Echoes from the Void (Self Insert Multicross)

[BlitzKrieg-T1]

Lights danced in front of my vision, a swirling corona that never seemed to stop.

It was beautiful. Just what I expected the entrance to the Allspark to be like. A kaleidoscope of colors never seeming to end that welcomes me to the Cybertronian afterlife. All the while, memories from my past flow through my head like water.

My first death, then waking up as Soundwave in Transformers: Prime.

Reawakening Ravage and Rumble.

Discovering I was a triple-changer and restoring my war-frame into a new version.

Decoding the Iacon Database and securing many of the relics into the Harbinger.

Helping Arcee kill Airachnid.

Optimus welcoming me into the Autobots.

Megatron calling me a traitor at the center of the earth and shooting me in the chest.

Joining the Autobots fully and returning Optimus' memories.

So many other memories after that, from crash landing on Griffin Rock and helping out with the Rescue Bots, to finding out I can use the Forge of Solus Prime and the Star Saber, to learning how to use Ember magic under Alpha Trion himself. And then, at the final battle, killing Megatron with the Star Saber.

Then the reconstruction of Cybertron began, along with Shockwave's army.

Unicron's one last attempt to kill us all.

I was so focused on the passing memories that I didn't even notice when things got… weird.

Something grabbed me.

Not in any sense of a physical touch though. It felt like someone reached out and grabbed onto my soul itself. It was gentle though, so I wasn't worried. Perhaps Primus wanted to find out how a half-human spark got into the Well.

Muddled and muted voices rang out around me. Two of them. They seemed to be speaking about something

A few moments later, a gasp escaped me, as I suddenly felt everything again.

My optics quickly onlined, but to my confusion, all I could see around me was a black void.

Nothing but inky darkness stretched out around me as far as the optic could see. Even looking around proved fruitless, because everywhere I looked, there was nothing but black in my vision, with a few star-like lights very far off in the distance.

After a few moments to observe my surroundings, there was a question or two rattling around in my helm as I gazed around at the seemingly endless depths.

One was whether or not I was standing or floating?

Experimentally, I raised one pede and stomped the floor lightly, but to my confusion, there was only a faint noise as my pede hit the… ground.

Weird.

The last thing I remember was…

My death.

I knew I died. I felt everything from my internal mechanisms stuttering to a halt to the feeling of my own spark fizzling out.

…If this really is what the Allspark looks like, it's a lot more boring than I anticipated.

The only thing I could really do was voice my confusion.

"Where the hell am I?"

I received no answer, my voice seeming to just fizzle out about three feet from my body.

"Hello? Primus? I think you forgot to turn the lights on in the afterlife!"

I still received no answer, so I decided to scope out the area and see if there was anything hidden by the inky blackness that seemed to permeate my vision.

I spun in a circle, then after completing around four turns, picked a random direction and started walking.

After a minute of seemingly going nowhere, the walk became a jog, and soon after that, the jog became a sprint. Panic boiled up in my chest as I skidded to a stop. I staggered around looking in every conceivable direction, optics wild as I tried to see anything in this void I was stuck in.

"What is this place!?" I exclaimed.

I spun in a circle again, optics flicking about everywhere to see something, anything, but as far as I could see there was nothing.

"Is this purgatory?" I questioned.

My optics could pick nothing out in the void besides the far off stars, and I spun in multiple circles until I just started ranting.

"Is this because I was inserted into Soundwave all those years ago? Is the combination of a human soul and Cybertronian spark not allowed in the Allspark? Is this my punishment for replacing that silent mech?"

I was met with nothing but silence.

"Am I just supposed to just exist here for the rest of existence slowly succumbing to this void UNTIL I CLAW MY OWN OPTICS OUT IN A FIT OF MADNESS!?"

Nothing.

"SOMEONE ANSWER ME!"

I received no answer.

There was nothing but the eerie silence of the void surrounding me.

My legs seemed to quiver and give out on me, and I slowly sank to the ground, wrapping my arms around my shins as I glanced in every direction.

After a minute of trying to spot anything around me, I ran a servo over my helm and through my hair to try to calm myself…

All of my thoughts ground to a halt as I processed the information my servo just supplied me with.

Hair?

That's impossible, I'm a Cybertronian. We don't have hair, like humans have. Or like I used to have, at least.

But sure enough, after an experimental tug and a small twinge of pain, I realized I had hair again, raven black locks with reddish tips of real hair that went down to my shoulders. Then I noticed that instead of Cybernite, my arm was flesh and bone. After a cursory examination, I appeared to be in an altered version of my holoform, but I'd need a mirror to be sure of it.

My hands gently glided across my body, feeling soft flesh where there was once hard Cybernite for years, drawing a nostalgic smile to my face as I remembered my old body from before I died the first time. But this one was different. I felt taller, stronger, faster, like everything that dragged me down in my old human body was just… absent.

Then I decided to check if I was anatomically accurate.

The results were… shocking… to say the least.

"Sweet Primus, I don't remember it being that big..." I muttered as I zipped the black jeans I was wearing back up.

Oh yeah, I was wearing clothes too. It essentially looked like what I would be wearing if I was a human.

A black cloak hung over my shoulders with an attached hood. A gray shirt with gray pants covered my torso and legs. Black combat boots covered my feet, and I found a pair of gray gloves in one of my pockets. Interestingly, there were black and red armor pieces covering my body as well, not too different from where the placement was on my Cybertronian body.

A bit strange for me to be a human, though. I haven't been one for about six stellar cycles now. It was also a bit weird to not have my Hud in my vision as well.

Suddenly, a new light popped up in my vision, closer than the other ones, and different in shape.

I felt an urge to move closer to it, not malicious in nature, but more of a gentle nudge in its direction.

With nothing better to do than look at my new body and catalog the differences between my old and new one, I started walking. As I walked, I noticed that the light was actually in the shape of a rectangle, almost like the door that Gman used when he left Freeman in stasis.

After about two minutes, I finally made it to the light door. It was exactly the same as what Gman used, which meant it was some sort of portal. Experimentally, I tried to poke it, but my finger disappeared into it. I quickly pulled my finger back out, and one brief examination later, I determined that it was safe for my use.

"Hmm. I guess this is the only way to go then." I muttered to myself, glancing around and seeing nothing but the same inky black void and far off stars.

Taking a moment to gather my courage, I took a deep breath, exhaled, then stepped through.

My vision went white, and I lost consciousness.

---

AN: This is the sequel to my first story, so if you haven't read that check it out if you get a chance.

 

[BlitzKrieg-T1]

The sun rose over a wide valley, its rays of light causing the alien forest within to slowly awaken.

Warmed by the sun's first rays, bird-like avians chirped and trilled from the canopy, ruffling their feathers and sunning themselves further before they began their days of foraging for insects and small lizards. A small herd of deer-like animals the size of horses began to graze on the grass in a small clearing to enjoy the warmth of the light, while a pack of canine's the size of grizzlies prowled the undergrowth, looking for prey to fill their stomachs.

A peaceful existence, in an ecosystem totally alien to earths, but similar in so many ways.

However, many of the animals went completely silent, ran, or hid deeper in the forest as gunshots echoed from over a hill, followed by the sounds of intermittent screaming, which was cut off by more gunfire. After a minute of silence, multiple sets of heavy, metallic footsteps thudded into the clearing, revealing a man in a suit of gray-plated power armor wielding a large assault rifle, followed by twenty-four other men in blue colored power armor of the same model.

A few moments later, an assortment of troops and vehicles came into the clearing as well, stopping just behind them.

There were twelve larger power armored troops armed with high-velocity grenade launchers called Marauders, eight large transforming walkers with gatling guns for arms called Vikings, seven smaller power armor suits with red crosses on their pauldrons known as Medic units, six hovering units duel-wielding a pair of large pistols called Reapers, and eight small buggies with flamethrowers on top of their roofs called Hellions.

As they joined the other men, it was easy to tell that they were all a part of Raynor's Raiders, because all of their blue paint jobs matched.

"Jim to Hyperion. Matt, are we close to this artifact or what?" The man in the gray armor asked as his eyes, aided by the high-tech optics of the power armor, trailed over the tree line. "We just ran into another Dominion patrol that's out here while we're looking for this thing."

"Hyperion to Raynor. I hear you, Jim. According to scans you're about a half a mile or so from where the dig site is. I'd hurry, though, the signal has only gotten stronger in the last ten minutes, so the Dominion may have unearthed it already." Matt Horner, the captain of the Hyperion, responded.

"Got it, Raynor out."

Jim gestured to the group, and they started walking, rolling and hovering forward. As they moved through the woods, one of the soldiers in a more decorated suit and wielding a large chain gun walked up beside Raynor. The front of the helmet rose up, and a small cloud of cigar smoke floated out, revealing the scarred, shaven face of one of Jim's old friends, Tychus Findlay.

"So, Jimmy." Tychus began, pulling the cigar out of his mouth and letting out a puff of smoke, before placing it back between his lips. "Why exactly are we doing this again? I know this ain't one of my Moebius contracts."

Behind his face shield, Jim sighed, then opened his own helmet, and stared at his friend with half-lidded eyes.

"We've been down here for an hour and a half and you're just now asking me that, Tychus?" Jim replied flatly.

The other man shrugged with a good-natured grin. "You know me, Jimmy. I never paid much attention to them mission briefings. I just like to shoot stuff."

Jim rolled his eyes at that, remembering how gung-ho his friend was back when they were younger. "We're looking for something that's giving off a distress signal that's never been seen before. Not Dominion, not Confederate, not UED, and not Protoss either. This is something that's totally new."

"If it's something we ain't ever seen before, it'll probably be worth a pretty penny on the black market, then."

"Probably, but let's see what it is before we start throwing price tags at it."

The two men walked out into a clearing, and then immediately ducked back into the tree line. The large clearing they had briefly entered was a Dominion dig site, which was crawling with forty Marines, twelve Firebats, ten Reapers, eight Hellions, four Vikings, and even a pair of Siege Tanks. Dominion SCV's could be seen floating around a large, twenty-foot meteorite that was in the process of being lifted out of its crater.

The meteorite was dark brown in color, with strange blue veins covering its surface. The crater also had the same blue veins in it, but there were also large blue crystals that were slowly but visibly growing from the blue veins on the ground. They looked somewhat similar to Minerals, and even with all the noise coming from the machinery around them, Jim could hear a faint pulsing noise coming from them.

They set the meteor down next to a large blocky machine. It was a bit taller than the meteor, and it had a large pair of needle-like prongs aimed right at it. It looked like a prototype of something, but of what, Jim didn't know. He did know one thing though, if the Dominion got their claws into whatever was in this meteor, fighting them could become a lot harder than normal.

"You ready, Tychus?" Jim asked as he checked the magazine on his rifle.

The ex-convict chuckled, hefting his minigun in the process. "You know me Jimmy, I'm always ready for a fight." His helmet slammed closed, and Jim gestured forwards to all of the troops.

Four of the Vikings transformed to jet mode and shot out of the woods, the mere sight of them distracting the Dominion forces, who all raised their weapons to try and shoot the jets down.

"Shoot down those Vikings!" One of the Dominion Marines shouted.

The rest of the group charged out of the bushes, Raynor and Findlay in the lead, while the Hellions and Reapers flanked around the sides. The dig site quickly became a battleground, as both sides slammed into each other in a mess of bullets, blood and metal.

"Bring those Dominion bastards down!" Raynor ordered, spraying bullets into a charging squad of Marines.

Grenades flew through the air, and two of the Vikings fell silent as the combined explosives cracked their cockpits open, making the mechs grind to a halt. One of the Raider Vikings transformed and skidded to a stop, before opening fire on the Dominion troops. Troopers fell to gunfire on both sides, but it was clear that the tide was slowly beginning to shift. Raynor's side was going to come out on top in the end.

The four Vikings in the air fired salvos of missiles into the Siege Tanks, blasting apart the whole turret of one, and blowing apart one of the tracks of the other. A few Marauders fired at the already damaged tanks, and the two tracked vehicles exploded in a fiery inferno. The biggest threat had been taken out, but there was no time to celebrate, for the battle was still to be won.

"Just like old times, eh Jimmy?" Tychus asked as he sprayed bullets into a nearby Dominion Firebat.

"Just like old times." Raynor replied as he lobbed a grenade at a group of Dominion Marines.

In the heat of the battle, while Jim was focused on shooting at a squad of Marines, the last Dominion Viking, having lost one gun arm and the other one's barrels being dented from a previous explosion, limped until he had Raynor in his sights. He disengaged and overrode all of his safeties, then tried to fire off a full salvo of missiles at the man, intending for there to be nothing left of him to be buried.

"Raynor! Look out!" One of the Marines shouted, firing at the cockpit of the Dominion Viking.

The Viking pilot flinched, and the whole mech flinched in turn, making the missiles misfire all over the battleground. The salvo of missiles slammed into the ground and exploded, cutting down Dominion and Raider alike, until one of them hit the meteorite itself. A small pulse of energy pushed out from the meteorite, making everything technological glitch for a moment and making the fight come to a screeching halt.

Both Raider and Dominion troops stared in concern and a little bit of curiosity at the meteor as the blue veins running across the surface of it started to pulse, almost like a heartbeat.

"Pull back!" Raynor ordered. "Vikings, get out of the air, now!"

The Raiders retreated, while the Dominion rushed forwards, trying to stop the meteor from whatever it was doing. The pulsing became brighter and faster, and the Dominion scrambled to activate the machine that was next to it. But just before the prongs of the machine could pierce into the rock, a massive dome of energy surged from the meteor, frying anything electrical that was close to it.

The Dominion troops who were inside machines at that point were electrocuted by their own vehicles, while the Marine's life support system glitched out and shocked their hearts until they popped. Further out, everyone was knocked off their feet, systems malfunctioning from the surge of energy flooding into the sensitive electronics of their tech.

After a few moments of the dome warbling, the energy subsided. The dome dissipated into nothing, leaving silence in its wake.

…For about ten seconds.

"Ah, hell." Jim groaned as he rolled onto his stomach.

He struggled to his feet, suit glitching and jerking slightly as multiple warnings flashed across his screen. Once Jim was standing up, he realized that his suit was overcharged on energy, to the point that his power core was reading at 110% power. Thankfully, he was overall fine, if not a little tingly all over from the energy pulse.

"Alright, who's not dead?" Jim called out.

"Mother of god." Tychus groaned as he slowly propped himself upon a fallen tree. "What the hell was that, Jim?"

"Looks like the Dominion accidentally killed themselves." One of the Viking pilots said as he walked over.

"I guess they did. Status report, Jacobs." Jim ordered.

The Viking pilot crossed his arms. "Well, my rig is fine, and the others said that theirs were as well. The only problem, if you can call it that, is the excess energy that our power cores have in them. That and a few minor subsystems are glitching every once in a while, and some are even fried. Some of the circuits on a Viking just aren't built to handle that much power running through them. And they're rated to survive lightning strikes."

"So, we're having the opposite of a power drain problem here?" One of the Marines asked as he limped over, one leg dragging behind and twitching every few seconds.

"Swann ain't gonna like this." A nearby Marauder commented.

"He'll have us by the balls with his wrench hand if we come back empty-handed like this, I just know he will." A Reaper remarked as he hobbled over, his massive jetpack offline for the moment.

"Let's just make sure that that meteor is still in one piece, alright?" Jim said.

Once they had gotten their bearings once more, the group of Raiders made their way to the dig site. When they saw that the meteor had cracked in half, many in the group started to grumble about not finding anything interesting. While some of the others went to work salvaging some munitions from the fallen soldiers and buildings, Jim, Tychus and a few Marines took a closer look at the meteor and found not much of interest besides the blue crystals.

That was, at least, until one of the Marines shined a light into the large crack splitting the meteor in two.

"AAHH!" The Marine screamed, flailing backwards onto his rear and scampering back from the crack.

"Mitchell, what the hell did you see, man?" Another Marine asked.

"There's a face in there!" He replied, pointing to the crack.

Sure enough, when Jim shined his own lights into the crack, he saw a youthful human face with their eyes closed.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph, who is that guy?" Tychus asked.

"The source of the signal." Jim replied.

–

Once they got him to the med bay, they started discovering some rather… strange things about their new passenger.

First was his clothing. He wore a strange set of black and red armor on his body, along with a black cloak over a set of gray pants and a shirt of the same color. The armor was the most interesting part about his loadout, because it was a different style to anything anyone on the ship had ever seen. Next was his age, which they couldn't pin down, but they at least knew he was somewhere in his early twenties, thanks to facial scans. But other than that, they had no clue.

At first, they thought the man was fully human, but when they weighed him, he turned out to be 345 lbs. They ended up recalibrating the scale three times, but every time the results came back, his weight was always around a hundred and fifty pounds heavier than he looked, even for his height of 6'6. Eventually the doctor threw his hands up in frustration and brought their resident scientist in to see if he could figure out their patient.

"Well, sir. I can absolutely, with no doubt in my mind tell you, that this guy isn't Terran, Zerg, or Protoss." Egon Stetmann, the lead scientist on the Hyperion, reported to Jim as he walked up.

The man had been relocated to the laboratory for observation, and so Stetmann had access to all of his own tech as well. Jim could see a small iv in the man's arm, which was attached to a bag of a blue glowing liquid.

"Well, the latter two is a relief, more so the middle one, but have you figured out anything else?" Jim asked.

"I have. It was actually a little frustrating at first, but eventually I took an industrial scanner to him instead of a medical scanner, and what I saw was actually pretty interesting. But first, the crystals."

Stetmann walked over to one of the many crystals that they had gathered from the crash site, then pulled up a report from his tablet that overlaid the large crystal in the corner of the room. Jim followed, and scratched his chin in thought as Stetmann started his report.

"These crystals have some sort of unknown chemical makeup. They're nothing like Minerals or Vespene or even those relay crystals that the Protoss have, and I'm pretty sure that if we try to melt them down, they'll explode. But what got me was the readings that I got from both of them. Both these crystals, and that guy, give off the same energy signature, but the guy's is sharper. Which means that there must be some way that these crystals can be refined, but what use they would have inside a 'normal' human I'd have no clue. But if we could refine them into fuel, it'd be incredible."

"And why should we use these crystals as fuel other than them being 'incredible'?" Jim asked.

Stetmann gestured to a table next to him, where a piece of crystal about the length and width of Jim's arm sat. "The energy readings I'm getting off of just this one is off the scale. Just one of those car-sized ones over there, could potentially run the Hyperion for two weeks if we could refine them."

"How are these things so energy dense?"

"I know you hate to hear it, especially from me, but I honestly have no clue. These crystals by all logic should combust as soon as they form, but from what I've scanned, there's some sort of almost artificial molecular lattice holding the crystal itself all together. What I find fascinating about them, though, is the fact that they glow in the dark, and let out a pulsing hum almost constantly. It's almost like the energy itself is alive."

"So, what about the guy in the bed?" Jim asked, gesturing over at the strange human. "You said he had the same type of energy inside him?"

"I'm getting to that." Stetmann pulled up another report, which hovered over the unconscious body. "Well, you know how they had to recalibrate the weight scale like three times before they gave up? Turns out there's actually a reason he's around a hundred pounds heavier than how he looks. Here, check out his arms, and you'll see what I mean."

Stetmann walked over to a terminal and opened a file. A 3D model of the man's form popped up, and Jim focused on the arms.

"Are those… weapons?"

"Yep. This guy is apparently a cyborg, but I have no clue what kind of weapons he has, or how seamlessly his cybernetics meshed with his actual body, or even what kind of cybernetics they are." Stetmann gestured to one of the arms in a photo, and not a seam in sight could be seen where there should be. It was almost like he was… born with them.

"This guy just gets more confusing the longer you look at him." Jim muttered.

"That's not all, though. You know how I said he gives off the same energy reading as the crystals? Well, that's because his weapons run off them, but so does his body." Jim raised an eyebrow at the scientist. "I know it sounds weird but trust me on this. Look at this scan of his chest."

Jim looked at the chest on the scan, and one very noticeable organ was missing. "...Where's his heart?"

"That's just it, he doesn't have a heart, literally. That's when I ended up taking an industrial scanner to him instead of a medical one, and… well… He does have some sort of heart, but it's… eh just look."

The report changed to one centered on his chest, and Jim's eyes widened when he saw the pulsing ball of energy at the center of the man's chest. It was a bright ball of pure energy, with crackles of electricity slowly flowing over it almost constantly. There were smaller balls of a much darker color inside it with a larger one at the center, that all clustered together and spread out with a pulsing, beating sound, exactly like a heartbeat.

It was beautiful to look at, and Jim and Stetmann went silent and just stared at it for a few moments.

"Whoa." Jim nearly whispered.

"I know, right. I spent nearly an hour just staring at it when I first did the scan." Stetmann remarked.

Jim looked back at the man in the bed, then his eyes trailed over to the iv in his arm, then to the bag of glowing liquid.

"Stetmann. What exactly is in that iv bag you have connected to him?" Jim asked as he looked back at the scientist.

"Oh, it's the liquid form of these crystals. It's actually how I know they can even be refined. There was a small cube, about the size of an ammo box inside the meteor, and when I popped the top off, it was filled with a liquid that matched the same energy scans as the guy and the crystals. So, I thought the reason that he might still be unconscious is because he's running low on it, and so I started injecting him with a bunch of it to see if he'd finally wake up."

Jim would have responded, if the sound of a weapon powering up behind him didn't stop him right in his tracks. Slowly, Jim raised his arms and turned around, meeting the glowing silver eyes of the man who was pointing a very dangerous looking pair of arm cannons at them both. Stetmann tensed, raising his arms quickly above his head with wide eyes as one cannon was pointed at him.

"Who are you?" The man demanded. "And where the slag am I?"

---

AN: First stop, Starcraft 2. I haven't seen many stories go here, to be honest.

 

[BlitzKrieg-T1]

AN: I'm very sorry about the lack of anything in any of my stories lately. I've been busy writing out a vague outline for a few of them so that I have at least some idea of where I'm going with some of my fics. Not to mention that this chapter in particular has gone through four rewrites.

That and I got a new gaming pc recently so most of my time lately has been spent replaying a bunch of the games in my steam library with better graphics. Plus, I got a few new games, Cyberpunk 2077 and Hogwarts: Legacy, so I've been distracted by them, as well.

Anyway, enjoy the new chapter, and I'll probably have some more coming out soon!

---

Jim would have responded, if the sound of a weapon powering up behind him didn't stop him right in his tracks. Slowly, Jim raised his arms and turned around, meeting the glowing silver eyes of the man who was pointing a very dangerous looking pair of arm cannons at them both. Stetmann tensed, raising his arms quickly above his head with wide eyes as one cannon was pointed at him.

"Who are you?" The man demanded, his eyes seeming to glow brighter as he spoke. "And where the slag am I?"

—
Eleven days later.
—

Waking up somewhere unknown with two people talking about you like you're just a slab of meat is very disconcerting.

I will admit, I may have been a bit hostile at first though. However, considering they had a scan of my internals up on a computer screen, and one of my last memories was of Shockwave monologuing about how I would be a good test subject… Forgive me for thinking that my death and my experience in the void were just hallucinations and that I was about to be experimented on.

However, once they had started to explain about who they were and what they were actually doing with the scan of my insides, the tension relaxed enough that I finally put my cannons away. Said conversation eventually led to me telling an abridged and partially truthful version of the last half-decade or so of my life. Needless to say, my explanation about being an out of time alien that had recently just come out of a millions of years long war had left them nearly speechless.

I also found out what I looked like as well, thanks to a mirror that they gave me.

I looked mostly the same as how my holoform looked when I last used it. Tall, with a lean but muscular build -like an athlete, swimmer, or more relevant, a warrior- with a slightly angular face, harking back to my old helmet with its face-covering visor. But there were a few things that I noticed right off the bat that were different. My shoulder-length raven black hair still had reddish tips, but what really threw me for a loop wasn't anything about my body (besides the… well-endowed part of it.)

Instead, what drew my attention was my eyes.

Instead of a normal-ish color for a human, they were silver with a pure white pupil, and they had a subtle glow to them when the lights were dimmed, illuminating my eyebrows, the tops of my cheeks, and the bridge of my nose. I found that they pulsed brighter when my emotions were heightened, which was pretty cool to be honest.

Another thing that I noticed was that I looked a bit younger, physically around twenty-two or so instead of the mid-thirties that my holoform originally was. And I had also lost the permanent 5 o'clock shadow that my older body always seemed to have, which saddened me slightly because I knew that when I actually was a human years ago, I had both a beard and a mustache.

My height of 6'6 was still the same, something I was happy to keep. However, I weighed quite a bit more than expected thanks to my unique circumstances and physiology. Despite the lean but muscular look I had, which was a result of my millennia of combat and multiple armor changes, I weighed around 290 pounds. Despite not looking at all like I weighed that much.

Most of that weight was taken up by the Cybertronian parts of my body. But I can tell there's some Ember magic fuckery going on as well, because I know for a fact that I should weigh around a hundred to a hundred fifty pounds more than that. Not to mention that when I was unconscious, they weighed me, and I was 345 pounds, which still didn't seem heavy enough. I was expecting to weigh somewhere around 375 to 400 pounds total, thanks to all the metal inside of me, but something is making me weigh much less than what I should, hence my hunch about my Ember.

Another thing is that I don't even know if I have my full bot mode, even though it would be impossible to have an entire twenty-eight foot tall and twenty-ton triple changer body tucked away in this relatively small human form. However, I have discovered that I do have an alt mode in this form. But to my dismay, whenever I try to transform, this error message pops up.

[Error: Transformation locked]
[T-cog acclimating to new data]
[T-cog accessibility ETA: unknown]

…Yeah, that doesn't help much when I don't even know what my current mode is besides… human mode. Hopefully I do actually still have an alternate mode, otherwise I'm gonna take my anger out on the Dominion. I like being a Transformer, damnit!

Anyway, over the course of the hour that Jim, Egon, and I talked, and they introduced themselves, and the ship we were currently on, an inescapable fact began to rattle around in my skull, constantly making itself known to me as I smiled and nodded where applicable.

I wasn't in Transformers: Prime anymore.

Somehow, I was in Starcraft.

More specifically, I've found myself somewhere around the beginning of the sequel game, Starcraft 2. An isometric real-time strategy base builder game. In said game there are three major factions. The first are the humans, known as Terrans, along with two alien races. The first, is the psychically enhanced Protoss, and the other, is the hive-minded Zerg.

And all three of them are on a fast-track to another extremely bloody galactic scale conflict the likes of which will take up whole history books on its own.

Throw in some scheming Xel'naga bastard named Amon, his Protoss worshipers the Tal'darim, and Arcturus Mengsk of the Dominion war crime factory, and this section of space has become just about as dangerous as it can get.

Thankfully, I've got about two or three years before I gotta deal with all that crap involving Amon and the Xel'naga. Plus, I'm a Cybertronian, no matter what I look like, so I think I can come out on top of this with a bit of prep time… hopefully.

In the meantime, however, I found myself employed by Raynor's Raiders two days after I woke up, which was about around a week and a half ago. Yeah, that surprised me when it happened, but I guess I understand them wanting to keep a close eye on the strange man with glowing silver eyes that came out of a slagging meteor and who has built-in energy cannons in his arms and literal tentacles that come out of his abdomen.

I also have a full name now. A name was needed for my medical file, and a military ID chip for myself so that Raider soldiers knew I was on their side in the field. Since I only had two names that I could realistically call myself, Soundwave and Blitzkrieg, I had to make up my own. And so, I did with Ariel's, Jim's and Egon's help.

And now, according to my file, my full name is Blitzkrieg Onyx Ravenclaw, with my first name shortened to Blitz in informal settings, which mostly means Captain Horner calls me by my full name while everyone else doesn't. Surprisingly, my last name wasn't made on my own, it was a suggestion that Stetmann made, which I accepted, since the other two options were Stebins, Starhopper and Collins, none of which would work with the rest of my name.

I did enjoy the Harry Potter books and movies when I was a kid as well, so it was rather nice to remember my human roots. Shame I hadn't watched or read either of them before I died though, so the memories are pretty faded. And yes, I was aware that giving myself the last name of Ravenclaw showed the nerd in me, but thankfully there was no Harry Potter connotation added to the name, probably because a lot of earth culture is lost or just straight up missing to Terrans and Earthlings alike.

Anyway, the job's pay is pretty good, and I get to experiment at my leisure. Plus, I get all rights to the energon on the ship, and the crystals that are still growing on that forest planet that they found me on, where a 'small' outpost was left to oversee its safety. There were a few terms for my employment, however. One of which is that whenever the Raiders completely reassemble that Keystone thing, I have to put down whatever I'm working on and rigorously test the artifact instead to see what all it can do besides mess with Kerrigan and the Zerg.

The other term is that I assist with upgrading the Raiders tech so that they have an edge over the Dominion. I was fully expecting something like that to come up, and since Optimus isn't around to give me the 'humans cannot handle Cybertronian weaponry' lecture, I agreed to the term and got to work. So far, I've implemented a small synthetic energon distiller in the lab to see what tech is compatible with theirs and to keep myself fueled. So far, nothing I've tested is compatible, but I'm working on it.

Speaking of creating stuff, I also found out that my Ember magic has carried over to this new body in a lesser state. It's still plenty powerful, and I still have everything I need to transform (heh) regular metal into Cybernite for experimental use, but it seems to be less combat capable now. And it even takes me more energon to do so as well, but only for combat abilities.

Along with the synthetic energon distiller, I'm also working on designs for a suit of power armor that I can use in case the worst happens, and I'm permanently stuck in my new human form.

It's similar in design to the X-02 power armor to please my inner Fallout fan, although it'll be black with red accents to reflect my own paint job. But there are a few upgrades that I've added to it though, notably, integrated jet propulsion systems allowing for flight, gauntlets that can conduct Ember magic so I can use my power from inside the suit, ports on the abdomen that allow my data cables to come out, and the arm panels and gauntlets can even fold outwards so I can use my own blasters as well as the weapons that are going to be mounted on it. All while being compatible with the standard weaponry that the CMC marines use.

The suit is only in the design stage right now, and that's because of some problems I'm having with the gauntlets conducting my Ember, and a new thing I've discovered about my data cables along with one other reason.

Back on Griffin Rock, I used my data cables to grab the blueprint of Dr. Morocco's Morbots from the machine's chassis. It was as simple -and extremely lucky- as that. But, one week ago, when I did the very same thing to a CMC suit to take its design, millions of nanites flooded from the data cable into the CMC suit, taking everything instead of just directly interfacing with its computers. That confused me for a while, until I figured out just what had happened to me.

Somehow, I had been given a Progenitor Commander's copying ability, albeit much, much lesser in comparison. A later internal scan showed that there was a small nanite hive core in my body, situated where my small intestine would have been, and directly connected to my data cables. As far as I could tell, I could only discharge them from said data cables, and while they could assist with construction, they couldn't build things all on their own.

…Slightly lewd implications of my data cables discharging something aside, the ability really has come in handy in shaping some of the tricker parts of my armor when I needed a physical representation, aided by my Ember magic. Eventually I hope to create a sort of Ember and Cybertronian tech fusion power armor, which I honestly think would be extremely cool, and it also dips into the realm of Magitek.

And I am very glad that I can directly copy things now and get my power armor up and running faster, instead of rooting around endlessly inside a piece of tech and figuring out how it works the long way.

That's because of the simple fact that despite how old I am, and how many millennia I have lived, I have no clue how to build a suit of power armor. I mean, I can build a Super Mode for myself if I were to take a semi-truck mode or something like that in the future, don't get me wrong. But Cybertronians ourselves never needed power armor because we were the power armor.

Super Modes were just additional armor that we added to ourselves that gave us more strength and firepower like Ultra Magnus's or were completely robotic sets of limbs that we slotted into like what Armada Optimus Prime used. And yes, I have seen that sort of Super Mode in action, and it is devastating.

Anyway, between working on my power armor, conversing with Stetmann and Jim, and experimenting, it's been a pretty relaxing time on the ship so far. The most notable in the last week or so was my first meeting with Tychus and Captain Horner. They're pretty cool dudes, but Matt is a bit tightly wound, as is expected for a captain of a ship like the Hyperion. And Tychus, despite being stuck in that CMC suit, is actually a pretty laid-back and funny guy.

I've also met Dr. Ariel Hanson as well. She's a rather pretty lady, and smart enough to deduce that I wasn't a human within a single minute of meeting me. Hanson's presence also allowed me to make a rough estimate of where in the Wings of Liberty campaign I actually was. Unfortunately, I couldn't get an accurate estimate though, but the lack of an old Adjutant in the lab leads me to believe that it's before the mission called The Great Train Robbery.

And I'm pretty sure I saw Zeratul staring at me out of the corner of my eye at one point, which was pretty strange. I hope I haven't offended the guy in some way just by simply existing.

But the strangest thing I've encountered so far isn't anything or anyone on the five-and-a-half-mile long ship that we're all living on.

It's actually a message I found.

Completely unassuming for a message, but what's weird (and mind-numbingly terrifying) is that I found it within my own files.

[Message received]
[Message source: ERROR; message created upon re-activation; data corrupted]

[Greetings, Blitzkrieg.

I'm sure you're wondering how you're alive again, how you ended up in the Starcraft universe, what a few of the new abilities I've given you are for, and most importantly, why you have a human form now.

That will all be explained if you meet my… expectations. So far, you recently reached a milestone, so I will at least tell you who I am, so that you have a name to put to this note.

My name is Noctem. And I suppose you could call me your employer, of sorts.

Impress me further, and I shall tell you more.

Sincerely,

Your benefactor]

[Message end]

…

The shiver that went down my spine when I read His name was like nothing I had ever felt before. It was like something otherworldly and powerful beyond anything I could ever hope to achieve or comprehend, had gazed down upon me for but a fleeting moment. And in that moment, within the confines of my mind, the dots connected, making a fact become known to me.

A fact that I wished with all my spark… wasn't true.

There was a ROB observing me.

ROB. Random Omnipotent Being. Godlike creatures of immense power with untold abilities that pluck willing or unwilling souls from earth and toss them into different universes with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Some just for fun, some as an experiment, and others simply for the sick pleasure of watching someone mentally break down because they lost all their loved ones and are forced to live without them.

I didn't sleep that night, the knowledge that a ROB had directly intervened in my existence taking up all of my thoughts. The questions piled up in my mind, driving me to check over my shoulder whenever I moved, like he was watching me from one of the corners of the room. Merely observing, but with the capability to simply erase my existence whenever he wished.

What did the ROB want with me?

Would he kill me after he'd had his fun?

Or would he leave me alone to live out the rest of my immortal life.

Even as I busied myself in the lab, the questions always sat at the back of my mind like hot, sticky tar, just waiting to come forth whenever I was alone with my thoughts.

"Hey, Blitz. How does this look?" Stetmann asked, drawing my attention to his side of the lab and (thankfully) out of my thoughts.

"This the energon grenade prototype for the Marauder units?" I asked as I walked over from the computer that I was using to finish up the 'final' design of my armor.

"Yep. What do you think?"

"Let me see." I said as I scanned the grenade. "Hmm… Well, you'll need to replace the primer with a plasma substitute, because energon won't ignite from the primer it has right now. And you can reduce the shrapnel and replace it with even more synth-en, because energon has better blast damage than a regular grenade. Other than that, you've done a pretty good job. Are you working on any of the other projects right now?"

"Not really, besides replacing the CMC suit's power source with an energon based one, but that one's very early in progress. Mostly because no one will let me near a suit after I accidentally blew one up with a prototype power core. Any ideas?"

"...You should probably leave the Cybertronian/Terran technology mix to me for right now. I think I could construct a few energon powered engines for you to study and experiment with. You could learn quite a bit from just one of the things without blowing up something we need. Be careful though, energon reacts strangely to human physiology."

"Yeah… I probably shouldn't be messing around with it until I know more about it. So, energon's like Terrazine then?"

"I guess so. I've never encountered the stuff, so I can't tell you if it is or not. But I'll get those engines built for you so you can get to know energon's properties beyond its use as an explosive agent."

"I hope you two aren't going to blow up this lab with your experiments… again." Ariel remarked from the Keystone container.

I chuckled. "Don't worry Dr. Hansen. We'll keep the explosions to a minimum." I replied, turning to the woman, who had an unimpressed expression on her face.

Ariel rolled her eyes, then turned back to the first piece of the Keystone while Stetmann and I went back to our experiments. A few minutes later, Jim walked in.

"How's it going, eggheads." He greeted with a grin.

"Afternoon, Raynor." I replied, then tilted my head and pulled up my internal chronometer. "Ah, good evening, actually. It's seven pm."

"Yeah, you guys have been down here longer than you thought. What have you folks got for me?"

"Well, out of curiosity, I did some tests on the minerals we got from Redstone." Ariel said. "I found trace quantities of Jorium. A rare crystal with some very unique properties."

"What kind of properties are we talking about, Doc?" Jim asked.

"Jorium resonates at the same frequency as certain brain waves. It's been theorized that it could be used to stimulate brain activity or even produce psionic abilities in human test subjects."

"The hell does Tosh want that for?"

"Creepy guy, that Tosh." I commented, drawing everyone's attention to me. I shrugged. "What? The guy creeps me out, and that's saying something considering how old I am. I swear I've heard him muttering to himself sometimes, and my scanners never picked anything up on him that was actively transmitting."

"Tosh is a… acquired taste. He'll be gone sooner or later."

"Hopefully sooner. "I muttered. "Anyway. Stetmann and I have something of note for you."

"Huh? Oh, yeah! By using some of the synthetic energon from the dispenser that Blitz made to refuel himself, we've made a prototype for a new grenade for the Marauder units. Blitz helped me make a few adjustments, and now Marauder units, and eventually all of our explosive units, should have a flat damage and piercing power increase across the board." The young scientist explained.

"I just need to design and build an industrial sized dispenser and we'll be good to go." I added. "However, it'll probably take me months to upscale the design, and that's not counting whatever teething problems the larger distiller will have. So, for now at least, we can only really outfit the Marauders with them."

"I see. Well, the new explosive's will certainly help with our next job at least." Jim said.

"What's the job?" I asked.

"There's a new Dominion salvage operation on Tarsonis. It might be another piece of that artifact." Jim explained, nodding his head at the Keystone fragments hovering at the center of the lab. "There's a bunch of supply trains running without too much security, so we're gonna hit the trains and grab whatever they're transporting."

And with those words, I finally had a more concrete answer as to where in the timeline I was. The mission 'The Great Train Robbery', which is, funnily enough, one of my favorite missions in Wings of Liberty, even if the reward of Diamondback blueprints were a little useless since I never built them after that mission. It'll be interesting to see what an actual battle looks like without the lens of a strategy game over it.

"Do you need me to come down and take a look at whatever it is before we bring it up to the ship?" I asked.

"Nah." Jim replied. "You just stay up here and keep working on giving us better ways to fight the Dominion. I'll let you know if we need ya."

"Alright then."

After a few minutes of conversing with us, Jim left the lab, leaving us to work on our own individual projects. But I had a feeling that I'd end up fighting down there, one way or another.