Rebirth
The only one to speak was Rattrap. “In other words, we really are going to die.”
The last things that happened in the last ten second of the Omega Delta’s existence were; Rattrap falling back into his chair crestfallen, Rhinox hanging his head, Silverbolt and Blackarachnia finding solace in each other’s arms, Cheetor straining against the controls to clear the next wave, and Optimus Primal standing firm to stare into the eyes of death.
That was until the transwarp space stabilized somewhat and the shuttle was enveloped in a multicolored light.
“What is that?” Cheetor stated once the light show began.
“It’s a tear in the transwarp field.” Rhinox double checked his terminal to be certain. “It may be our only chance for survival.”
“Cheetor head for the rift.” Optimus commanded.
“I’m on it Big Bot.” Without hesitation Cheetor guided their doomed ship into the rift.
But as they crossed the threshold all of the Maximals felt an energy surge overload their circuits.
Optimus attempted to block out the pain. “Everyone enter beast mode.” With that Primal’s body twisted and shifted until he was in his transmetal gorilla mode.
The rest followed suit. But once in beast mode there was a new surge and a new pain. “Oh yeah-gah-This is-urk-so much better-AAAAH. What next Monkey Brain?” Despite the pain Rattrap remained snarky as ever. One by one they passed out, unable to take the pain any longer, until only Rattrap remained awake. He felt his insides twisting and his metal plating burning. He saw his friend bodies twisting and distorting involuntarily. In the last few moments before the darkness took him he looked at his metal paw, he almost thought he saw his toes retracting.
After who knows how long, hours, days perhaps, Optimus Primal awoke to a dark room. He felt the cold metal floor beneath him, so he figured he was still in the Omega Delta. He tried to stand upright, but couldn’t keep his balance. ‘Something’s wrong.’ He thought to himself, he rubbed his neck and found two more strange things about his body. First was his body was no longer covered by metal plating, but a short coat of fur. The second thing was that he no longer had any fingers. He snapped out of his self-inspection momentarily when he heard moans coming from around him. “Is everyone alright?”
From the front came Cheetor’s voice. “Yeah, I think I’m good.”
“A little shaken, but nothing bad.”
“Blackarachnia are you alright?”
“I’m awake, that’s all I know.”
“If I told you I was dead, would ya leave me alone for eternity?”
Ignoring Rattrap’s comment, Optimus turned to where he heard Rhinox’s voice. “Rhinox, we need to asses our situation, can you get the lights on.”
“We’ll see.” Despite the doubt in in his voice, and after some anonymous noises, Rhinox managed to get the lights in the ship functioning.
Rather than seeing a rhinoceros, let alone a rhino themed cybertronian, what he saw before him was a horse with a brown coat, red eyes and a short golden mane and beard. What separated him from any normal horse though was a horn coming out of his forehead.
“Rhinox, Your beast form has changed.”
Rhinox looked about the room. “I’m not the only one.”
Optimus turned to see that the rest of his team had turned into horses as well. One was yellow covered in black spots as well as had a black mane, tail and stripes set below his eyes that trailed down to the corners of his mouth. Near the back corner was a smaller gray one, he lacked a mane but he did have a pinkish flesh colored tail, it was coiled tightly into a rat-like tail. Further in the back were two more, one light gray whose face was covered in a black mask pattern, a silvery mane, tail and had bird-like wings growing from its back. The one next to him was about a head shorter and completely black with a yellow mane and tail, like Rhinox this one had a horn in its forehead.
Out of curiosity, Primal looked for a reflective surface. Once found on the back of a terminal, he didn’t see a giant metallic gorilla staring back. What he saw was a silver backed dark gray horse significantly smaller than the aforementioned ape, he had a short cut blue mane and tail. To top it off he too had wings.
“Hey Rhinox, what’s up with the change in beast modes.” The cheetah coated one asked in Cheetor’s voice.
“It could be because when we exited the transwarp space, some kind of radiation damaged our previous forms, so we had to rescan new forms. The problem with that theory is that this shuttle doesn’t have DNA scanners for that to be it.”
“Eh we can ask questions later. Personally I’m curious about my new physique.” All attention went to the smallest maximal. “Rattrap MAXIMIZE!” Nothing happened. “HEY! W-What gives!”
“Cheetor Maximize!” Not even Cheetor changed to his robot form. “Big Bot what’s going on?”
“Our transformation protocols must have been damage by the radiation.”
“RATTRAP MAXIMIZE! . . . I Am Transformed! Transform! Go Go Rattrap! Shazaam.”
“How about ‘Give it a rest Rattrap.’” The yellow and black mare finally spoke identifying herself as Blackaracnia.
Rattrap breathed heavily beginning to feel claustrophobic in this new body. “Awww man. What about Rhinox? You got the lights on, ya can Transform right.”
“Actually, ever since Tarantulus created his transformation lock lens, I’ve been practicing with essential maintenance in my beast mode. This new form is so similar to my previous one I may never have noticed if the lights remained off.”
“Well, pardon my use of your catch phrase Boss Monkey, but this is just prime.”
“I’m afraid I have to agree with you.”
It wasn’t any more than a few moments later they heard a knocking on the hull. Then a faint nearly inaudible voice came from the outside.
“Hello? Is there anyone in there?”
“The thing crashed into a mountain. I don’t think anyone could have survived that.”
Optimus answered the voice. “Yes, we are here. Who are you?”
“Oh! Uh.” The voice seemed surprised by the reply. “My name is Twilight, Twilight Sparkle. Is everyone alright in there?”
“Yes everyone is alright, in a manner of speaking. Can you tell us where we are?”
The voices started speaking in a more hushed tone, though still audible. “Don’t tell him anything, he might be dangerous.”
“Well thank you for telling me that after I told him my name.”
The two voices continued arguing, this left the Maximals time to talk.
“Well, at least we crashed on a planet that’s inhabited.” Cheetor said optimistically.
“Yes but, inhabited by what?” Was the first thing Silverbolt had said since the lights came on.
“One of them came to our aid, so we can’t rule out they’re a peaceful people.” Optimus reasoned.
“Or that they have ulterior motives.” Blackaracnia stated bluntly. “Trust me it’s possible.”
“Be that as it may, we don’t have many options at the moment. We’re on a foreign world that we know nothing about and these people may be able to help us.”
The first voice came again. “Hello? Are you guys still there?”
Optimus answered back “Yes we’re here. There’s a hatch under the shuttle near the back. We may need your help digging it out.”
A third voice came through the walls. “Yah mean the trap door on the bottom of this thing? There are a few rocks in the way, but it’s just about clear enough. It shouldn’t take long.”
“Heh… That’s convenient.”
Ignoring Rattrap, Optimus addressed the ones outside. “We’ll meet you outside.” They heard nothing more from the voices. “Rhinox if you would open the hatch when they give the all clear.”
As the Maximals reached the rear hatch and Rhinox readied to operate the controls with his mysterious ability. One of the voices gave the all clear and Rhinox opened the hatch. It was then that something occurred to Silverbolt. “Won’t they have problems with us taking the forms of local wild life?”
When the hatch fully opened they saw six pastel colored mares before them, two with wings and two with horns. Both parties looked at each other with startled expressions.
Rattrap turned to Silverbolt. “My guess, no.”
For hours after introduction, the maximals recounted the six mares of their adventures during the beast wars. Their victories against the predacons, the mysterious artifacts of the Vok, the emergence of new maximals and predacons, the attempted destruction of earth, the quantum surge, the deaths of allies, Megatron’s attempt to erase the maximals from history, and their final battle against Megatron and The Nemesis.
Rattrap had just wrapped up the story. “And so we strapped Megs to the hull and after a tragic set of circumstances, here we are.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Rainbow Dash held up a hoof. “What about the original Megatron’s spark? Did you ever put it back?”
“We didn’t mention that? Oh yeah don’t worry, we put that back for sure.”
“Uh huh, Twilight I think we should talk.”
“Oh, uh, okay, if you don’t mind excusing us.”
“Not at all.” Optimus allowed them to go talk in private.
The six native ponies separated from the group and huddled together.
Twilight Started. “So what do you girls think?”
“There’s no way anything they told us is true.” Dash stated almost immediately.
“Why?”
“They say they’re alien robots that turn into animals, but conveniently they are stuck as ponies”
“Dash they fell from the sky in a space ship. I saw it, you saw it. Heck, aside from them being ponies they almost match the creatures from my dream.”
“I’ll be honest with you Twilight, I didn’t exactly believe your dream thing a hundred percent.”
Twilight started to get frustrated with Rainbow dash. “Fine then you explain what happened.”
“Fine.” Dash paused to think for a bit. “They’re part of a foreign government agency developing spacecraft in order to um… attack Canterlot from orbit. But when they were doing a test flight we hit them with the ‘harmony beam’, mistaking them for a star, and caused them to crash land here.”
“That is. The most. Convoluted. Theory. Ever!”
“It’s better than ‘Aliens did it’! It may work for Michael Bray, but not me.”
“Where was this skepticism during the Zecora incident?”
Applejack got between the two mares before the fight could escalate further. “Girls stop it. Now Twilight, ah admit I see Dash’s point. Their story is a bit sketchy, sketchier than Granny Smith’s hoofwriting even. But Rainbow, from what I can tell, they ain’t lyin’. Right now they are just a group of ponies that really could use our help, for now I say we can trust them.” Both Twilight and Rainbow Dash looked at the embodiment of honesty, then to each other, nodding and wordlessly agreeing she was right. “How ‘bout you three?” She directed to the rest of the group.
“They seem like a nice group, although Rattrap is a rather bit crude for my liking, but overall they’re good ponies. It wouldn’t hurt to help them out for now.”
“They have been through so much, lost so many friends. We should let them feel as welcome as possible.”
“Plus they might have more awesome stories to tell. Especially ones with Waspinator, he is hilarious!”
“Pinkie, Waspinator was a predacon. A bad guy.” Twilight reminded the pink pony.
“Well duh! It’s the villains that always have the best characters.”
Twilight had to admit to herself, Pinkie was right. “. . . Yes well, we’d better get back to the others.”
The mane six started walking towards the Maximals when Optimus walked up to them. “Do any of you know where we can get medical assistance? We are rather under equipped in terms of biological healing.”
One of Twilights eyebrows rose. “Why, is someone hurt?”
“It’s nothing.” Blackarachnia answered from where she was sitting, Silverbolt was holding one of her hooves.
Twilight walked over to see that Blackarachnia’s hoof was burned. Silverbolt scooted over to give her room to see it better. “Tshh, this is a pretty bad burn, we should get you to an emergency room. All of you in fact, you may have gotten banged up more than you realize in the crash. The Ponyville hospital is the closest, we’ll take you there.”
Rattrap rose to his hooves in an instant. “That’s it! If anything can prove our story, a simple X-ray will do it. C’mon let’s go!” Without another word Rattrap trotted off in a random direction.
“Actually, Ponyville is that way.” Twilight pointed roughly 90 degrees to the right of the direction Rattrap was headed.
“Oh, I see.”
It took them the rest of the night to reach the hospital. The sun hung low in the sky outside the window of the hospital room the maximals were collected in. Blackarachnia sat upon a table with a bandage wrapped around her hoof. With the exception of Silverbolt, who sat next to the table, the maximals were scattered about the room. Rhinox and Optimus looked out the window studying the strange new world outside. Cheetor was reading a magazine, attempting to anyway. Aside from clumsily turning the pages with his less than dexterous hooves, he couldn’t exactly read the language, but he did look at the pictures. Rattrap stood next to the door awaiting the doctor’s return.
Rhinox broke the silence. “They are a fascinating race, three different types, each with their own specialized abilities.”
Optimus continued looking out the window, watching the few ponies up at this hour go by. “The ones with horns, like the doctor, they seem to be capable of some kind of telekinesis. How do you suppose they can do that?” Optimus eyed Rhinox’s own horn.
“Hard to say. Perhaps their horns amplify their brain waves. Then again the only evidence of psychokinetic energy I’ve ever come across was Blackarachnia, which can be attributed to the Vok technology.”
“I wonder.” Blackarachnia thought out loud. She closed her eyes for a moment and her horn was suddenly enveloped in a green aura as was Rattrap who began to float off the ground.
“HEY HEY HEY! Put me down longlegs!”
Blackaracknia opened her eyes and the aura dissipated dropping Rattrap to the ground. “Still got it.”
“I swear to Primus, I will-” Rattrap halted midsentence when the door swung open and a caramel colored unicorn in a white doctors coat walked in.
“Well, Black-Arachnia was it?” He quickly looked at a clip board he held in his telekinetic grasp. “Aside from your burn, you are in perfect health; however I want you to be careful and avoid getting it infected. If it should anyway, you can come back and I will prescribe you some antibiotics.”
Rattrap cleared his throat to get the Doctors attention, “And the rest of us Doc?”
“From what you’ve told me you all are very lucky to have lived through a rock slide without injury, let alone live at all.”
“Eh yea that’s nice.” Rattrap waved his hoof towards the doctor. “You didn’t happen to notice anything out of the ordinary, didya?”
The Doctor looked from Rattrap, then to the other maximals. He lowered his head and whispered to Rattrap. “Not to sound rude or anything, but you should really bathe more than you do.”
“So I’ve been told.” Rattrap said with annoyance, clearly the doctor was blinder than a bat with cataracts. “I mean did anything unusual come up on the X-ray?”
“I assure you, aside from hygiene, you are the healthiest ponies I have seen this year.”
“You’re certain there is nothing physically unusual with us?”
Now the doctor was becoming agitated by Rattrap’s pestering. “If I show you your x-ray will that satisfy you?”
“It could.”
The doctor’s horn glowed and a negative of a pony and its internal parts appeared before Rattrap.
“No, no, this isn’t right.” What Rattrap saw wasn’t a puzzle of miscellaneous mechanical parts he was familiar with since he was an alpha unit. What he saw was a horse’s skeleton and nothing more. “This has to be the wrong one.”
The rest of the maximals looked over Rattrap’s shoulder to see the horrific truth of their new forms.
“There aren’t that many Stallions of your. . . . ‘stature’ around these parts. I wouldn’t make that mistake.”
Optimus could see the uneasy feeling in the faces of his comrades. “Thank you doctor, we’ll take our leave now.” The doctor nodded and winked the x-ray out of existence before he left.
The waiting room was empty save for Twilight, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash, plus the few nurses coming in and out of the room. Twilight was currently setting the Elements of Harmony back in their jewel box, getting them perfectly placed.
“Twi, they’re just going to get ruffed up on the trip back.” AJ attempted to point out the futility of the act.
“It helps pass the time, who knows how much longer the maximals will be in there.”
“Not long at all.” Dash pointed out the team of six ponies entering the room.
Twilight shut the box and walked to meet them halfway. “So how are you guys? The doctor didn’t find anything wrong did he?”
Rattrap just kept walking towards the door, not even looking at Twilight. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Twilight Turned to Optimus. “What’s wrong with him?”
“We were just presented with some unpleasant news.”
“UNPLEASANT NEWS!” Rattrap shouted from before the doors. He walked back towards his comrades. “Finding out you have a scraplet in your t-cog is unpleasant news. Waking up with Gold Plastic Syndrome is unpleasant news. Now, finding out that the very essence of who you have been your entire life has been taken away from you? That is. The worst. News. Ever!”
“Keep it down please.” A disgruntled nurse pony called from the front desk. “There are patients here that are still asleep.”
Optimus addressed the nurse. “I’m sorry mam; we’ll try to calm him down.” The nurse nodded and returned to her rounds. “Rattrap I’m going to need you to not panic.”
“I’m not panicking, for your information boss monkey, or maybe it should be boss Mustang, this is pure rage.”
“Can somepony tell me what’s goin’ on?” Applejack addressed the group.
“Turns out we’re no longer techno organic.” Rattrap explained. “We’re just plain organic.”
“And that would mean?”
“We are no longer able to transform.” Rhinox stated clearly. “We are as we appear to be.”
“I knew it.” Rainbow dash blurted out with a smug look on her face. She was however met with Twilight’s face that told her that wasn’t the right thing to say. Dash immediately regretted the words that came from her, and broke eye contact with her purple friend.
Twilight turned back to the maximals. “So, what are you going to do now?”
The maximals turned to look at one another, each with a face of uncertainty. Cheetor looked back at Twilight. “No idea. To be honest, this kinda sent us back a few squares.” Cheetor gestured with his hoof at the rest of his body.
“Well if that’s the case, yall will probably be stayin’ round till ya figure it out. So why don’t we show you round town.” Applejack offered.
Optimus looked to his team. “I don’t see many other options.” The rest of his team nodded each saying that they may as well.
“Okay, follow us for the Ponyville grand tour.” Twilight lead the way to the door, picking up the jewel box telekinetically on the way out. She was followed by Applejack and Rainbow Dash who were then followed by Cheetor, Rhinox, Blackarachnia, and Silverbolt. Rattrap however did not move.
Optimus walked up to him. Optimus tried his best to reassure his crude and somewhat faithful follower. “We’ll figure this out; we’ve been in worse situations.”
Rattrap let out an exasperated sigh. “I know, I know. I just wish they would stop coming at us.”
“As do I.” The both of them turned to the doors and walked to the others waiting outside.
The group had been walking for about five minutes when Cheetor noticed the group was missing someponies. “Where are the others, the three that were with us earlier?”
“Ah, they had stuff they had ta do.” Applejack answered. “Fluttershy has animals she takes care of, and Rarity said she had ta get her boutique ready ta open. Although I’m sure she just used that as an excuse to get cleaned up, on account of the landslide we dealt with earlier.”
“Right, and the pink one?”
It was Twilight that answered this time. “She told us not to tell you, she wants it to be a surprise.”
The town had gotten a tad bit more lively and Rhinox noted the stares they were getting. “Twilight, is this town wary of outsiders?”
“No, in fact we welcome visitors better than any other town in Equestria. Why do you ask?”
“We’ve been getting nothing but stares since we left the hospital.” Rhinox turned to a mare that was currently looking over at them. She then quickly looked away and rushed off.
Twilight puzzled over this. She studied the Maximals and realized why they were getting looks. “It’s because you don’t have cutie marks.”
“Cutie whats?” Rattrap piped up.
Twilight was Just about to explain the concept when she was interrupted by an approaching voice. “Twilight!”
Twilight turned to see a familiar purple dragon running up to her. “Spike, you’re up early.”
Spike stopped running and crouched claws on his knees panting. “Where-gasp-were you? I’ve been looking-” But his attention was drawn to the maximals. “Who are they?”
“Oh right.” Twilight side stepped to keep from obstructing any ones view. “These are the maximals. Optimus Primal, Rhinox, Rattrap, Cheetor, Silverbolt and Blackarachnia.” She pointed a hoof at each one as she said their names. Then she motioned to her assistant as she addressed the maximals. “And this is my assistant Spike.”
Blackarachnia stared at the creature. “What is he? A talking lizard?”
“I’m a Dragon.”
Cheetor turned to Silverbolt. “Winged horses, talking unicorns, and now dragons? This place just gets weirder by the minute.”
“Said the alien robot shape shifter.” Rainbow Dash countered.
“Spike huh.” Rattrap slowly approached the baby dragon slowly. “Nah, he’s not wearing a hard hat.” This got a chuckle from some of the maximals.
Spike contorted his face in confusion. “What does a hard hat have to do with-” Spike shook his head, remembering what he came to tell Twilight. “That’s not important now. Twilight, Early Edition the paper colt just told me there was a giant dragon at the edge of town.”
“Dragon?” Optimus whispered, loud enough for only the maximals to hear.
“Is that all? I thought it was something horrible.” Rainbow Dash said with a tone that one couldn’t tell if she was being honest or sarcastic.
“Huh, what was it doing?” Twilight asked her assistant.
“I dunno, EE didn’t say. I just knew I had to find you.”
“Well we’ll have to see what he wants, before he starts a panic. Come on girls.” She then headed off in the direction Spike directed her, followed closely by Dash and Applejack. She momentarily paused to call to the maximals. “We’ll continue the tour later.”
“Optimus, you don’t think Megatron survived do you?” Cheetor asked his leader.
“How could he? He was outside the shuttle.” Rattrap countered.
“Megatron surviving would be the first normal thing to happen today.” Blackarachnia brought up an excellent point.
Optimus turned to look at his crew. “Megatron or not, we had better follow them just in case.”