SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you haven't seen all of Transformers Prime and Predacons Rising, and read Transformers: Exodus, go no further! I refer to major plot developments that will give spoilers, and also half of this story won't make any sense if you don't read the novel. You really ought to play Fall of Cybertron and/ or read the Rage of the Dinobots and Beast Hunters comics as well. Everyone should, just because they are so awesome.
Legal stuff: I don't own any of these characters or settings and this is just a fan work.
Anyway, picking up right where Predacons Rising leaves off with Starscream and the Predacons...
“I come not to claim thrones,
Starscream, but to settle scores.”
Starscream scrambled backwards as
the trio of Predacons closed in, his eyes darting over them, searching for a
way out. Even standing on the ground they had the advantage of altitude. There!
He fired a missile at the floor between Predaking’s feet. The beasts didn’t
need to dodge, but predictably they did, giving him the instant he needed to
leap into the air and transform. A blast of dragon fire cut in front of him just
as he fired his engine. He rolled to avoid it – right into Darksteel, who
instantly latched on with his talons. The impact jarred Starscream back into
his proto-form and the Predacon slammed him into the floor and held him.
He scrambled a bit, but Darksteel
was easily five times his mass and he wasn’t going anywhere.
“That was fun,” hissed the
Predacon. “Don’t you have any more missiles to play with? Maybe the next one
will do some damage.”
Not rising to the provocation,
Starscream instead aimed his remaining missile at the ceiling – if he brought
the roof down on them all, he could jet as soon as the beast lifted its paw.
The others would not be fast enough to escape. It was an awkward posture,
aiming backwards with the giant creature on his back, but the roof was a big
target, and he got his arm straight enough to feel the firing mechanism engage.
He twitched his finger and – unbelievable! – Darksteel grabbed his arm,
wrenched the missile off its bracket before it could arm, and tossed it away.
With a sinking feeling Starscream watched it bounce once and roll off the edge
of the floor. The Predacon slammed his face into the metal tiles.
“Aren’t you even going to try?”
“He’ll offer you no sport.” It was
Predaking, though Starscream couldn’t turn his head far enough to see him. “He
is a coward, fit for only two things – begging for mercy and flying away.”
Darksteel’s claws dug in, and
Starscream began option one in earnest. His frantic pleas rose to a scream that
drowned out the screech of shearing metal. The near blackout haze of pain
cleared from his optics in time to see a crumpled half of his wing clatter to
the floor in front of him.
“Now he’s only fit for one thing,”
Darksteel said. Skylynx laughed hideously and advanced. A cold bolt of panic
went through Starscream – they were going to kill him and there was no way out.
They had literally cut off his means of escape. Skylynx bit down hard on his
leg, and Darksteel hooked his beak under the plating on his side. Starscream
twisted around and fired a barrage of Null Rays into his face, which made the
Predacon flinch and let go, only to snap his jagged beak down on the weapon.
The ray changed back into his hand, backfiring with a discharge of energy that
sent dizzying static through Starscream’s electrical systems. Wrenching pain
cleared his head a moment later as Darksteel resumed cracking and prying up his
armor.
“Stand aside,” said Predaking. His
henchmen ignored him, their killer instincts getting the better of them.
Skylynx pulled Starscream away from Darksteel and batted him across the room,
both Predacons giving chase as he flew. Darksteel pounced on him when he hit
the wall and began to pry up another piece of plating over some vital wiring,
while Skylynx tore at the arm he was using to protect his head. Both Predacons
suddenly jumped away, avoiding the blast of fire that poured over Starscream’s
back, flaring up blue where it ignited spilled Energon, burning many times
hotter and more painfully in his wounds.
The flames stopped, but it took a
few moments and the uncomfortable sensation of his plating creaking and
clanging back into shape as it cooled for Starscream to realize he wasn’t dead.
He opened his eyes and saw that the paint on his arms was bubbled and peeling.
“I’m alive?” he gasped, looking
around, then froze as Predaking stepped over him and transformed to his bot
mode. His alt-mode, Starscream thought.
It was still bizarre to see him transform. The beast’s protoform was the
monster that had just tried to melt him.
“You’re alive because I’m not
finished with you,” Predaking growled. “Although it is tempting to let those
two tear you apart. And I don’t want you leaking out.” He slashed Starscream’s
huddled shoulder and arm with his claws. “But we may see how many wounds I can
melt closed before it stops helping.”
He walked to a pile of rubble and
twisted out a metal rod. Starscream didn’t like the gleeful way Skylynx and
Darksteel watched him do it.
“Do you recall what I said I would
do with that rod you had?” Predaking asked. Starscream tried to think. On
Earth? What had he… Bury that rod in your spark!
“No! Wait!” He held up his hands
and Predaking swatted them down with the bar.
“Now we end this, Starscream! I
believe this will wound more than your pride.”
“You’re still angry about that?” A small voice told him to stop talking. He kept
talking. “But I- I did not know you were intelligent!”
“Did not know?” Predaking bellowed.
He hammered Starscream into the floor with both fists, his weapon apparently
forgotten. “You knew and it frightened you!” He pounded him again, denting the
steel floor plates under him. “That was why you betrayed my brethren to their
deaths!” A spiked backhand to the face sent the Decepticon flying into the
throne, which crumbled around his unconscious form.
Darksteel knocked some rubble away
and lifted him up by the throat. Several bits of metal fell off of him.
“He still lives, Predaking. I can
fix that.”
Predaking seized Starscream, about
to rip him in half himself, but after a long moment, he shook his head. “No.
Not when he is like this.”
“You have a problem killing
helpless creatures?” Skylynx snarled. “Starscream doesn’t.”
Predaking laughed. “Even if he were
alert and uninjured, he would be just as helpless before our might. That is not
the reason. When he perishes, I want him to look into my face and know why, and
at whose hand.” He looked around. “Surely this castle has a dungeon to throw
him in until he wakes up.”
---
Megatron landed in the plaza
outside the building in Iacon where the Autobots had set up a temporary nerve
center during reconstruction. He looked around as he walked inside, and many
more eyes looked back at him. It seemed Cybertron was already repopulating. He
thought he recognized a handful of bots from the war, and they knew him, edging
uneasily out of sight as he passed. A couple of them had been Decepticons.
Most, bots he had never seen before, watched him with curiosity and nothing
more.
In a room off a central atrium in
the building he heard talking, and approached. The conversation petered out as
one by one the Autobots noticed him standing there.
“Megatron?” said Bulkhead, and that
was as far as the greetings went.
“I am looking for Optimus Prime.”
Megatron said. At a corner workstation, Ratchet slammed something he was
working on.
Bumblebee came forward, and Megatron
looked him in the eye, acknowledging all the history that had passed between
them.
“Optimus isn’t here. He - ”
Bumblebee seemed to be searching for the right words, and whatever they might
be weighed on him. “He’s joined the AllSpark. He had to take the AllSpark into
the Matrix of Leadership to protect it from Unicron, and there was no other way
to give it back unless he went with it.”
Megatron didn’t move. The news
should have staggered him, but somehow he had known something had happened to
Optimus. He only shook his head. “For millennia I wished for nothing so much as
sending Optimus Prime to the Allspark, and now that I would seek his counsel
again, he has gone and joined it himself.”
“What were you going to ask him?”
Smokescreen asked. Arcee glared at him.
“It does not matter.” He turned to
leave then paused. “Did you arrest Starscream?”
Arcee shook her head. “No, he flew
away. That’s pretty much what he does.”
Indeed thought Megatron as he made his way outside and took
to the air again.
A short while later he thundered
over the Hydrax Plateau, until it dropped off onto the mirror smooth plains
around the Well of AllSparks. The plains blazed with the reflection of the sun,
with the Well in the middle, cool and black, as deep as one could go in Cybertron
before heading back “up”. On one edge, he spied Knockout and an Autobot he
didn’t know, and a gleam of bright light. A new Cybertronian was climbing out
of the Well into their arms, its metal catching the sun’s rays brilliantly.
That was why Optimus had done it.
He touched down far away from any
other bots and looked down.
“Optimus,” he said. The Well spread
before him, so vast he could barely make out any bots on the other side. Tiny
flickers of color showed occasionally in its depths, Sparks that would bring to
life new Cybertronians. It was quieter than he’d ever known, not that he’d ever
known quiet.
“Optimus,” he said again. “what
shall I make of myself now? Is it enough to refrain from inflicting oppression?
And slink away? It sits uneasily with my sense of ambition. A free bot should
do more, should he not? I wish you and I could talk of philosophy once again.”
He knelt down and pressed his hands against the rim of the Well.
“I know now that you did not want
it, but you shouldered the burden you were given by the Matrix and the High
Council, and chose to make the best of it, while I railed and rampaged to
assert my will over all things. To truly use my freedom, perhaps I must
discover…where my obligations lie?” He looked around at the endless sky.
“A paradox. But I will start here.
I must do more than avoid inflicting oppression. Do I not have an obligation to
help those still oppressed, and prevent other oppressors from rising?”
The wind picked up, causing a deep
resonance as it passed across the rim of the Well. Megatron was not sentimental
enough to think it sounded like a voice.
He leapt into the air and took
flight. There was one who had suffered most under his oppression, and who also
posed the greatest risk of rekindling the war. And to find him, Megatron need
only find the nearest available throne.
To be continued...
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