[Before the end of The Great War]

[Location: Archival Outpost, 5.86 Kleps from the Autobot Capitol City-State of Protihex]


Slightly distraught from a long, news-less day, the dutiful Longarm took a seat at his Data Terminal, ending his 5-Cycle break. He resumed his lonely job as an informational archivist and continued to hesitantly monitor the day's situation as he was 5 cycles earlier, along with just a few other comrades performing the same duty.

"Conflict continues to steadily rise along border of Yuss."

"Decepticon front pushes in on border edge forcefully."

"3 registered Autobot soldiers and 5 unidentified Autobots struck from aggressive Decepticon charge."

"Barrier-Generator X71 attacked."

"Barrier-Generator X71 offline."

Longarm sighed.

"Cliffjumper," he hollered. "The Decepticons are about to push through the border. It looks like they're coming our way."

Cliffjumper stood up from his Data Terminal and approached Longarm from behind, looking over his shoulder at his screen. "Pull up the border camera drone."

Longarm obeyed, typing in commands and selecting options with his agile fingers.

On screen, the camera showed that the immense, pykline-adamant walls of the border just 80 Kleps from where they were, were in pieces. Ravenous, sinister figures and vehicles paraded through the ruins of a section of the border, passing through to the other side.

There was a sudden loud blast from the audio playback on the Data Terminal and the screen switched out. The drone had gone offline.

Cliffjumper stroked his chin. "...huh."

"What should we do?"

"Eh, we're fine I guess. This is the Autobot capitol that it looks like they're heading for. We've got plenty of backup..." Cliffjumper raised his voice. "Everybody, forward alerts to the Cybertronian Council! The Decepticons are heading for Protihex!"

Quietly, they obeyed.


After several cycles of intense silence and pondering, not to mention nervousness, disaster struck.

The entire building shook in shock from an extremely loud noise from nearby, startling the six or seven occupants of the Archival Outpost including Longarm and Cliffjumper.

There was a micro-cycle of silence, followed by the rise in volume of a continuing disturbance coming form the city they were just Kleps away from...they could hear people. People screaming.

Right then and there, a circuit-curdling message appeared on-screen.

"Protihex's defenses breached."

Without a word, everybody inside the outpost stood up form their seats and ran out of the building in fear, eager to see what was happening. They exited the outpost and out into the open yard of the station to see airships and smaller Cybertronian aircraft zooming to-and-fro in the distance. This was bad. Everybody knew that only one side had the advantage of air.

And if this wasn't worse enough, Longarm identified one of the airships--it was a big, fearsome, imposing battleship that was slowly creeping up on the horizon--"That's The Nemesis!"

The lowly Data Archivists transformed into their vehicle modes and drove up the nearby hill up to the viewing platform for a better look at the city. Longarm nervously converted into his Cargo-Transport vehicle mode and followed.

As they transformed back into their humanoid forms and looked on at their capitol city in horror, everybody knew that this war had to come to an end soon.

Protihex was in flames.