CATHARSIS

                      By Christopher E. Meadows


    The freeways were busy today, and it took him longer than usual to
get back to his small apartment on the outskirts of the metro complex.
He didn't really mind the trip so much, as it gave him time to think
about things...and the bustle of the busy freeways was actually a
comfort to him after so long a time with no company at all.
    The dumpy little groundcar puttered along the road, looking oddly
out of place among all the gleaming angular hovercraft and racing-body
cars, and the fliers that flitted by overhead.  Some of the passing
cars honked in a friendly way, but others tootled derisively.  He
tried not to let the latter types bother him too much--it was at least
some acknowledgement that he existed, after all.
    When his signal came, he pulled off the busy express lane and
followed the exit ramp down into an area cluttered with metal and
glass structures, perhaps a bit sloppy to some eyes but to his, it was
home.  He shared the road with fewer other vehicles, now; a groundcar
or two and the occasional garish orange motorcycle were the only
passers-by.
    Finally, the pinkish car pulled into an alley leading off of the
main road, paused, then stood erect as legs and arms emerged from its
auto body and its canopy slid up to reveal a face beneath a visor.
"I'm home, it's me; open sesame," Wheelie said wearily, and the
apartment door unlocked.
    Wheelie stepped into the room, and the illumination panels along
the ceiling lit up automatically.  To look at it, it wasn't really
much of an apartment.  He'd furnished it very sparsely, with few
fixtures--a couple of chairs, maint-charge bed, Energon dispensary,
communication console, storage closet, and a holopic or two, and that
was it.
    With the income from his job, plus the familial back pay from the
Cybertron Exploration Corps, he could have afforded better, of
course--a bigger room, in a better part of town, with a so-called
better crowd around...but he liked it here.  The "Little Planet Junk"
neighborhood of Iacon was close enough to his workplace that he had
few transit problems, and he liked the company.  The Junkions were
always so _alive_, and they had a good sense of fun.  When he felt
like having fun, anyway.
    Wheelie sighed, and slumped into the chair.  His job, helping out
in the day-care center for the children of the human and other alien
diplomats, was usually fun, but it could also be tedious--and this had
been the latter kind of day.  It was some time before he could work up
the enthusiasm to check the commscreen to see what messages he'd
gotten while he was out.
    There were only two calls waiting.  Ral-Thrust, one of the
Junkions, had called, and left an advertisement for something that was
apparently a cross between a human coffee grinder and a hydrospanner.
Wheelie half-smiled.  The Junkions were enthusiastic, but had never
quite gotten the hang of video communication systems--they tended to
confuse them with television, started thinking they were on the air
when they tried to use them, and ended up getting so distracted that
they usually forgot the original reason they were calling altogether.
Well, if it was important, Ral would probably come by in person later,
so it wasn't something to worry about.
    The second call was from Daniel Witwicky, one of Wheelie's closest
human buddies.  "Hey, Wheelie, remember how you promised to help me
study for the Exploration Corps's entrance exams?  Arcee and I were
wondering if maybe you could make it next Thursday night?  Please drop
me a line or some email or something and let me know, okay?  G'bye."
    Wheelie checked his calendar-chronometer.  Thursday night would be
fine, but Daniel and Arcee would be at softball practice now, so there
wasn't really any point in calling.  He reached over to the console's
keyboard and dashed off a quick email.  "Thursday sounds just fine to
me.  Happily studying we will be!"  He punched "send," then frowned at
the message after it had left the console.  He'd done it again.
    Wheelie got up from the console, and lay dispiritedly down on the
maintbed, sighing.  "Rhyming, rhyming all the time.  This really is
disgusting me.  Am I being punished for some crime?  Will I ever be
set free?"  His optics dimmed as his memory traced back through old
familiar datatracks.

    They had been a proud crew--more than just a crew, a family.
Landrover, the rugged all-terrain vehicle commander; Hydrate, the
hydrofoil life-scientist; Arclight, a high-speed hovercraft explorer,
and Wheelie.  Wheelie had been the "baby" of the family--Landrover and
Hydrate had only built him a few years before, as humans reckoned
time.  Arclight was of earlier construction, and a veteran of several
prior exploratory missions with their father and mother.
    This particular mission had been intended to be a very simple,
low-danger reconnoiter, which was why Wheelie had been allowed along.
Hydrate had thought the travel would be good for him--"a learning
experience," she had called it.  Landrover had been less enthusiastic
about the idea, but had agreed in the end.  Their ship would be
charting the course of a rogue planetoid that was passing relatively
close to Cybertron, to determine if it posed any danger to the
mechanoids' homeworld.
    What they hadn't known, what they could not have predicted, was
that this oddly-misshapen planetoid was the home of an ancient race of
semi-mechanical life who some would claim predated even the
Cybertronians' creation...a race who was not yet ready to be
rediscovered.  Their ship's communications had been jammed, and a
Quintesson tractor beam had forced it down into the planet's harsh
seas.

    "Guilty or innocent?"  "Innocent."  Splash...splash...

    Wheelie alone was spared capture by the Gatorcon patrols who
served the Quintessons, looking for survivors and interlopers who
might crash on Quintessan shores.  And "alone" was the word; there was
no one else on the planet he could talk to.  Aside from the
Quintessons, the only inhabitants were unintelligent, savage, and
often downright inimical to intelligent life.  Even the planet itself
was dangerous, as it was prone to open spikepits, laser zappers, and
other boobytraps on the spur of the moment.  Quintessa was no place
for the unwary.
    Above all, Wheelie realized, the most important thing to do was to
keep his head.  Rescue would come, sooner or later...surely someone on
Cybertron would realize their ship had not returned, and send someone
to investigate.  Wouldn't they?
    Wheelie lived from day to day for a number of years, continuing to
hang onto the hope that someday, he might be rescued, or perhaps find
his own way off that wretched planet.  He did all that he could to
prepare for that day--exploring, thinking, planning.  He found out
some interesting things, including where the Quintessons kept their
starships...but with no understanding of how to operate such a ship,
it would do him little good.
    By far the most difficult challenge that faced Wheelie on
Quintessa was not the Quintessons, nor the Sharkticons, nor any other
of that world's inhabitants.  It was his own mind--staying sane in the
face of an utter loneliness and hopelessness that would have decimated
lesser mechanoids.  To keep from going crazy, Wheelie began to talk to
himself...but that wasn't enough; it paled after the first year or so.
To keep his mind occupied, he started playing games with
words--palindromes, anagrams, puns, and other diversions.  He wrote
stories, songs, poems...and that was when he first discovered what he
called the Rhyming Game.
    As he was thinking one day, walking along an abandoned patch of
silicon shore by Quintessa's turgid sea, it occurred to Wheelie that
anything that could be said, could be rhymed.  Why say, "I'm really
bored," when you could say something more interesting, like "As the
sky is high, so bored am I," and perhaps distract yourself just a
little from those feelings of boredom?  It wasn't as though there was
anyone else to talk to, after all...the least Wheelie could do was try
to be an interesting conversationalist to himself.
    And so Wheelie began to talk to himself in rhyme.  And not just to
himself...he rhymed to the rocks, he rhymed to the sea, he rhymed to
the small mouse-like creatures he often shared shelter with at night,
he even rhymed to the Quintessons (but only when they could not hear
him, of course).  Rhyming the word "Quintesson" was quite a challenge,
in fact, and Wheelie was rather proud of himself when he came up with
"Too much time I've spent upon / the homeworld of this Quintesson."
Soon, with practice, Wheelie even began to think in rhyme...and though
at first he found this amusing, it soon became confusing, abusing
reusing refusing losing...
    By the time rescue had come, years later, the speech and thought
patterns had been so burned into his mind that Wheelie found, to his
horror, he couldn't _not_ speak in rhyme.  "Friend find look behind!"
"You get ship if I get trip!"  "Ship stare over there!"  He tried to
stop, but he couldn't help it--even when he tried not to rhyme, the
words somehow seemed to fall in time, so unless he were to become a
mime, he'd only rhyme in every clime.
    But he couldn't let it slow him down...couldn't admit that there
was a problem.  There was a crisis on, of unheard-of
proportions--Unicron had come to devour Cybertron and destroy the
Matrix, and there was no time for something so menial as helping an
Autobot with a speech impediment.  So he tried to adapt, put on a
cheerful demeanor to match the rhymes he spoke, and went with Hot Rod
and the others to see what he could do.
    And wonder of wonders, he was soon to find he was not the only
Autobot who could not speak straight.  There was a whole _planet_ full
of them, the Junkions.  With their slightly confused sense of language
and a culture that had been cobbled together from decades of
overexposure to television, they made him seem downright normal by
comparison.  Was it any wonder he was dancing for joy along with the
rest of them after the Junkions resurrected the fallen Ultra Magnus
and agreed to join their crusade?
    By the end of the crisis, and the war with the ragtag Decepticon
forces that followed, that false-cheerful mask had stuck right along
with the rhymes, and most everyone figured that this was simply how he
was.  Most of the other Autobots seemed to find the behavior and the
speech pattern amusing or endearing to some extent, or at least
tolerated him.  Still, he knew there were those who found him annoying
or worse.  He tried to avoid them whenever possible, but he didn't
always have the choice.
    At least he had a few friends who seemed to understand him...or
did they, really?  Grimlock didn't often seem to understand anything
beyond which side to bash and which side not to, Daniel just saw him
as a cool "kid" Autobot he could hang out with, and the Junkions were
always off in their own little world of TV buzzwords.  Wheelie
supposed it was somehow telling that his best friends were all either
children or childlike themselves, and that even his job involved
working with them.
    And what was he?  He was much older than some Autobots who'd
fought in the recent wars...but most of that time had been spent going
mildly insane on a desolate planet.  He was still a short, pink
mechanoid who carried an Energon slingshot as his sole weapon.  He
still had his child's body, his child's weapon, his child's act, his
child's speech impediment.  And no one could see that he didn't want
to be a child anymore.

    Wheelie was awakened from his introspection by the beep of the
commpanel.  He sighed, and roused himself.  Had Daniel gotten out of
softball practice early?  Or had Ral-Thrust decided to try again?
Well, either way, he was here, so he might as well answer.  Wheelie
got up and walked over to the console, then punched in.  "Wheelie
here, loud and clear."
    The screen rezzed into a staticky haze, with just a rough
silhouette visible.  The voice was hard to make out, half-obscured by
static as it was, but...it seemed familiar.  "--eelie?  Is --at you?"
    Wheelie's jaw dropped, as his laser core suddenly kicked into high
gear within his chest.  "Arc...light?" he gasped, for once not
rhyming.
    "Wheelie...thank Primus--eed to see yo--"
    Wheelie all but stuttered, "Tell me where, I'll be there!" as his
fingers played across the keys, trying to trace the call.  He was no
Blaster, but he'd learned a thing or two...there!  The spacedock
district, Pier XQ-33261.
    "I have your location, I'm going with anticipation!" Wheelie said,
dashing for the door and transforming along the way.
    "--ait, don't come--oo dangerou--" the silhouette said.  "Wheelie?
Wheelie?"  But Wheelie was no longer there to hear him.
    As Wheelie zoomed out of the alley, he nearly ran down an orange
and brown Junkion who had just been walking toward his door.  "Sorry,
Ral-Thrust, have to go, must!"
    Ral-Thrust turned, watching him go, then fingered his fu-manchu
whiskers introspectively.  "It's quiet...too quiet.  I don't like it."
His mind made up, he transformed into a motorcycle and revved his
motor, taking off in hot pursuit.

    Wheelie zipped along the Cybertron autobahn at top speed, dodging
between the automated cargo transport drones as if they were traffic
cones.  For once he blessed his small size as he zipped between,
around, and through, taking advantage of small gaps where no other
Autobot (except perhaps Goldbug in his Bumblebee days) could have fit.
It was a good thing that these mindless, slow-moving drones were
almost the only traffic on the road at this hour; Wheelie's central
processor was hardly on his driving.  His big brother--his _dead_ big
brother had called him.  He was alive, after all!  Alive!  But...how?
    After they'd been separated on Quintessa, Wheelie was positive
that he'd seen the Quintessons capture all three of the others.
But...perhaps Arclight had escaped somehow.  After all, Wheelie had
only been able to explore _part_ of Quintessa during his time
there--and he had never returned to that world to search further.
What if Arclight had been marooned on the other side of Quintessa all
this time and he had never known?  Thoughts spinning round and round
even faster than his wheels, Wheelie took the interchange ramp to the
thoroughfare that headed to the XP- through XS- sections of the
Cybertron spacedocks.  It wouldn't be longer now.

    Ral-Thrust had started out thinking the chase would be easy.  He'd
never known Wheelie to go very fast when heading anywhere...but then,
he'd never known the little guy to be very enthusiastic about much of
anything, either.  Oh, he put on a brave front...but once you got to
know him, you could see past it to the real him.  Maybe that was why
Ral-Thrust was so worried now.
    His confident attitude had changed when Wheelie had taken off like
his tailpipe was on fire.  "What the...?"  Realizing he was in danger
of losing his friend entirely, Ral-Thrust hastily accelerated after
him...but was stymied by two cargo drones passing close together and
closing the gap.  "Nothing for it.  Punch it, Chewie!"  Ral-Thrust
fired a quick burst from his faring lasers that shattered the latch
holding a flat-top drone's loading ramp up.  The ramp flopped down,
striking sparks as it dragged along the road surface, and Ral-Thrust
kicked in the turbos and used it as a launch ramp from which to take
to the air.  "Hi-yo Silver, away!"
    Ral-Thrust was able to keep up with Wheelie fairly well by
hopscotching across the tops of the cargo drones as Wheelie dodged
between them.  However, he miscalculated at the last moment and found
himself carried past the exchange ramp Wheelie took.  "Curses, foiled
again!"  Ral-Thrust looked around, aware that his friend was getting
further and further away every microsecond.  Then he looked up.
    Aside from one of the major land routes, this section of Cybertron
also contained an elevated monorail.  It had been put in for the
safety and convenience of the Transformers' fragile little biological
cousins, so they wouldn't have to worry about getting squished by
accident when their business brought them to Cybertron.  And it just
happened that this branch of the monorail parallelled the highway that
Wheelie had just taken...and a car was passing overhead at this very
moment.
    Transforming to his humanoid aspect, Ral-Thrust raised his arm and
took sight on the tram car.  He'd just tricked up a winch and grapnel
launcher attachment for himself that very day--that was what he'd been
coming over to show Wheelie in the first place.  He hadn't actually
gotten to _test_ it yet, but oh well...  "You never get a second
chance to make a first impression," Ral-Thrust muttered under his
breath, and fired.
    Ka-THUNK!  "Skipper, I think I caught something!  I think it's a
big--whooaaaaa!"  The tram car's perpendicular motion, combined with
the cable having reached the end of its tether, conspired to yank
Ral-Thrust off of the transport drone and into the air.  "Surprise
surprise, it really flies!" Ral-Thrust declared proudly, triggering
the winch to reel him slowly up toward the car.  Then he noticed that
the path of his swing was taking him directly toward a cluster of
jagged, sharp-looking antennas mounted to a waste reclamation tower.
"Whoaaaaa, Nellie!" he yelled.  "Faster!  Faster!"  He banged on the
winch with his fist, to no appreciable effect.  The antennas got
closer and closer...it looked like he was going to miss them.  Almost.
    "Nnnngh..."  Ral-Thrust reached behind his back to pull out his
axe.  He'd wanted to avoid property damage, as these Cybertronian
Autobots had some strange ideas about who stuff belonged to (which was
silly, when you thought about it.  After all, stuff is stuff), but it
looked like in this case it was going to be necessary.  "We now
declare this bridge...open!"  He swung and chopped through the
antenna's support structure, knocking the top few feet off.  As an
afterthought, he grabbed it as it started to fall.  Waste not want
not.
    But after that, Ral-Thrust's flight path seemed free and
clear...and that was when the winch on his arm started sparking and
smoking.  "Uh-oh.  Think I smell Mohican burning."  Then it fell apart
entirely.  Ral-Thrust tried to snag the cable with his other
hand...but just missed.  He looked down.  "Top of the world, ma!"
    And then he transformed into vehicle mode just in time to make a
soft landing on top of another cargo transport drone.  Since most of
his movement had been horizontal, along a pendulum swing, he hadn't
actually been that high to begin with.  And there was Wheelie, just
ahead.  Resolving to keep a better eye on his friend this time,
Ral-Thrust resumed the pursuit.
    
    The docks were quiet as Wheelie pulled into the loading area.  This
section actually hadn't been used in some time, as Cybertron was still
recovering from the recently-ended energy crisis and most activity was
still centered around the Autobots' headquarters in Iacon.  The whole
planet would revive in time, Wheelie was sure...but for now, the docks
were dark.  It wasn't any wonder there had been static on the
transmission...the wonder was that the old commsystems in this area
worked at all.  But there were still plenty of starship landing docks
here, and a good pilot didn't need functional automatic systems on the
ground as long as his ship's scanners functioned properly.
    As Wheelie transformed and looked around, he began to wonder why
Arclight had landed here, instead of closer to Iacon.  Had his ship
been so damaged he did not want to risk a populated area?  Then why
hadn't he sent a distress signal for a rescue?  Or...did he have
something to hide?
    The dark and spooky reaches of the docks and warehouses, the long
shadows cast in the absence of completely functional illumination
grids...the silence...these were beginning to get on Wheelie's nerves.
When he heard a clatter behind him, Wheelie would have put fair odds
on his outmatching Blurr as quickly as he spun around with his
slingshot out.  But there was nothing there.  "Arclight?" Wheelie
called tentatively.  "You're there, right?"
    Then he heard another noise, from a different direction.  It
seemed to be a sort of groan, and it was coming from a nearby
building.  Gripping his slingshot carefully, Wheelie shoved the door
open and stepped in.
    Not far away, Ral-Thrust frowned at the obsolescent
waste-collection robot he'd stumbled into in the dark, nearly
revealing himself.  He glanced at the warehouse Wheelie had just
entered, and frowned.  "I've got a baaaad feeling about this."  He
waited a moment, then followed.
    The warehouse was even more dimly lit than the loading area
outside, and it was a little hard to see at first.  Wheelie pulled a
flashlight out of a pocket compartment and turned it on, looking
around.  There were rows and stacks and shelves of old crates and
boxes that had probably been here since Alpha Trion's reign, gathering
what little dust there was in a machine environment.  Wheelie briefly
wondered what could be in them, then forgot about that as he stepped
around a row of shelves to see what at first looked like a heap of
tarpaulins someone had shoved into a corner...but then it moved.
    "A...Arclight?" Wheelie half-whispered tentatively.  Then he saw
the dim, flickering greenish glow of two optics at the top of the
heap.  It was a head!
    "...Wheelie...?"  It was Arclight's voice--but something was wrong
with it.  It sounded slurred, and the harmonics were different.
"Y...you shouldn't have come."
    "Shouldn't have come?  But that's just dumb!"  Wheelie winced,
wishing he _were_ dumb.  But he had no choice but to rhyme if he
wanted to speak.  "You're my _brother_.  I have no other.  I...thought
you were dead.  Wh...what's wrong with your head?"
    "R...run.  You must...must get away.  Away fro...from me.  Now!"
    Wheelie blinked, taking a step closer in spite of himself.  "Get
away?  Why do you say?"  Wheelie could see more clearly now.  Arclight
was lying in a corner made by some boxes, covered with a tarpaulin
he'd apparently pulled down onto himself while trying to get back up
again.  Only...the bulk under the tarp seemed bigger than Wheelie
remembered.
    "I'm...not myself," Arclight said slowly, as if each word was a
struggle.  "Don't...come any closer.  STOP!"  At Arclight's last word,
Wheelie winced, halting as if jerked on a rope.  There was movement
under the tarp, and then it fell away as Arclight came shakily to his
feet.
    And Wheelie recoiled in horror.
    Arclight's body formed only a small portion of the bulk that had
been under the sheets.  What there was of it was pitted and scarred
and twisted...and there was something surrounding and interpenetrating
it.  Ropes and bundles of silvery cable, like what the humans called
spaghetti.  It was...slick and slimy, and it pulsed like something
organic.
    And Arclight's wasn't the only body.  There were others...it was
like an obscene parody of a combining team like the Constructicons or
Aerialbots.  But where combiners were designed to fold compactly and
fit together into one efficient machine, this unholy accretion had
bodies crammed together and mangled into crude semblances of arms and
legs with little regard for efficiency...or for the comfort of the
mergees.  At least three heads were visible other than Arclight's own,
all twisted into expressions of pain and torment evocative of the old
Earth paintings of damned souls in Hell that had been in that museum
Daniel had taken him to...
    "...Primus..." Wheelie gasped, stumbling backward and tripping
over a crate to sprawl prone on his back.
    "Quintessons...I'm...weapon for them.
Nanovirus...absorbs...processes...when reaches critical mass...will
infect whole planet..."  Arclight's chimerical body lurched forward,
towering over the fallen Wheelie.  "C-can't control it..."
    An axe whirled through the air overhead and sank into Arclight's
chest, severing a number of silvery cables and throwing the
monstrosity off balance.  As it recovered its footing, the cables
writhed for a moment, then reassembled themselves around it--but by
then Ral-Thrust had pulled Wheelie back out of the way.  "How many
times do I have to tell you?" Ral-Thrust said.  "Don't leave your
loved ones in the lurch.  Call 1-800-JUNKION for speedy service!"
    "Ral-Thrust!" Wheelie gasped.  "In time, just!"
    "Satisfaction guaranteed or double your money back!  Operators are
standing by!" Ral-Thrust agreed amiably.  "I'll remove your unsightly
mildew stains!"  He pulled out his rifle and took up a guard position.
    "Ral-Thrust, no!" Wheelie cried out.  "He's my brother--let him
go!"
    "He's sick!  Sick-sick-sick!  Is there a doctor in the house?"
    "N-no, Wheelie," Arclight's voice came again.  "H-he's right.
I...have to die.  I _want_ to die.  Before I--oh Primus, NO!"
Arclight bent double, making a retching sound.  The slime-cables
quivered...then a mass of them shot out, tentacle-like, toward Wheelie
and Ral-Thrust.
    Ral-Thrust didn't hesitate--dropping his rifle, he flung out an
arm to shove Wheelie aside, then tried to dodgebut the tentacle looped
around behind him, hooking him.  "Urrk...this is a sticky situation."
Ral-Thrust pulled a knife out of a forearm compartment and sawed at
the cable, but it parted in front of and sealed behind the blade,
binding it in.
    "Ral-Thrust!"  Wheelie got to his feet and ran toward his friend,
but Ral-Thrust flung out an arm to stop him.
    "Stay...back."  Ral-Thrust looked up at Arclight.  He could feel
the living cables probing at him, working their way in through the
many chinks and fractures of his jury-rigged body.  "If you strike me
down, I will only become more powerful."
    "Hrrrk...can't...help it," Arclight said.  "I'm sorry."
    Though Ral-Thrust fought it all the way, the cable contracted,
yanking him up against the monstrous mass...then the mass rearranged
itself around the hapless Junkion.  "Hrrk..." Ral-Thrust said, still
struggling.  "Rrrgh...nngh..._Rosebud_..."  Then silence.  The body
shifted around, redistributing its new mass...Ral-thrust's left arm
poked at an odd angle out of its torso, and his head was where the
waist would have been on a human.
    "R-Ral-Thrust...noooo!" Wheelie cried.  "Let him go!"
    "St...stop me..._please_," Arclight whispered.  "Help me...I hear
them all in my mind...can't do anything...the virus is in control of
my...of our bodies."  The body, taller now, lurched forward, and
Wheelie scrambled backward to keep out of its range.
    "But...but I'm so small.  What can I do at all?"
    "Only one...chance," Arclight said as the body lumbered forward.
"I...was the original host.  It's...using my processing cycles.  If
you can...kill me...you should disable it."
    "K...kill you?  No--no, I say!  There has to be another way!"
    "Little brother..._please_.  It's almost done incubating...I can
feel it.  It only needs...a few more victims before...it
metastasizes."  Ral-Thrust's jutting arm waved spasmodically as if to
emphasize his words.  "If you...ever cared for me at all...don't let
_me_ be the one to hand my homeworld over to the Quintessons."
    Wheelie backed around a corner made by shelving, and the
monstrosity lumbered after him.  "I...I'll do my best.  And let
you...rest."  He choked off a sob at the last word.
    "Th...thank you, little brother..."
    Wheelie raised his Energon slingshot, took aim, and fired.  The
blast splashed off the creature's body with no visible effect.  Not
working.  Not working.  What could he do...change tactics.  Wheelie
shifted his aim and fired at a support leg holding up a shelf full of
crates even taller than the metal beast.  The blast blew out the leg,
and the shelf toppled slowly over onto the beast, pinning it down.
Wheelie started forward...but then the cables snaked out from under
the shelf, tearing at it, at the crates, shifting them away or pulling
the shelving into its body.  The beast stood up, taller and stronger.
    "Oh...help me Arclight, I don't know _how_ to fight," Wheelie
moaned.  "I have to put things right...if I only might..."  And even
at a time like this, the damned rhyming continued...
    "I...have faith in you."  It started to lumber forward again.
    Wheelie put his slingshot up and looked around for something,
_anything_ that could serve as a better weapon.  Crates, boxes...there
had to be _something_ in them he could use.  Keeping well back from
the shambling creature, he started tearing lids off.
    Armor plates, useless.  Random solid-state components, obsolete
before Orion Pax was built.  Crystal shards that...wait, were they
glowing?  "Did I see what I thought I saw?  Energon crystals in the
raw?"  It couldn't be, but...it was!  Somehow, the last shipment of
Energon to come through this warehouse had been neglected, lost.  Over
time, the Energon had slowly leaked out of the cubes' containment and
crystallized within the sealed box.  It was dangerously unstable, and
would be useless for power without reprocessing, but...it was just the
thing for a heavy-damage slingshot charge, as long as the wielder was
willing to risk having his hand blown off.  At the moment, that did
not seem like an undue risk.
    Wheelie drew back the slingshot and let fly with his first round.
"Attack, attack, attack, attack!  You have my brother--I want him
back!"  Boom!  The shard exploded, knocking a chunk off of the thing's
left arm.  Boom!  Another shard detonated at the shoulder.  Wheelie
grabbed a fistful and tossed them by hand, scattering them in front of
the creature, then fired again to detonate them.  The blasts buffetted
the monstrosity, knocking it off its feet--but it retaliated, throwing
a chunk of rubble bigger than Wheelie.  Wheelie threw himself to the
floor, and it went whistling by overhead to shatter against the wall.
"Clean miss!  Take this!"  Wheelie fired two chips at a time,
exploding squarely in the creature's chest.  Ral-Thrust's arm fell out
and clattered to the floor.
    "G-good...you're doing it...can feel it weakening..." Arclight
said.  "Keep...it up..."
    Wheelie fired more chips, causing more explosions...staggering the
creature.  But it kept moving forward, and even the Energon blasts
were not doing the job quickly enough.  Only one chance left...and
realistically, Wheelie knew, he stood a fair chance of not walking
away from it.  He could run, summon help, and hope that by the time he
got someone it wouldn't be too late.  But...that wouldn't be right.
If he died while saving Cybertron, well, at least he'd be one with the
Matrix, with his family.
    Grabbing another handful of shards, Wheelie retreated from the
box, moving for the door.
    "W-wait--don't leave!" Arclight implored as the monstrosity
shambled forward.  "What about--"
    "Don't worry, brother," Wheelie said quietly.  "You'll go no
further."  He drew back the slingshot a final time, and fired the
Energon shard straight into the box containing the rest of them.
    
    Wheelie's systems came back on-line one piece at a time...his optics
flickered back to life, and he sat up, or at least tried to.  A fairly
large chunk of wall had fallen across his legs, and the damage sensors
were all but blinding him with pain until he switched them off, and
his left optic wouldn't focus at all.  It took a little shoving, but
he finally managed to flip the rubble away.  What he saw was not
encouraging.  His left leg was entirely severed at the knee.  His
right was still relatively intact, as another piece of rubble had
prevented that side from being crushed all the way.  Still, it left
him without a leg to stand on.
    Fumbling around for whatever was within reach, Wheelie's hands
came in touch with a cool metal rod...a few feet of metal antenna,
branching out into a set of trident-like spikes at the end.  It would
do well enough for a crutch, he supposed.  Levering himself to his
feet--or to his _foot_, he mentally corrected, Wheelie looked around.
The explosion had been enough to shatter the entire warehouse.  Half
of the walls and ceiling had fallen in, though he'd escaped the brunt
of it because he had been in the doorway at the time.  The monstrosity
that had engulfed his brother and Ral-Thrust hadn't been so lucky...he
hoped.
    But then he saw a piece of the rubble shift, and a mangled,
silver-oozing arm reaching into the air.  Wheelie moaned.  After all
this...he hadn't killed it?
    "Better pull yourself together," Wheelie muttered sternly.
"Remember you're an Autobot.  Use that feeling as a tether...you still
can give it your best shot."  Using the antenna as a crutch, he limped
determinedly toward the shifting rubble.  That thing had been right on
top of the blast...it surely had to be worse off than he was...
    What he saw when he got there, as the rubble fell away...was his
brother.  Arclight was still festooned by silver slime, but the blast
had apparently severed the rest of the bodies away.  "Arclight!
Are...you all right?"
    Arclight looked up.  "You...have to finish it," he whispered.
"Finish me.  I can still feel it...feel the rest of it, under the
rubble.  It's...still alive.  Still...contagious.  Still...trying."
Even as he spoke, the slime started re-forming into cables, squirming
and oozing to make connections.
    Wheelie cycled his optic shields, trying to blink out the dust
that must have gotten in behind them; his optic lubricant systems
seemed to be stuck on full outflow.  He knew Arclight was right.  No
amount of telling himself anything different would change it; if the
years on Quintessa had done one thing to him, they had made him a
realist enough to see that.  He knew he had to do it.  But he had to
say something first...and oh Primus, he prayed, please _please_, if
you're out there, let me say it straight just this once.
    He balanced himself against a chunk of rubble and hefted the sharp
antenna fragment he'd been using as a crutch.  "Brother...Arclight,"
he whispered.  "I love you so much."  Then he plunged it home with all
his strength, stabbing it through his brother's chest and into his
laser core.  Electricity arced up the spear and into his body.
Wheelie felt something already damaged inside him give out, and he
fell next to his brother.  He could feel himself fading fast, but it
was all right.  At the last, he'd said what needed to be said...and he
hadn't rhymed.
    "I know..." he heard Arclight say, very dimly.  "And I love you
too, Wheelie.  Always have...always will...until all are one..."
    
    For a long time, silence reigned in the ruined warehouse.  The dust
settled slowly.  Then a grinding sound could be heard, a piece of
rubble shifted dimly, and Ral-Thrust's voice sang (very badly
off-key), "My eye looked around, discovered my hand.  Together they
found my arm in the sand.  All the pieces of me came together as one,
and we all dance forever in the morning sun..."  Another chunk of
rubble shifted, and Ral-Thrust stood up, attaching an arm (someone
else's, actually, but they weren't needing it at the moment anyway) to
his shoulder.  "Oh, Bobby...you wouldn't _believe_ the dream I just
had," he muttered, giving his head a shake to settle it in its socket.
"You were there, and you were there...but I've never seen _you_
before..."
    Ral-Thrust looked around slowly, with a low whistle.  "You damn
dirty apes...you went and did it."  Then his optics fell on the
fallen, shattered form of his friend.  "Oh no."  He picked his way to
Wheelie's side and knelt next to him, making a thorough examination,
then he sighed, relieved.  "We can rebuild him.  We have the
technology."  He turned and looked at the rubble heap behind him,
sighed, and started digging.
    
    There was a long, dark time, filled with images and words and sounds
and memories...then the faces of Landrover and Hydrate and Arclight,
all looking down at him proudly and saying words he couldn't remember,
but they filled his laser core with a joy so profound he wanted to
cry.  And then there was light.
    "Welcome back to the land of the functional, mate," Ral-Thrust
said.  "You had me worried there."
    "...Ral-Thrust?  I thought you were dead.  I...thought _I_ was
dead."  Wheelie paused.  "I'm not rhyming anymore!"  He blinked his
optics a couple of times in wonder, and tentatively tried to make a
rhyme.  And he found it didn't come naturally--he could do it, but he
actually had to think to find a matching word.  It was as if his
thought patterns had been altered somehow...the tracks and ruts that
kept him rhyming filled in or sanded away.  He was finally free of his
curse!  But...there was something else, too.
    "My voice...it's deeper."  Wheelie paused again.  "And my body
feels...strange."
    Ral-Thrust nodded soberly.  "Your old body, she couldna take the
strain.  You canna change the laws of physics, laddie."
    Wheelie looked down, almost afraid what he would see...and it was
as he feared.  "You...put me in my brother's body."  At least for the
most part, he mentally amended.  There were some mismatched bits and
pieces here and there that must have been taken from the other
victims.
    "It was the least damaged."  For a moment, Ral-Thrust looked as
old and worn-out as the parts that made him up.  "I'm sorry, mate," he
said quietly.  "Your brother was gone.  And the others had been in it
for too long--they were gone, too.  But you were still here.  So I did
what I could with what I had.  I guess now you're a Junkion for true."
    Wheelie shook his head after a moment.  "No, it's okay...I'm not
angry.  I think...I think he would have wanted it this way.
Now...well, he'll always be with me."
    Ral-Thrust clapped him on the shoulder.  "Good lad."  He paused.
"No...that's not right anymore.  Good _man_."
    Wheelie slowly clambered to his feet, finding his new balance.
"Thank you."
    "No...thank _you_, Thighmaster!  Wheelie, you rescued your brother
from a fate worse than death, stopped a rampaging nano-virus monster,
_and_ saved all of Cybertron!  What are you going to do now?"
    Wheelie smiled in spite of himself.  "Go home...tell Optimus Prime
about what just happened...have Perceptor check it, and me, out to
make sure it's really safe now..."  Seeing Ral-Thrust's crestfallen
look, he sighed.  "...Oh, all right.  I'm going to Disneyplanet!"
    "Yay!"
    As they reached the edge of the rubble, Wheelie stopped, looking
back to where his old body lay atop a rubble heap, a broken egg in the
dirt.  He felt so different now, and it wasn't just the new body, or
even the lack of rhyming.  It was all of those and more.
    Ral-Thrust turned back also, and followed Wheelie's gaze.  They
stood together in silence for a long moment, then Ral-Thrust spoke
again.  For a rarity, it wasn't a TV quote or a song lyric that came
to mind this time--it was a fragment of one of Optimus Prime's
favorite Earth poems instead.  "And--which is more--you'll be a Man,
my son!"
    Wheelie nodded once, then turned and walked out of the ruined
warehouse with his friend, leaving his childhood on the rubble behind
him.
    
AUTHOR'S NOTES:

    Take THAT, you Wheelie-bashers!
    Well, when I wrote the first part of this story, I said that if I
got enough positive feedback I'd write the conclusion.  Well, that
much was true; I just didn't say _when_ I'd write it. :P When I
started this story 6 years ago, I honestly didn't expect it to be this
long before I finished it.  I had vague ideas about the direction I
wanted to take the second part, but somehow I never got around to
writing it.  Maybe I just didn't feel ready yet.
    I originally started this work because of an off-hand comment
someone made on IRC about how it was not possible to write a good
Wheelie story.  Naturally, writer that I am, I took this as a bit of a
challenge, but that was really only part of it.
    I used to think of Wheelie as annoying, too, but after a while I
started feeling sorry for him.  I honestly don't think he can help
talking in rhyme, after all...probably doesn't even realize he's doing
it, like any nervous habit gets to be after a while.  Having a nervous
habit like that myself, I can feel for the little guy.
    Over the course of writing this, in fact, I think I started seeing
Wheelie as a bit of a metaphor for those of us who, like me, tend to
come in for hatred or ostracism for things we can't really help
(whether it's being too uncoordinated and unpopular for P.E. sports,
or just plain having an annoying personality--both of which I'm afraid
I have in spades).  So I think I really put a lot of myself into this
piece...maybe more so than any other fanfic I've ever written.  I
wanted the little guy to get a break...to have, as it were, a
Catharsis (and perhaps give myself a bit of one in the process).  And
maybe get a few people to look at him in a new light.  I hope you'll
tell me if I've succeeded.

    
A few ideas that didn't make it into the final cut:

* Wheelie getting sucked into the monstrosity and causing it to fall
apart because it couldn't deal with his rhyming thought patterns.  It
just didn't fall into place that way, and it would have been kind of
hokey anyway.

* Arclight being saved along with Wheelie.  I seriously considered
this, but it really wouldn't have been the sort of happy ending that
the character needed.  Having his big brother back would have kept
Wheelie in the subordinate "little brother" role he really needed to
break out of.  Losses of loved ones are a part of growing up.  Anyway,
by giving him Arclight's body, the torch is symbolically passed on.
Besides, Optimus Prime has come back from the dead so darned many
times that there's a bit of a shortage of resurrections left over for
anyone else.

* I'd also considered not resurrecting Wheelie in the end...there's
something about stories where the hero dies knowing he's succeeded.
But then Wheelie wouldn't get to "grow up," which was an important
part of the story to me.  Besides, it would also mean the "Wheelie
must die" crowd would win. :)

* I'd considered having Wheelie change his name when he got the new
body, in the grand tradition of Orion Pax, Hot Rod, and Bumblebee, but
I couldn't decide on what to change it _to_.  It seemed wrong for him
just to take Arclight's name, and Arcwheel sounded dumb.  So leaving
it as it was seemed easiest.
    
Disclaimers:

* I was not aware that there was a UK comics Wheelie/Wreck-Gar team-up
until after I'd finished writing the entire story.  To me it just
seemed natural that Wheelie and the Junkions would find they had a lot
in common.  I guess the comic book writers thought so too.

* I just plucked 1-800-JUNKION out of thin air.  I don't know who
actually has that number, if anyone.  Probably best not to call it--or
if you do call it, don't tell them you got the number from me.
    
* As to Wheelie's family, all I'd heard about them is that he lost
them on Quintessa.  I don't know if there were names or functions
given for them in the children's book which mentioned this, so I just
made up my own.

    
[This story is copyright 1998 and 2004 by Christopher E. Meadows.
Hasbro trademarks and a verse from a Pete Townshend song used without
permission, but I don't mean any harm by it, guys, so please don't sue
me.  Permission granted for redistribution and archival as long as no
profit is made; all other rights reserved to the author--but ask him
for permission, he'll probably say yes.]