Five hunter-seeker airships streaked overhead, howling a mix of laughter and war-cries.  Lexius and Terminus stared in horror. The skies above were suddenly filled with Decepticons.  

 No-one had considered the possibility of a Decepticon attack. The Autobot War College had always been well-hidden, and moved frequently.   But somehow, a lost, retreating contingent of  Decepticons, looking for something to take their anger out on, had stumbled upon the secretive encampment.

  They swept in from the skies, firing, preceded by a hail of missiles and photon fire, cutting down student and teacher alike. A dozen Autobots died in the first seconds alone.  The survivors scrambled for shelter in confusion, or took to the skies for a disorderly counterattack.

 Lexius found himself in a kind of shocked, stunned pause as the firing began, a state which slowly succumbed to horror.  He wasn't afraid, but rather paralyzed; he could do nothing but stare uncomprehendingly at the ashes that had been Windmill.  Terminus shook off his own shock, charged up his weapons, and was about to leap into the sky when he noticed that Lexius wasn't following.
 
 "Lex, come on, eh, let's move!" Terminus called.

 "Ah -- ah -- Wi -- Windmill --"

 "Lexius, come on, we've got to go!" Terminus shouted at him.  He bounded over beside his brother, and shook his arm for emphasis, but Lexius remained stock-still.  "Come on!  We can't help him!"  Another group of seekers was heading for them, already firing their deadly plasma cannons.

 "I -- I -- I --" 

 "Lexius --" Terminus stopped, and turned to the approaching enemy.  "Hey you slagheads!  Thisaway, eh!"  Terminus fired his concussion blasters at the seekers and launched.  The group soared after him, ignoring the immobile Lexius.

 What are you doing?! Lexius screamed at himself.  Autobots were dying -- Terminus was up there, risking his life for him -- Windmill was dead, there wasn't a thing he could do for him.  He had to do something, but... what?  He knew the answer.

 I can't do it!  I can't just shoot at a total stranger and try to kill them!  I can't do what they just did!  Lexius hesitated, unable to join in the slaughter.  The thought of doing to someone else what had just been done to Windmill was simply too much for him.

 Terminus swung past just then, half of the squad still on his tail; in less than a minute he'd lost or shot down the others.  He was agile and quick, but it was clear that the numbers were against him -- he'd also  taken a lot of hits, and no-one was around to help him.  As Lexius watched, he switched to robot form, spun and trap-shot one of the Decepticons, and transformed back to jet mode.  But he'd pulled the same trick one too many times.  The others fired and nailed him in the thrusters as he swung back onto his flight path.  Terminus yelped in pain as he spiraled out of control, and crashed to the ground in flames.

 Terminus transformed and tried to rise to his feet, but the blasts had disabled his legs.  He collapsed in a heap.  "Lex... help," Terminus radioed to him, weakly.

 "Terminus!" Lexius shouted, finally spurred to action.  "Hang on, I'm --"

 Whatever action his mind planned, however, was too slow to keep the four remaining seekers from blasting Terminus with their powerful  cannons.  The barrage left nothing but flames -- no doubts, no life.  The seekers soared past without even a pause, moving on to another target.

 Lexius gaped at what had been his brother, certain his systems would explode from rage if he moved an inch.

 Another student soared overhead, with the same group of hunter-seekers on  his tail.  Lexius recognized the Autobot.  It was an older student, one who'd been there nearly the full two months, nearly  ready for his first assignment with the vast Autobot armies.  Aside from Terminus, he was easily the finest flier Lexius had trained with.  His name was Starblast.

  Starblast dodged and swerved amazingly, then turned and climbed, streaking straight upwards.  At the top of his climb he let a trio of missiles go; he came to a stop in mid-air and fell backwards with them, towards the following Decepticons.  Starblast pealed off an instant before there was a collision; the missiles stayed the course and plowed into one of the seekers, knocking him from the sky.  But the other three split in different directions, and converged on Starblast from all sides.  One of the Decepticons caught him with a plasma burst.  The Autobot came crashing down, trailing smoke and flame.

  Starblast survived his landing and transformed to robot form before collapsing on the ground, his gun in his hand.  He opened fire as the Decepticons tried to strafe him as they'd done Terminus.  The Decepticons scattered, then assumed their own ground forms and landed nearby, their weapons at the ready.

 "UH-uh.  Not this time," Lexius snarled quietly.

 He looked down at his inconspicuous wrist-mounted concussion blasters, the potentially lethal wrist blades... no, they would not do. He reached into the tiny  portion of subspace that was his alone, and withdrew an object, a long, heavy particle beam cannon, his most powerful weapon. He'd not used it before. He hefted it, feeling its weight, then charged it up and moved in. 

 Starblast had actually taken down one of the Decepticons with his chain-gun, but the others had him pinned, and were toying with him, laughing at him, slowly blasting him to pieces. Lexius was aghast. Did they always laugh? Did they laugh at those they killed, too? Had they laughed at Terminus, and Windmill, and all the others he'd seen die these past minutes?  Let them laugh at this, Lexius thought grimly. He stopped, took careful aim at the back of one of the Decepticon's heads. 

 And hesitated.

 Was it right? To kill someone from behind? To murder a fellow living being at all? The doubts flooded up again. Perhaps he should warn them first.  That was only fair... 

 The Decepticon raised his rifle butt, and swung it towards Starblast's face. It would smash through the optic visor, and the Decepticon would fire, and Starblast's brain would be destroyed, and he would die. Unless...

 NO!  Lexius fired without a doubt, without hesitation, without remorse.

 The shot passed completely through the Decepticon's head, vaporizing the brain module that had held the robot's personality and will. The Decepticon's life was irretrievably over, destroyed in a second by Lexius's single action. It was that easy: pull a trigger, end a life. The lifeless, mindless body -- an empty shell, now -- collapsed in a heap on the ground.  The Decepticon was dead.  But Starblast was alive. 

 Lexius barely remembered the rest of the battle, what had happened... he or Starblast, one, had disposed of the third Decepticon. They had fought on; the attackers had, at cost, been driven off. Lexius had killed several more times.  But the first, the first had been the One, the threshold irretrievably crossed.

 Later, he'd grieved at length for Terminus, and Windmill, and the others he'd known that had died that day.  It had been his first taste of death.   Lexius devoted the rest of his time in the War College to doggedly absorbing everything he could about the business of war, resolving that the Decepticons would be stopped, and that no one would ever again go through what he had just experienced because of them.

 He had not long thought about how or why he killed, from then onward.  He remembered one lesson from that battle, above all: hesitation equaled death, the death of friends and comrades or potentially himself.  If the Decepticons were there, they had to be killed -- or else.  That was the way of things. 

 But he saw now, that was not the way of things. He saw something completely different.  He had come full circle. 

 Don't you remember?! You fight, and you kill, to save other lives! THAT is why you do it, that's the ONLY possible justification for it! Any other reason, and you are lost, the thing that makes you what you are, dies!

 Lexius had expected to die at the end of this journey through the past,  to be killed by the same conscience that had tormented him with the  entire experience. But instead, he was being born anew. He was  remembering now.

 Life, LIFE is what matters...

-  -  -
 Alone in his tiny med cubicle, Lexius stirred for the first time in two days (the motion eliciting an excited beeping from the monitoring chair), and moaned from his mental torment. He was alone in the darkness, but he had his life. He had much more, in fact, than he had ever expected. 

 He rose slowly, and silently renewed a vow he'd taken long ago. A vow he'd long forgotten. A vow whose neglect would burden him the rest of his existence. 

 Lexius solemnly vowed to protect life, always.

********************* END PART FOUR****************************
On to Part 5