A/N: Well, here you go. The last little bit. We actually finished writing this months ago—and it's been a real trip to re-read it bit by bit as we post. It was a wild collaboration experience—ups and downs and *facepalm* 'I forgot we already did that's and such, but we had so much fun, we really didn't want to say goodbye to writing it, even though both of us have moved on with other projects (which, maybe I'll actually start posting here? I don't know. Lots of robot kissing and stuff….:C ) Anyway, thanks for reading our silly little collaboration fic, and we hope you had fun.

[***]

Barricade cursed as loudly as he dared when he pulled the last length of detcord from its holder in his wheelwell. This fuse…was way too short. There was no way his tiny pro-pack could get him out of the blast zone in time. Slag. Another plan gone to pieces on him. From now on: no more plans. He was done with plans. A nice quiet life for him. Maybe Starscream would let him retire on some distant planet where he could scare the locals and live the easy life and never be depended on for a plan again. Or would pay for him to have a nice berth in the Robot Home for the Very, Very Nervous.

Who the slag was he kidding? He was going to die. The det cord was that short. It was pathetic to even try to get away, but he knew he would. He wasn't an Autobot—if there was a 1/1,000 chance he'd survive by turning his aft and bolting? He had no shame.

And he had to do it: he'd given his word. What good would all his griping be about everyone else letting him down if he at the very end did the same? He hoped they'd remember him, like…at all.

Then again, he hoped they'd forget huge parts of him. Like…most of it really.

Slag. This was getting him nowhere but depressed.

He set the Neptunium in place and broke the chem fuse.

[***]

The explosion bored a violent hole through the deck of the hangar bay, directing the concussive force of the chemical explosion in a vicious cone. It caught Megatron squarely in the body, Optimus falling back from the force, Mindwipe on top of him. The violent decompression tore a wider hole in the ship, popping out rivets as the pressure sliced its way along assembly seams. Soundwave clutched his cassettes, racing backwards toward the shipside airlock door on awkwardly groundbound feet. Mindwipe was on his own.

"Problem?" Hook snapped over the shipside intercom.

"Someone's blown a hole in the deck!" Soundwave cursed. "Autobot resistance. It makes sense they would come after their leader. I knew Megatron was wasting too much time!"

"Megatron's status?"

"Unlikely to be functional. The hangar bay is tearing itself apart from the explosive pressure."

Hook merely grunted in reply. "The Neptunium's safe enough in the hold. If it was going to blow, would have blown by now." Normally, Soundwave respected Hook's blandness, but this was a bit…much. Then again, he hadn't just seen a greenish fury of an explosion tear his leader's chassis in half. And nearly lost his own life in the process. His collector panels trembled from the rush of cybadrenaline.

"Megatron is…offline," he said, his voice awed. That nameless Autobot assassin had done the impossible. Killed Megatron. And this time, there was no putting him back together.

[***]

Barricade pushed off the plate of the belly of the hull, as though the extra boost from his leg servos would make the difference between life and death. Stupid. Still, he tried, and blasted the throttles wide open on his propack, aiming simply….away. He flew on his back, watching the hull recede, not fast enough, not small enough yet as the chrono clicked down the time he had before the det blew.

Oh frag is this what dying feels like? He thought, numbly. Time seemed to stretch, the hull drawing away seemingly by inches instead of yards per precious klik, and then he saw a green explosion blossom from the hole he'd bored in the plating, to direct as much of the blast upward as possible. It wasn't enough. Even with the hangar being fully pressurized, it wasn't enough to contain the explosion. Frag.

The green rays from the detonation stretched toward him. He could SEE the concussion wave forming behind the light, pushing more and more along with it, getting more and more force and power as it rolled to him. When that hits, he thought, it is all over. That is your death rolling at you.

He tried really hard not to blank his optics in fear.

A blaze of pain hit his left side, and his stabilizers spun in a sickening dance, trying to reorient him. By the time his sensor grid popped on line again, he was shaking. Dead?

Not quite.

"I swear to Primus," he said, weakly, "If you save my life one more time, copter, I am going to kill you."

[****]

"So," Starscream said, to the Decepticon forces ranged around the hull of the once great Autobot ship. "As your new leader." He paused, looked around nervously, as if expecting someone to show up and shoot him. Thundercracker cocked his head at him. "As your new leader, I hereby order an immediate cessation of action in this sector. There is nothing for us on that putrid blue ball called Earth. Nothing, certainly, worth the lives and pain of true Decepticons. The Autobots can have their 'Earth'. We shall find another dominion. One worth fighting for." He was, he thought, a natural at stirring speeches. He resolved to give them more often.

"How did it happen?" someone called from the crowd. Ah yes. Starscream had a cover story for that. It was more than Megatron would have done for him, but he had resolved—honor, he told himself—to give Megatron a hero's death.

"Megatron had apparently been fighting for control of the ship against Optimus. The Autobot was losing, badly. Of course." He restrained himself, somehow, from rolling his remaining optic. "And unbeknownst," he paused, so that they could admire the word choice, "to our intelligence," he paused again to shoot a look at Soundwave, "Optimus had installed a cortical bomb, just like we bear."

It made more sense and required less cover up than the truth. An Autobot assassin would require a vengeance mission. And the only two mechs qualified to interpret the data of the explosion were Soundwave and Barricade. It might behoove Starscream (he paused again to admire the vocabulary of even his inner monologue) to publicy ensure that former. "Is that not correct?" He smiled at Soundwave. Beside him, Barricade leaned against the comm pillar, sensorblocked to the point where he couldn't even spell pain, much less feel it. Barricade smiled goofily back at him.

Soundwave fluttered his panels self importantly. "Yes. Examination shows that the explosion emanated from Optimus Prime's cortex. Which is why," he hesitated, then plunged gamely on with the rest of their fabrication, "there is no body."

The real reason there was no body, of course, was the elaborate cover up: Thundercracker had shoved Optimus in one of the remaining CR rescue pods and dropped it with the others as just another bit of space junk. Only this time, it was operational, unlike the other pods whose power cores had been killed by the EMP burst. Starscream had decided, in his first heady rush of executive decision-making, that if they did finish off the Autobot, the other Autobots might decide they needed to retaliate. He was done with retaliations. Done with the ceaseless petty back and forth. They would find their leader, when they came to rescue, as well as could be expected. And with a message from all of them. It was over. It is done. Let us leave. Have your peace. Let us have ours.

Starscream didn't expect peace at all, though. There was conquest to be had, and an army ripe for it ranged before him. The Autobots would suffer more, he thought, as they tried to hammer their swords back into plowshares (or whatever that human expression was—and a clear sign they needed to vacate this system when their idiot euphemisms crept into the great leader's cortex uninvited!). Especially Ironhide.

"So…what do we do?"

"Anything we want," Starscream said. "We have the entire universe before us. We fear no one. I have led us before in Megatron's absence. I shall lead us again, this time to victory."

"Victory," Skystalker snapped. The small plane was irate that Mindwipe had been damaged—he had taken the worst of the blast, had, in a sense that would sicken him, shielded Optimus with his own frame. Mindwipe was in heavy regen in the ship's med bay, Hook whistling happily as he worked. And if Hook was happy, things were going well. "Where the slag is victory?"

Starscream's smile took on an edge. "Ah. While these Autobots and their leadership engage themselves accommodating to the humans," he heard Barricade's disgusted snort, which sent a surge of reassurance through his own spark—they had come through, they had survived, "Cybertron lies but weakly defended."