, anomalies. Without your little illusionist here to save you, this graveyard is yours.
Battletrap slammed his spiked mace into the stone, sending cracks racing toward the Autobots.
Battletrap: Look at how beat up they still are. I do not even need Lockdown to unlock my C DNA powers to rip these scraps limb from limb.
Beside him, Nightbird did not waste a breath on dialogue. She glided backward until she cleared four meters of distance from her allies and activated Free Bird.
Instantly, her entire silhouette vanished into thin air. Her footsteps, the hum of her spark, and every trace of her thermal and radar signature dropped to absolute zero as she moved like an untouchable ghost toward the flank of the Autobots.
Hound raised his heavy rotary cannons, scanning the empty air frantically.
Hound: Where did the female go. My sensors are completely dead, I cannot hear a single footstep.
Before Optimus or Megatron Prime could charge forward to intercept Scourge and Battletrap, a calm, resonant voice drifted down from the high stone wall overlooking the courtyard.
Wing: Lower your weapons, warriors of Earth. And lift your head, my brother. You have carried my exile on your conscience for far too long.
Every warrior on the battlefield froze and looked up. Standing atop the moonlit battlement, his white and gold armor gleaming cleanly against the dark sky, was Wing.
Drift gasped, taking a stumbling step forward as his optics widened in disbelief.
Drift: Wing. How are you here.
Wing stepped off the high wall, dropping fifty feet through the air to land without a sound directly between the Earth alliance and the invaders.
Slowly, he reached over his shoulder and drew the Sword of the Heavens.
The moment the divine steel met the night air, an invisible wave of awe washed over the courtyard, and the sacred law of the blade quietly went to work, bending the threads of probability across the battlefield to turn all odds in his favor.
Scourge snarled, igniting his dark plasma claw.
Scourge: Another stray swordsman playing hero. Tear him apart, Battletrap.
Wing stood completely still, his tranquil optics glowing faintly as his mind peered ten seconds into the future.
He saw the exact trajectory of the chain of Battletrap, the lunging slash of Scourge, and the silent, invisible path Nightbird was taking around the outer gate.
Effortlessly, Wing scheduled his astral projections into those future timestamps and lowered his physical sword to his side.
Wing: You are swinging at where I am, yet your defeat is already waiting for you in the seconds you have not yet reached.
Battletrap roared and hurled his massive wrecking ball straight at the chest of Wing while Scourge sprinted in from the blind side, swinging his scorching blade at his neck.
Wing did not parry. He simply took two slow, graceful steps backward, The exact millisecond Battletrap and Scourge entered the empty space Wing had just vacated, time caught up to the scheduled attacks.
Two blinding, translucent astral projections of Wing materialized out of nothingness like phantom gods.
The first astral projection swung an ethereal blade upward, severing the thick chain of Battletrap like thread before carving a deep diagonal gash across his armored chest that launched the massive brute twenty feet backward onto his back.
At the exact same instant, the second astral projection danced around Scourge in a blur of golden light, delivering five devastating cuts across his shoulders and leg actuators before vanishing into sparkles of light.
Scourge crashed face first onto the stone pavement, spitting sparks and dark oil in total bewilderment.
Scourge: What just happened. He didn't even swing his sword. What cut us.
Across the courtyard, hidden completely inside her Free Bird stealth mode, Nightbird felt a cold spike of terror run through her processor.
Realizing this lone swordsman was completely beyond their tier, she abandoned her assassination route and sprinted in dead silence toward the outer wall to escape and warn Lockdown.
Wing did not even glance in her direction.
Wing: You cannot outrun a future that has already been placed in your path.
Because the Sword of the Heavens tilted all probability in favor of Wing, a loose pebble shifted beneath the invisible foot of Nightbird right as she reached the wall, forcing her to momentarily drop her stealth state for a tenth of a millisecond to catch her balance.
At that exact coordinate and timestamp, a third astral projection of Wing flared into existence, driving the flat of its phantom sword straight into her stomach.
The blow knocked the wind from her lungs and sent her flying backward across the courtyard until she crashed directly on top of the groaning frames of Scourge and Battletrap.
Before the three humiliated hunters could even attempt to rise, the temperature in the courtyard plummeted below freezing.
A jagged tear of blue ice ripped open in the air beside Wing, and Wheeljack stepped casually out of the frost portal, dusting a few snowflakes off his shoulder plates.
Wheeljack: Still showing off with the future strikes, I see. Good to see you, Wing. Let me lock these three up before they scratch the stonework I just spent all afternoon fixing.
Wheeljack raised one hand, formed a small loop with his thumb and index finger, and blew a soft breath of freezing mist toward the pile of Lockdown enforcers.
In the blink of an eye, a shimmering sphere of unbreakable glacial ice enveloped Nightbird, Battletrap, and Scourge.
Inside the rapidly shrinking sphere, reality folded inward, trapping the three panicked warriors inside an endless, freezing pocket dimension of towering ice mirrors.
Wheeljack caught the miniature frozen marble in his palm and dropped it into his subspace pocket as if it were a spare bolt.
Optimus Prime stepped forward, his optics wide at the effortless display.
Optimus Prime: You neutralized three of Lockdown's elites in less than ten seconds.
Wheeljack shook his head, a sudden, chillingly serious grin crossing his face as he looked back toward the direction of his portal.
Wheeljack: Oh, Optimus, you have it all wrong. Lockdown only sent those three weaklings here to test your perimeter. He sent his real heavy hitters, five cosmic monsters, straight to the Glacier Shrine at the exact same time to wipe us out.
Drift stiffened instantly.
Drift: You left the shrine while it is under attack by five of Lockdown's strongest warriors. Why are you standing here.
Wheeljack chuckled softly, crossing his arms.
Wheeljack: Because Acid Storm made the mistake of insulting Bludgeon on his own front porch. Trust me, kid, the safest place in the universe right now is as far away from that mountain as possible.
Halfway across the globe, where the black volcanic cliffs met the roaring ocean, the sky above the Shrine of the Swordsman was tearing itself apart.
Five meteors of pure cosmic violence had slammed into the lower stone courtyard at the base of the mountain, vaporizing the ancient cherry blossom trees and boiling the surrounding snow into thick clouds of steam.
Standing in the center of the scorched stone were the five supreme vanguard destroyers of Lockdown: Thundercracker, Thrust, and the feared Storm Family consisting of Ion Storm, Sunstorm, and Acid Storm.
High above them, leaning lazily against the marble balustrade of the upper balcony, stood Sunstreaker, Windblade, and Slipstream.
Despite five invaders radiating enough energy to destabilize a planetary core standing right below them, not a single member of the shrine had drawn a weapon.
Sunstreaker was casually leaning on one elbow, watching the courtyard the way a spectator watches a street performance.
Windblade sighed softly, shaking her head as the wind whipped her cape.
Windblade: Five of them. And judging by their energy signatures, any single one of them could wipe out an entire fleet. Should we go down and clean the steps.
Sunstreaker laughed, waving a dismissive hand toward the grand double doors opening directly below their balcony.
Sunstreaker: Are you kidding and ruin our afternoon. Look down there. The old man just stepped out. These poor bastards have less than a minute left to enjoy having intact limbs.
Down at the top of the wide stone staircase, the heavy wooden doors parted without a sound. Out stepped Bludgeon.
He did not wear the towering, flaming armor of a giant like Tarn, nor did he float on wings of cosmic light. Bludgeon simply walked out to the edge of the top step and stopped.
Yet the instant his boots settled on the frost covered stone, a suffocating, primordial dread descended over the entire island.
The roaring waterfalls flanking the mountain suddenly quieted, their rushing waters slowing to a crawl as if afraid to make noise in his presence.
The very air around his skeletal helm and battle worn armor grew so dense that light itself seemed to bend slightly around his shoulders. His hands hung loosely at his sides, inches away from the hilt of the Green Energon Blade strapped to his waist.
At the bottom of the stairs, Acid Storm stepped forward, his toxic green plating hissing as he scanned the lone figure at the top of the steps.
As the tactician of the trio, Acid Storm mistook the quiet stillness of the old master for frailty.
A mocking, arrogant laugh echoed from his vocal processor as he raised both hands, conjuring hundreds of swirling, emerald spheres of hyper concentrated molecular acid that melted the stone floor just from hovering above it.
Acid Storm: Is this a joke. Lockdown warned us that the Shrine of the Swordsman housed creatures that defied the timeline, and all they send out to greet us is one dusty, decrepit old fossil. Wash this rust bucket off the steps, my brothers. Dissolve him and his pathetic little temple into sludge.
With a sweeping wave of his arms, Acid Storm unleashed a tsunami of molecular acid bubbles straight up the staircase, a corrosive wall potent enough to eat through Cybertronian battleship hulls in a fraction of a second.
At the top of the steps, the optics of Bludgeon narrowed by a fraction of a millimeter, He did not raise his arms. He did not step back. The insult against his sacred sanctuary simply caused the ancient master to stop suppressing a tiny fraction of his presence, Bludgeon entered full Aura Mode.
There was no flashy explosion, only the terrifying sound of reality groaning under an impossible weight.
An invisible wall of pure, suffocating spiritual and physical pressure rolled down the staircase like an unseen tidal wave.
The moment the aura of Bludgeon touched the incoming swarm of acid bubbles, the sheer density of his presence crushed the molecular bonds of the acid into nothingness, freezing the toxic mist into harmless white snow that drifted gently to the steps twenty feet below his boots.
Down in the courtyard, the invisible weight slammed into the five invaders like a shifting tectonic plate.
Acid Storm choked mid laugh, his knee actuators buckling violently as the sudden atmospheric pressure nearly slammed his face into the stone..
Acid Storm: What... what is this weight. My frame cannot. Kill him. Kill him right now.
To his left, Thrust reacted instantly with lethal precision,Summoning his twin overpowered sniper blasters into his hands in a flash of crimson light, the dimensional marksman did not aim at Bludgeon,Instead, Thrust aimed his barrels into the empty air to his left, right, and straight into the ground, pulling the triggers in a blinding frenzy.
Dozens of armor piercing plasma rounds tore straight through the fabric of the third dimension, vanishing into spatial rifts only to rip out of the air less than two inches from the head, neck, back, and spark chamber of Bludgeon simultaneously. It was an omnidirectional dimensional barrage that could not be dodged or blocked by any three dimensional being.
At the exact same second, Thundercracker rocketed into the storm clouds above the shrine, his blue armor erupting with the most violent electromagnetic phenomenon in the known universe.
Drawing upon the power of a Magnetar Starquake Flare, Thundercracker channeled quintillions of volts of relativistic cosmic lightning between his palms.
The sky turned a blinding purple white as he hurled a pillar of magnetar thunder straight down upon the head of Bludgeon, an apocalyptic discharge carrying more raw destructive energy in a tenth of a second than Earth's sun produces in a hundred thousand years.
The dimensional sniper rounds and the planet cracking magnetar lightning struck Bludgeon at the exact same microsecond. The roar of the impact shook the ocean floor for a hundred miles.
Up on the balcony, Slipstream did not even blink as the blinding flash washed over her face.
When the smoke cleared a second later, the five warriors of Lockdown froze in absolute, blood chilling terror.Bludgeon had not moved from the top step. He had not even leaned back.
The dozens of dimensional sniper rounds fired by Thrust were floating frozen in mid air an inch from his armor, flattened like harmless lead pellets against the passive density of his aura before clattering uselessly to the stone.
And as for the magnetar starquake lightning, Bludgeon had simply raised his bare left hand and swatted the quintillion volt plasma bolt aside with the back of his knuckles as lazily as a man brushing away a cobweb. Not a single scorch mark marred his plating.
Up in the sky, Thundercracker felt his spark skip a beat, his voice trembling over the comms.
Thundercracker: He... he just slapped away a magnetar flare with his bare hand. What kind of monster is this.
Bludgeon did not answer. He did not roar, boast, or power up. He simply took one calm, unhurried step down the staircase.
To the optics of the invaders, Bludgeon did not teleport, he simply walked, yet the sheer, incomprehensible baseline speed of his physical frame made space itself blur like a smeared painting.
Before the electrical signal in the brain module of Thrust could even travel to his finger to pull the trigger a second time, Bludgeon was already standing directly between Thrust and Acid Storm at the bottom of the stairs.
Using less than a thousandth of a percent of his suppressed, planet shattering baseline strength, Bludgeon casually swung both open palms outward in a lazy, simultaneous slap.
The sound that followed was not the clang of metal; it was the sickening crunch of two insects being crushed against a windshield.
The chest plates of both Thrust and Acid Storm caved straight through to their spinal struts on impact.
Their internal organs and spark chambers ruptured instantly, and their lifeless, mangled bodies were launched across the plaza like ragdolls, smashing deep into the frozen rock wall with their optics completely dark. Two of Lockdown's elite killers had been killed instantly without Bludgeon even clenching his fists.
High in the air, the middle brother of the Storm trio, Sunstorm, screamed in panic as his frame ignited like a miniature sun.
Sunstorm: Brother. You will not take my family from me, old man.
Activating his Life Energy Exchange ability at maximum output, Sunstorm thrust both hands toward the massive volcanic mountain beneath the shrine.
He violently drained the geothermal heat and ancient kinetic energy stored within the millions of tons of black rock, converting that inanimate planetary energy into a blinding torrent of golden life force.
Two beams of pure resurrection light shot from his palms and slammed into the corpses of Acid Storm and Thrust.
Within two seconds, their shattered armor welded itself back together, and their extinguished sparks violently reignited, pulling both warriors back from the grip of death as they gasped raggedly for air.
Seeing his brothers revived, the eldest and overwhelmingly strongest of the family, Ion Storm, stepped forward into the center of the courtyard.
The air around him crackled with terrifying blue arcs as his Matter Creation power surged to life.
With a wave of his hand, he rewrote the empty air atoms around him, instantly forging a floating arsenal of hyper dense neutronium blades, shields, and singularities that orbited his frame like a miniature galaxy.
Bludgeon stood ten feet away, his hands still resting calmly at his sides, watching the display with the cold indifference of a butcher watching a lamb.
Ion Storm sneered, trying to mask the tremor in his voice behind a wall of arrogance as he pointed a neutronium spear at the chest of the grandmaster.
Ion Storm: You underestimate my power, Old Man.You have no defense against my power, no security.
Bludgeon tilted his skeletal helm down slightly. The silence that fell over the plaza was so absolute that Ion Storm could hear his own fuel pump hammering in his chest.
Slowly, the deep, quiet voice of the grandmaster rolled across the stone.
Bludgeon: There is no security more secure and stronger than me in this holy place.
Beneath the dark shadow of his brow, the optics of Bludgeon flared with a chilling crimson and emerald ring. His Optics Flare with Fire, He did not fire a beam. He simply looked at Ion Storm for half a heartbeat.
In that single glance, the supreme authority of the Devil Eyes reached into the fabric of reality and rewrote the existence of Ion Storm.
Instantly, the orbiting arsenal of hyper dense neutronium spears vanished into thin air as if they had never been created.
Worse, Ion Storm felt a horrifying, hollow sensation tear through his entire body as Bludgeon visually dictated a new law for his frame, stripping away every drop of his cosmic durability and setting his physical strength and armor resilience to the exact equivalent of an ordinary Earth elephant.
Ion Storm gasped, stumbling backward as his heavy metal frame suddenly felt as brittle and fragile as thin glass beneath the crushing gravity of the mountain.
Ion Storm: Wait... what did you just do to me. Where did my matter go. Why does my body feel so weak.
Bludgeon did not take another step forward. Standing ten feet away, the old master slowly raised his right hand, pressed the tip of his middle finger against his thumb, and casually flicked the empty air in the direction of Ion Storm.
The tiny, compressed pocket of air from that single finger flick shot across the ten feet of space like an invisible cannonball.
When the shockwave of the flick hit Ion Storm, his downgraded, elephant level durability offered zero resistance against the baseline force of a planet buster.
With four simultaneous, horrifying rips of tearing steel and spraying energon, the air pressure of that single finger flick tore both of Ion Storm's arms and both of his legs clean off his body at the sockets.
His severed limbs flew in four different directions across the snow while his limbless torso crashed onto the icy stones, rolling helplessly to a stop in a steaming pool of blue fluid as he screamed in agony.
Acid Storm and Thrust, who had just stood up from the rubble, dropped right back to their knees in pure, paralyzed horror.
Their strongest brother, the untouchable master of matter creation, had just been reduced to a limbless trunk by a literal flick of a finger from ten feet away.
Up in the air, Sunstorm lost his mind to terror, raising his golden hands to drain the ocean itself to heal Ion Storm, while Thundercracker let out a desperate, hysterical roar and dove straight down from the clouds wrapped in every last volt of his magnetar lightning.
Bludgeon let out a quiet, disappointed breath through his vents. Slowly, his left thumb brushed against the guard of the Green Energon Blade at his hip.
With a soft, musical click, Bludgeon pushed the blade out of its scabbard by barely a single inch, exposing just a sliver of glowing emerald willpower to the air, before immediately clicking the guard back shut.
Nobody saw him swing. Nobody even saw the blade leave the sheath.
Yet across the entire expanse of the courtyard, the third dimension itself split open along a single razor thin green line.
The emerald wave of pure willpower sliced cleanly through time, space, and the concept of energy itself.
Mid air, the golden resurrection beams of Sunstorm were literally cut in half and erased from existence.
At the exact same instant, the invisible spatial slash passed effortlessly through the diving frame of Thundercracker, the glowing body of Sunstorm, and the kneeling forms of Thrust and Acid Storm.
Time seemed to pause for two full seconds before reality registered that it had been cut.
Then, four simultaneous geysers of sparks erupted. Thundercracker and Sunstorm fell out of the sky like severed puppets, slamming into the stones beside Thrust and Acid Storm.
Every single weapon they carried had been sliced into microscopic dust,Their heavy armor plating was split cleanly from shoulder to hip, their transformation cogs and energy conduits severed with such divine surgical precision that every cut stopped exactly half a millimeter away from their pulsing sparks.
In less than thirty seconds, five of Lockdown's most terrifying cosmic destroyers lay groaning, limbless, and completely broken in the red snow.
Bludgeon had defeated the entire vanguard without breaking a sweat, without taking a fighting stance, and without even drawing his sword out of its scabbard.
Bludgeon looked down at the five trembling, weeping hunters at his feet, his patient mercy sparing their sparks so they could drown in the weight of their own insignificance.
Bludgeon: You came to this sanctuary speaking of power, yet you do not even understand the ground you stand upon. Take them to the lower ice dungeons. They will remain in chains until their sparks learn discipline and submit.
High up on the balcony, Sunstreaker stretched his arms above his head with a soft yawn, turning back toward the warm interior of the hall as Windblade and Slipstream followed him inside.
Sunstreaker: Like I said. Didn't even need a full minute. Now come on, let us go see what Wheeljack brought back from Earth.
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ABILITY CHART
CHARACTER: BLUDGEON
ABILITY- DEVIL EYES
Reality manipulation through visual perception. With a single glance, Bludgeon rewrites the reality of anything he sees, allowing him to freely dictate, strip away, or set the exact level of strength and durability his opponent is allowed to possess.
CHARACTER: WING
Ability: DEJA VU
Wing perceives the future timeline and schedules translucent astral projections of his attacks into future coordinates and timestamps. Opponents walking into those future seconds are struck automatically by unavoidable phantom slashes.
In simpler words He can Schedule Attacks in future, by any number of seconds or Minutes hours or any unit, He can Also Turn the odds against him into the evens.
CHARACTER: ION STORM
Ability- SHAPE IT
The strongest of the Storm trio, capable of generating and shaping physical matter and hyper dense elements out of empty air.
CHARACTER: SUNSTORM
Ability- FAIR TRADE
Drains thermal, kinetic, or ambient energy from any inanimate object and converts it into pure life force, allowing him to instantly revive dead Cybertronians and restore shattered frames.
CHARACTER: ACID STORM
Ability- ACID WAVES
Generates and fires swarms of highly concentrated molecular acid bubbles capable of dissolving Cybertronian armor on contact. Serves as the primary strategist of the Storm family.
CHARACTER: THUNDERCRACKER
Ability : BLINDING LIGHTING
Releases cosmic electromagnetic discharges equivalent to a magnetar starquake flare, channeling quintillions of volts of relativistic plasma lightning.
CHARACTER: THRUST
Ability- RESONANCE
Summons two overpowered sniper blasters capable of firing omnidirectional shots that tear through dimensional rifts to strike targets from every angle simultaneously.
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Anyways guys this is the fallen here, I have to update you On my life circumstances I have been going through a lot since sometime I am in Everything Or nothing Burnout phase of my life which has been negatively effecting me and my mental health but I am still here trying my best for you all this was the last chapter for this volume we are moving to Volume 5, and this story will definitely end by Volume 7. Which might only have one chapter, but let's see, We have to take this one chapter at a time, and good news, i am finally Brave enough to say I left my college due to Many issues I can't disclose yet, So Yeah 2 chapters Per month, wish me Luck, on the other novel it will be updated Tommorow 😁 one last thing, I am working my Ass Off for designs after this Chapter so you will updated on Pinterest I will take some more days and trust me by the next chapter we would have gotten many characters images 😄
Sorry for the Unedited chunk i between i just thought of seeing it.. I have fixed it.
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