K-Bomb Regen (Derailment)

“Don’t be an idiot, Rampage,” came Blackarachnia from the floor. She pulled herself to her feet, using the railing. “If we could just make core bombs, don’t you think we would have? They’re useless unless hardwired into a living spark.”

“You think I don’t know that?” he demanded. His missile launcher clattered to the grated floor of the catwalk. Then, like something from a horror vid, he plunged his clawed fingers deep into his chest and pulled back his own carapace. The pain must have been incredible, but other than a long grunt of exertion and a slight, twisting grimace in his vertical vocoder, there was no sign of it. After several long nanokliks, his spark was visible. It seemed somehow larger than most, not that Ro-Tor had seen many exposed sparks. Into his chest cavity he shoved the core bomb, and this time it elicit a howl of pain. Nonetheless, he pressed on, using both hands to shove the foreign object into himself. Ro-Tor found himself wincing in sympathetic pain. With one last mighty thrust, Rampage managed to lodge the bomb next to his spark. As soon as he withdrew his hands, the chest healed around the wound. Ro-Tor’s faceplate dropped in astonishment. Rampage looked up at him and winked. “Till all are one, eh, kid?”

[...]

Rampage’s head jerked up. “This.” He pounded on his chest, feeling the core bomb he’d roughly forced to interface with his unique spark. It failed to catch. Imperious looked confused, and then, for a fraction of a nanoklik, took on a faraway gaze, as if he were
accessing some distant piece of information or, more probably, reviewing the Grand Mal security footage. Understanding dawned, and Rampage’s vertical maw turned into its loose approximation of a smirk. He pounded his chest again and—

V Plus 4.19 Solar Cycles
Outside the Grand Mal, Nova Cronum

The light from the explosion seared his optics as Magmatron felt the shockwave beneath his clawed feet. The Grand Mal detonated with a furious blast, the kind of blast that split the heavens, the kind of blast that later generations would incorporate into their mythologies. It obliterated any with the misfortune of being too close, though fortunately—if that was the word—the dense screen of Vehicons meant that most who were near enough to be instantly killed would have already been assimilated. Those in the optimal firing zone were lifted up and thrown violently backwards, which caused no shortage of fatalities and knocked thousands Maximals, Predacons, Micromasters, and Vehicons prone.

Scrambling to his feet, he saw burning debris plunge like meteors among the fallen. “Beast mode,” he said, splitting into his trifurcated form. His winged self, Skysaur, flew high into the air, scanning for particularly dangerous chunks and blasting them with his missiles. Seasaur and Landsaur hunted separately for survivors, digging through rubble and dragging wounded bots to safety.

[...]

“No, thasnotit. Rampage, I mean, I know he's dead, right, nothing could survive that explosion, but jus gettin used to the idea, you know? He always seemed unkillable, and not jus because of the percenter thingie.”

“Yep,” asked Snapper. “But, you know, core bomb. In his chest. Drawing power from his own mutant spark. You’re an engineer. Some things are just, you know, impossible.” Crazybolt thought it over. “Yeah, I guess.” He raised his engex. “To Rampage.”

[...]

Their first act, at least, which passed 13-2, was to declare today,
25 solar cycles since the destruction of the Grand Mal, Stellar Cycle 6.4.15 of the Grand
Uprising, to be Unity Day, and a planet-wide holiday henceforth.

[...]


U Plus 57 Solar Cycles
The Depths of Rodimus’ Folly

In the blackened depths of the cold, irradiated hellscape of the now second-largest crater on Cybertron there was a faint stirring. Molecules irrevocably quantum-entangled began to resonate, to draw closer to one another.

The process was slow, the tiny motes of matter were almost lost among the drifting particles that were the byproduct of the destructive energies that caused the crater. Atom by atom, molecule by molecule, they began to coalesce.
Slowly but surely they came together into the only shape the universe would allow. It began with the tip of a metal spike, a spike that became a claw. The claw attached to a hand, which was assembled tendon by tendon, before shuffling sideways through the
debris and connecting itself to the arm that had formed simultaneously.

Internal organs were fashioned, endoframe, exoframe, cranial structure, neural network, until, finally, the creature's newly forged optics opened. It staggered to its large, clawed feet, feeling the rush of data as sensory systems booted up.

When consciousness inevitably, tragically, returned, it fell to its knees, and cast its mandibled head back and gave a howl of sheer and utter agony that it had been cheated out of a death it had so richly deserved. The scream went on and on, until its vocoder was
shredded, until the sound lost whatever paltry meaning it had. After many long cycles it stopped. The instant the wail ceased, it felt the slight scratching that indicated the traitorous vocoder had begun to heal. Then, awash in fatalism, it shifted to decapodian form for the first time and began the long, painful climb from the impossible depths, ascending towards the distant light.