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.
So last time, Starscream got some come-upance and Megatron did a little Spark searching...
It was nearly night when Megatron
neared Kaon, a third of the way around the planet from the Well. The city was
dark but here and there molten metal still glowed in its unquenchable smelting
pits. Darkmount towered at the edge of the city, and that was where Megatron
made his landing. It was not what he’d expected – he had seen it when Unicron
had brought him here only days before, and the throne room had not looked like
this. The top of the throne was shattered, and faintly glowing Energon was
splattered across the black metal. Energon streaked the dented floor as well,
along with burn marks and deep gouges from claws.
Predacons.
No sooner had he thought it than
Predaking swooped in from a higher level and landed with a boom that echoed
through the tower. He advanced on Megatron, staying in the shape of a beast, as
he’d learned to do when fighting the gladiator. Megatron was not here to fight,
and he held up his hand.
“Predaking, a word.”
The Predacon growled, but after a
moment he transformed, his posture still aggressive.
“I came looking for Starscream, but
I see you found him first.” He looked around at the destruction. Only
Starscream could provoke that kind of rage. “And terminated him?”
“He still lives,” Predaking said.
“Only because he has not been punished enough.”
“And when you determine he has
been?”
“Then I will burn the Spark out of
whatever is left of him!” Predaking clenched his fist before Megatron’s face.
Megatron did not back down.
“I wish to speak with him.”
“You cannot save him.”
This was infuriating. “Did I say
save? I said speak!” The Predacon made no move and Megatron stepped closer to
him. “He is my lieutenant. I should demand you hand him over, but all I ask is
a word.”
“Very well, but only so you may see
what will happen to you if you dare approach me again. Skylynx. Show Megatron
to the dungeon.” Another Predacon swooped in and transformed. It seemed they
had all learned the trick. He glared at Megatron and then wordlessly motioned
for him to follow. Megatron knew where his own prison was, but it seemed the
Predacons did not, for they headed to a storage level on a middle floor of the
tower. He would have found the unexpected location on his own however, by
following the glowing trail of Energon that dotted the floor.
“He’s in there,” Skylynx said,
stopping before a door. “We should lock you in there right beside him, so we
don’t run out of toys.” The door slid open and Megatron looked inside. He could
see little in the dark, and definitely nothing that looked like Starscream. He
was about to switch his optics to infrared when he spotted a faint blue glow.
Stepping closer, he saw why he hadn’t noticed the Seeker – he’d been looking
for the angular silhouette of wings.
Starscream lay curled up facing the
wall, one wing flat against the floor, while the other, which should have stuck
up in the air, was gone, ripped off near the base. His hands covered his face,
and every now and then he shuddered slightly. At the sound of footsteps, he
froze.
Megatron turned to Skylynx, and
said, “Leave us.” He noticed Starscream try not to react, cracking one red eye
and then closing it again. When the Predacon finally shuffled out of the room
and closed the door – Megatron suspected he would not open it again –
Starscream looked up, amazement and suspicion warring on his face.
“Megatron?” he whispered, his voice
staticky, then, louder, “What are you doing here?” He tried to sit up, but his
arm was leaking Energon and lubricant and it failed under his weight. He
settled for propping himself on one elbow, never taking his eyes off of
Megatron.
“I came looking for you to warn you
off whatever you were planning, and discuss an alternative. But it appears I
must rescue you first.”
Starscream looked around, as though
for someone who might be in on a joke, then up at Megatron, confusion turning
to a flood of relief. He reached out a shaking hand towards Megatron’s foot.
“You – you did not abandon me,
master?” His voice crackled out at the end – perhaps from damage, perhaps from
emotion. There was even a chance he was being sincere.
Megatron knelt beside Starscream to
examine his injuries, but the Seeker flinched away from his hand. Megatron let
his surprise wash into sadness. When was the last time he’d laid a hand on a
bot except to wound or threaten? It must have been with Orion Pax. The sadness
became palpable – physically painful even – but he pushed it away.
“Show me your wounds,” he insisted,
pushing Starscream’s shoulder armor down so he could see his back. The plating
on one whole side of his torso was chewed up and partially torn off, nearly
exposing vital inner wiring and mechanisms, and he was covered all over with
shallower gashes from claws and teeth. Energon, darkly swirled with a film of
lubricants, had pooled beneath him, seeping from behind shattered plating where
he’d been crushed. Although it was not life-threatening, the worst injury was
to his wing. The metal was twisted along the edge, having been torn off rather
than cut. It had then been crudely welded, by dragonfire if Starscream’s
bubbled paint were any indication. The weld was not careful, likely only
closing the wound at all because Energon burned hot enough to melt metal, and
the main Energon line of the wing still leaked a thin blue trail over his back.
“Starscream,” Megatron began.
“Don’t tell me,” Starscream said
quietly, staring at the floor. Megatron said nothing. The loss of a wing cut to
the core of who Starscream was –Air Commander Starscream. That was when he was
at his best, and his skill at flying and commanding other flyers was one of the
main reasons Megatron had kept him around despite millennia of treachery. He
knew being grounded made the Seeker desperate. Even the temporary loss of his
T-cog, and his relief when it was replaced, had kept him on his best behavior
right up to the end of the war, although it was anyone’s guess how long that
would have lasted. He’d already shown signs of cracking whenever his rivalry
with Shockwave had come into play.
Megatron stood up and activated his
high frequency transmitter, composing a quick message.
“Before we go,” he said, when he’d
sent the coded burst, “we must figure out where you stand.”
---
Ratchet looked up from scanning
Ultra Magnus’s electrical systems. Bulkhead and Arcee had already gathered by
the reconnected Grid console, looking curiously at the waveform that had popped
onscreen. Ratchet walked over and touched the blinking indicator.
“We’re receiving a high frequency
signal,” he said, feeling a bit like a recording, “With an embedded message.”
“Starscream,” Arcee and Bulkhead
said in unison.
Ratchet shook his head. “Megatron!”
He opened the message, already guessing what it might say. “Send a ground
bridge to my coordinates. Have your medical facilities on standby.”
“A new take on the same old tune,”
said Bulkhead.
---
“Those Predacons will never let us
go,” Starscream said, now sitting up and supporting himself on his less damaged
arm.
“I’ve taken care of that. Once
you’re out of here I will talk to Predaking.”
Starscream started to laugh, but
grabbed his side and waited for the pain to subside before continuing. “You
think you’ll have better luck? They hate you as much as me.”
Megatron thought that phrasing was
a little ambiguous, but he let it go. “They do not represent justice on
Cybertron. Whatever crimes we have committed may demand justice, but until
then, no vendetta shall stain the new Cybertron with spilled Energon.”
“Well it’s a little late for that,”
Starscream sneered. “Wait – you’re talking about when a government is set up!
But that’s my-”
“It’s happening without you,
Starscream. The war is over. Optimus has restored Cybertron and the AllSpark.”
He didn’t say at what cost, for fear he would kill the Seeker if his reaction
was as inappropriate as he thought it would be. He could tell Starscream was
relieved to hear the news, but he suspected only because it made Cybertron a
better prize.
“Do you remember early in the war,
on Trypticon Station,” Megatron went on, “the first of many times you openly
defied me?”
Starscream sighed. “Here we go. A
list of all my misdeeds. We’ll be here awhile.”
“You were right.”
“Well of course I – wait! Really?”
Starscream stared at Megatron, surprise quickly shifting to suspicion.
“You had withheld Dark Energon from
me, fearing that I would use it to lay waste the planet – which I did - whereas
you would have preserved Cybertron and brought it back to its golden age under
the Decepticons.” He held up his hand, sensing Starscream’s growing smugness.
“That is not what you were right about, because you could never have done it.”
He watched him seethe a little before continuing. “But it can happen now - a
golden age! The planet is healing, and the space bridges are open again. Soon
colonists and refugees will bring back millennia of knowledge and discoveries
from unknown reaches of space. It will make up for time lost, not just in the
war, but during the eons when our civilization was stagnating.”
He watched Starscream’s reaction.
There was a hint of excitement on his face, which he tried to hide, as well as
his ever-present ambition.
“The question, Starscream, is
whether you still wish to see such a world, if you cannot rule it. You can be a
part of it, or become a footnote in history, a grasping lieutenant on the
losing side.”
Starscream said nothing and
Megatron could tell the words cut deep. A dream warped into obsession over
thousands of years did not change so easily. Look what it had taken in his own
case. The Seeker looked away, his eyes casting a dim red glow around the tiny
room. Every now and then the glow flickered as his system tried to cope with
his extensive damage.
“It’s been a long time since…”
The green light of a ground bridge
suddenly flooded the room.
“Took them long enough,” Megatron
growled, stooping down to pull Starscream to his feet. An angular blue leg and
thin arm moved between them. Megatron looked up.
“Soundwave? Where in the pit did
you spring from?”
Soundwave whirled and looked at
him, and Megatron heard his own words played back.
“If you cannot rule…” Then Soundwave
grabbed Starscream, opened a second ground bridge, and the two of them
vanished.
Ratchet pushed the ground bridge
control lever up and turned to the swirling portal. After a moment, Megatron
stomped through, looking furious. Ratchet stepped toward him.
“Megatron, what happened? You
requested medical attention.”
Megatron walked past him. “That was
for Starscream, but you took too long.”
“Did something happen to him?”
Ratchet asked. “Did he… not make it?”
The other Autobots tried to look
appropriately somber, but none of them was particularly saddened by the
possibility.
“I suspect he is still alive,” said
Megatron. “But I fear we have bigger problems. Soundwave has returned, and he
bridged away with Starscream somewhere.”
“He was trapped in another
dimension,” said Wheeljack.
Megatron shook his head. “He got
himself out.”
“But isn’t Soundwave your most
loyal bot?” asked Arcee.
“He was my most loyal Decepticon. A true believer in the cause. If he perceives that
I have abandoned that cause, he will not likely let it die simply because its
founder says so. And he is a very dangerous bot.” He shook his head. “And since
Predaking has been robbed of his vengeance, he’ll likely be on the warpath
too.”
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