Chapter Text
The mine was stiflingly silent as Megatron delved ever-deeper into the tunnels.
That silence was a profoundly eerie experience for him. The status quo of the mines was a constant cacophony of noise: chattering speech, joyous singing, humming fans, heavy ventilations, clinking pickaxes, rumbling explosives, breaking stone. All of those myriad sounds would blend and echo together into an incoherent jumble of noise too dense to tease any one thread loose. The roaring ambiance of the tunnels was obnoxious at times, yes, but comforting in its own way.
The clear and unambiguous sound of Megatron’s pedefalls echoing on brittle stone fragments- the crunch of overburden, that, in the haste of the war’s arrival, hadn’t been carted out to make more room- was unsettling. The fact that he could hear anything at all in particular unnerved him. The mines were unnaturally temperate, too- even cool- when his usual experience of them was one of radiating heat from the bodies, the friction, and the occasional detonations deep in the more stubborn mineshafts.
The persistent darkness was anathema to Megatron; you would expect a mine to be predominantly dark and gloomy if you had not been in one long, but the bodies of the miners glowed even kilometers deep from the surface, and each shaft tended to be so packed with ‘bots that the darkness was less frequent than light. As Megatron moved through the passageways alone, there was no reprieve from the gloom other than the hand-torch he carried with him. His frame no longer produced the light that miners worked and navigated by. It hadn’t since his alt mode had functionally transitioned from a tool of industry to a tool of war.
(What use did a tank have for a headlamp and biolights?)
Megatron could not shake the feeling that, in coming back here after so long, he was now an intruder. An interloper. This had been his home, brutal and vicious and terrible as it was when he and his fellows toiled under the heel of the overseers, but this mine was stagnant and dead and he was not. His body was no longer shaped for this place, just as this place was no longer shaped for him. Neither of them belonged to one another anymore, and there was both a freedom in that revelation as well as a distinct feeling of discomfort. The corpse of the tunnels would continue in perpetuity- preserving the conditions moments before the miners were liberated, a snapshot frozen in time and space- even when the captain had long-since moved past it. He felt a vague pang of unease in the fact that these mines would be here long after the name Megatron was forgotten to time.
(Though, with any luck, his completed opus would earn him ten million years or so of name recognition.)
Megatron persisted into the tunnels, exhaling heavily into the stale air. He moved ever deeper, ever darker, into the confining corridors. It became more and more irritating that his helm scraped the ceiling when he walked normally; adopting a tank as an alt mode had granted him a few extra inches of height, making him just slightly taller than the boilerplate drill he had once been (that everyone in the mine had used to be). It was just enough that he no longer made the tight clearance without ever-so-slightly bending his knee flexors.
Megatron tried to focus on that instead— the small annoyances, the tiny aches. His knee joints not being as supple as they once were. His helm aching when a burgeoning speleothem clipped his face. The darkness that made his optics hurt when he squinted too long.
It was easier to think about those small points of ire than the superstitious emotional weight of coming back to this veritable mausoleum. In truth, he felt the heavy and frightening weight of history hanging on his shoulder. There was a specter of death that peered from behind and breathed down the back of his neck, trying to toy with his mind and make him feel things that a good military commander oughtn’t feel.
Fear. Loneliness. Nostalgia?
He had known, the moment he set foot outside of the tunnels and saw the breaking dawn light of Hadeen for the first time, that he never wanted to come back to this place. He had promised himself he would never come back. The fact that he was breaking that solemn vow for stupid mining superstition- a marriage without a gem from your home tunnels was doomed to fail- and for Starscream, of all the creatures on Cybertron’s surface, frustrated him.
Frustration was an easier emotion to coast than any of the other ones batting around in his neural net, so he focused on that instead. Anger simmered and stewed in the back of his mind, percolating intensely while not yet boiling over. He knew anger was only a step removed from fear, but he wasn’t ready to face that fear in any meaningful way.
He searched his memory for the written works of Zeta Prime, closing his optics to concentrate and navigating the darkness by memory alone.
The enemy is a wily and oppressive force. They operate on the mind and in so doing, work through the body…
Zeta was referring to battling Quintessons in this manuscript, and he meant literal enemies rather than figurative, but it was soothing.
Their words sink through the processor to the spark. They will tell you lies about what you are and your destiny.
Megatron was moving through a connecting shaft; there was a wider, open tunnel here, leading to little branches and loops, the option to go up or down. The air smelled of rock and liquid. Their solvent barriers had failed without maintenance, and a trickle of oil slushed by his pedes.
They will tell you that you are a machine that they made…
Megatron remembered the overseers’ lash. They were very heavy and very quick with the whip whenever there was disobedience, whether it be real or perceived. They were few and the miners were many, so they ruled by tyrannical fear. By their logic, the more cruel they were, the more control they had.
… That a tool cannot be enslaved.
Megatron had read philosophy by one of Rung or Froid’s like. Written by some skinny pre-war thinker, now-Autobot, Foolcoal. It was a dataslate discussed the spectacle of torture, how it could be used to keep those who weren’t being tortured in line.
The enemy wants to distract you psychologically and make you weaker physically. They will tell you that you belong to them, that you were engineered for your purpose by them…
Wasn’t it ironic that all of these things had also occurred under Zeta’s own administration? He had written the most incredible critique of Functionism, his reigning government, inside his vicious attack of his hated alien nemeses.
The Quintessons may have given us our transformation cogs a billion years ago, but we are more than what we can transform into.
This treatise from Zeta had been burned en masse shortly thereafter. It was embarrassing, to the Functionalist government, the way he had so succinctly made arguments against his own philosophy. It had been pointed out by even the least erudite scholars of the age.
Freedom for me but not for thee, Megatron supposed.
He’d only had Zeta’s text- any of his copies of the wisdom of the ancients- because once upon a time he and the other miners had accidentally penetrated into some old archivist’s storage vault during a routine drilling operation. This heretical kook, Trion or something of that nature, had had thousands of volumes stashed underground, maybe even millions, in pristine physical condition (until they’d brought pickaxes and dust into the hermetically sealed chamber). In their anonymity, buried deep in the dark, the texts had all escaped the zealous censorship of the government for millenia.
The miners had gotten an audial-ful from the overseers for the time they’d wasted, been whipped and beaten until they were raw even though they had just thought it was another cave formation on their imaging equipment, and been told to forget what they had found and dig around.
Megatron hadn’t forgotten it, though. Before the Functionalist government’s secret police had been contacted to wipe away the precious font of forbidden knowledge, he’d snuck into the cordoned off shaft alone during the rest cycle and downloaded the archivist’s entire database onto his own hard drives.
(It hadn’t been hard— despite the fact that the overseers deemed it indecent material, everyone assumed the miners were too stupid and lazy to want to learn, to want to read. The tunnels weren’t even guarded. Given the fact that no investigation or reprimand had been forthcoming, it appeared no one even checked to see if the miners had accessed the systems before they were deleted.)
Megatron hadn’t exactly been an enlightened scholar before that moment. He scarcely had a notion of how significant that vault had been when he’d snuck down into the dark and stolen the database. In truth, he had barely been aware of the Thirteen Primes’ existence- much less read their work- but even the tiny tungsten-dense brain module he’d been granted when he emerged knew that he couldn’t allow this scale of literary contraband to just be wiped over.
And when he’d started reading, that very night, his spark had immutably changed.
He knew he was different. He knew he was special. He knew he was Megatron. Named for Megatronus, his favorite of the thirteen, though it had been decacycles of careful deliberation over which one he ought to title himself after. Megatronus: the deceiver, the betrayer… but then again, if you looked at what the rest of the Thirteen had become, Megatronus looked for all the world like a hero of liberation.
Ah. He had reached the deposit.
Megatron knelt in the slushy-cold cave water. His fingers gingerly fumbled through the stone, finding a good-sized chunk and breaking it from where it had been carefully wedged. A font of gems spilled forth, red by torchlight. Megatron scooped the most promising of the deposit up, keeping the stones tightly in his grip. There were more jewels- enough that he probably could’ve funded himself off of Cybertron and to one of the outlying colonies, away from war- but he left them buried in the brackish waters.
Megatron wouldn’t deny that he felt a little relief upon leaving the mine. Each step felt lighter and softer; the captain craved the touch of Hadeen’s light on his plating, the open air rushing around him. His home felt corrupted.
Or, perhaps, it was him who’d been corrupted. There was a simple complacency to the mine that it was easy to romanticize, even if it had been the Pits. He was not the same mech he once was. That was undeniable.
Megatron stepped out of the mineshaft and into the open air with a quiet sigh. He paused a moment to unbend his knee flexors, stretch his toe-pedes, and shift his joints. He looked to the sky and the rolling landscape and relaxed without the specter of the dark hanging over him. When he’d first left the tunnels three hundred years ago, he had been terribly myopic and prone to distorted vision at long distances; he had been one of the lucky ones, a miner who had made it high up enough in the Decepticon ranks that he’d since had his wonky vision surgically corrected. He could appreciate the distant skyline, the sun hanging low on the horizon.
When he had gone in, it had been a little past morning; it was almost sunset now.
The mine stole time from you; manipulated your mind, distorted it, made you think the joors passed both too quickly and didn’t last long enough.
“Starscream?” Megatron lifted the communicator from his hip. “If you would, summon Astrotrain to my present coordinates. I am ready to return to Vos.”
To you, he thought, with uncharacteristic sentimentality. This unpleasant little jaunt down memory lane had been for him, for the Winglord. It probably said something enormous about their impending relationship that he had been willing to do it.
“Good,” the Winglord replied, tartly, a few moments later. “But you’ll have to wait a little while longer, Megatron, Astrotrain is busy on an errand— you’ll have to share a transit.”
“You’re bringing someone else?” The rubies in his fist felt hot and accusatory, a sudden alarm burning along his plating. Megatron had hardly been committed about Starscream’s request to marry— he had been downright aloof, and barely confirmed his interest at all. The idea that he might’ve plucked up another grounder to be his new fiancé in the face of Megatron’s insouciance set his gyroscopes in a lurch. “Who?”
“That colonel of yours, Soundwave, reached us a short while ago via carrier pigeon— he seems rather resourceful, and I suspect he will be integral to the war planning, so I’ve permitted him to come to Vos so long as he brings his own energon supply.”
Megatron relaxed slightly. He’d heard rumors about Soundwave, ones that weren’t conducive to a frenzied romance with a flyer. Octane, at a poker night some solar cycles back, had insinuated the colonel was so repulsed by romance and interface he’d even had himself castrated. Megatron clung to the idea it might be true, even as Rumble and Frenzy introduced a hazy doubt.
“That means I won’t have to detour to get Rumble, I assume,” he remarked.
“Rumble?” Starscream asked.
“The…” he still had not gotten a straight answer on that subject, how he related to the more pertinent Soundwave and Frenzy. He defaulted to the safer choice: “You must remember him— you tried to kill him only a short while ago.”
Silence followed.
“He’s one of my soldiers. A minibot. The annoying blue and purple one,” Megatron ventured.
“Oh! Him, yes, the one who interrupted us. I remember. Why is he coming along?”
“I have no idea,” grumbled Megatron, mostly to himself. He shook his helm slightly, actually answering the posited query: “He and Frenzy and Soundwave have some history together, I gather, and they’re all anxious to meet up again. Besides, it’s safer for us to have him up in Vos than down here. Certainly it’s less annoying for me.”
“I suppose I have to tolerate some obnoxious things in order to secure Vos’s energon,” Starscream sighed. “I’ve sent Astrotrain, he’s confirmed that he’s picked up Soundwave and is on his way to Quasar Canyon for Rumble, then you… though I can’t help but notice you’re about three hundred miles southeast of your regular posting. Anything you’d like to tell me about that?”
“I’m preparing for war,” Megatron’s tone was steely.
“By doing…?”
“Idiotic dirtkisser behavior.” That should flummox him; Starscream was a flyer supremacist, and to continue his interest in Megatron’s whereabouts would be to admit that he didn’t think that grounders were inherently stupid. He wasn’t sure his ego could take it. “An old ritual of ours. None of your concern.”
There was a quiet, haughty huff over the line, and then silence. Megatron leaned against a rock and waited.
Astrotrain became evident on the horizon, a blackened shape as vulgar and predatory as any sonicondor. He had, at least, removed some of the bodies skewered on his chassis, but he was still dazzle-camouflaged in blood, painted with fearsome geometric designs that hurt the optic and distorted his physical appearance. Megatron gave him a halfhearted wave with his unoccupied hand.
Astrotrain landed with a heavy rattle of his struts; displaced dust clouds swirled around him, and Megatron’s waving hand did very little to cut through the haze.
“Little Megs!” Astrotrain boomed joyously, rocking slightly as if in delight. “Great to see you again. Can you believe this is the first time we’ve seen one another since I dropped you off in the Sea of Rust? What’s it been, two, three orbital cycles?”
“Call me ‘Little Megs’ again and I’ll strip your mesh from your struts and let Starscream use them as a decoration for his throne room,” Megatron said, levelly. Astrotrain guffawed, the snubbed shape of his wings bobbing up and down with the motion.
“You’re fun! No one else plays along.”
“Let me inside, Astrotrain. We’ve got a schedule to keep— there’s only eight solar cycles until Straxus is untouchable, any second we stand idle is a second wasted.”
“Whatever you say,” Astrotrain sing-songed.
Megatron stepped forward and a set of stairs folded out from the shuttle’s front. Astrotrain’s internal compartment slid open with a quiet hiss, and Megatron was unsurprised by the sight of Soundwave and Rumble already seated on an internal bench. He gave the former a polite nod, a small “good evening, Colonel”, and fixed Rumble with a little visual reprimand just by narrowing his optics.
“I’ve been good!” Rumble objected, offended by the Look the captain had shot him. “You were gone for like a solar cycle, and Crankcase really stepped up on correcting any mischief in your absence!”
“No he didn’t,” Megatron grunted, taking his seat opposite from the pair.
Rumble’s expression fell slightly.
“No he didn’t,” he agreed, in a petulant mumble.
“I assume everyone will have whatever you did cleaned up by the time I get back,” Megatron said. “That’s all I ask.”
“Let’s get this show on the road,” Astrotrain’s voice bellowed in his interior chamber, even when his speech had the inflection of a normally spoken sentence. “Fasten your seatbelts!”
There were no seatbelts.
One-handed, Megatron gripped his seat. He pressed his back against the wall as Astrotrain rumbled across the ground and shot into the air for takeoff. His internals roiled in protest; Rumble looked slightly green until the initial turbulence was over, and momentarily all that was left for Megatron was a light nauseated squeeze in the fuel tank. If Soundwave was bothered at all, his expressionless face and guarded posture didn’t show it. He swayed with the motion of Astrotrain’s takeoff like he was keeping time to music.
Once his body stopped trying to purge and there was no need to clamp himself to his seat, Megatron subtly shifted the set of rubies from one hand to the other, gingerly flexing his digits to try to bring some life back into them. He had been gripping them too tightly, and he hardly needed the strain on his hydraulic lines. The fluids in his servos had stopped circulating from the tension.
“Query,” Soundwave rumbled, in that trilling way of his, “purpose?” He gave an insouciant gesture to Megatron’s closed fist. Of course it hadn’t escaped his notice, no matter how furtively Megatron attempted it.
“A goodwill gesture for Starscream, Colonel,” Megatron answered, evasively. He had to be on his guard; it did not escape his recollection that Soundwave was a point-accurate lie detector, meaning that everything he said was going to have to be a technical truth.
“Soundwave: well-acquainted with the rituals of the miners of Kaon. Soundwave: was a mining mech from Kaon before his time in the gladiatorial arena. Presentation of jewels from home mining tunnel: integral component of a proposal of marriage,” Soundwave pressed, voice implying a frown.
Astrotrain suddenly keeled, giving a choked sound of surprise that rumbled through his internals. Everyone was thrown around in their seats; even the unflappable Soundwave made a disconcerted noise as he was pitched forward and almost faceplanted, if not for the tight grip he made on the seat. Rumble went cartwheeling across the room, only stopping because he slammed into a wall. Astrotrain’s voice bellowed incredulously from all around them. “You’re proposing to Screamer?”
Megatron felt a sudden hot flusteredness; embarrassment was not part of his day-to-day regimen of emotions, and probably something he’d felt only once or twice in his entire existence. He barked, without thought to the social repercussions, “the Winglord proposed to me first!”
There was a sudden sucking void of silence. Even Rumble (now rising woozily from his collision with Astrotrain’s cockpit) was quiet, lips mashed together in a befuddled purse.
“Well, he did,” Megatron muttered, folding his arms defensively.
“That’s amazing,” Astrotrain said, clearly wanting to say more, but too dumbfounded to do so. Rumble was next to regather himself.
“Primus below and Unicron above— this whole alliance thing the two of you have isn’t predicated on some weird sexual fascination he has with you, is it?” Rumble gasped, abruptly horrified. Soundwave attempted to temper his squeaking, shooting him a meaningful look that was ignored. “Slumming it up with the dirty dirtkisser captain like in a porno vid? Oh, Vector Sigma, all those times when you go out predacon hunting you’re having quickies with him, aren’t you! Two nightcycles ago when we were playing cards Octane was making some veiled references to you getting your spike wet, and there was also that time when I went out to see you when you were hunting! I thought you were acting weird, now I know why, it was because you were clanging him and I fragging interrupted you! I knew that war wound scrap was a slagging lie—”
Soundwave decided, mercifully, to wrap a hand around Rumble’s intake.
“It’s not like that,” Megatron warned. He really did not care for the hot flush that was creeping up from his neck and pooling in his facial derma. It made him, a war veteran and hero and poet, feel… silly. “We haven’t consummated.” He remembered Starscream’s beautiful, luminous optics, the way his grey cheeks had puffed ever-so-slightly as his mouth closed around his spike. That didn’t count, did it? “He’s very… old fashioned.”
Astrotrain chortled. “I knew him when he was at the academy, ‘fore the war. He really isn’t.”
Rumble managed to break loose of Soundwave’s firm grasp. The innate impulse to gossip had just proved too tempting. “The flyer king is a piece of slagging shareware?”
“You should try saying that to him,” Astrotrain advised. “Loudly, and within audial-shot of as many ‘bots as possible.”
“Historical context acquisition can be done at another time,” Soundwave stated, letting Rumble go since he would not be repressed. “Status of his interfacing history: irrelevant. Marriage: sufficient incentive for him to ally with the Decepticon coup and co-operate with removal of Straxus from his position. That is all that matters.”
“And then, when Straxus gets his fragging head blown off, you’re in charge, right?” Rumble prompted, pivoting to look at the colonel. “You’ll lead the Decepticons? If we’re eighty-sixing Straxus, might as well topple down all the Lords, gladiators, and advisors who are next in line; Tarn, Overlord, Six-Shot, Clench, Barricade—”
“Best successor for Straxus: inconclusive,” Soundwave droned. He had no pupils with the visor structure of his helm, but Megatron got the feeling his gaze was boring right into him. Megatron stared right back; he knew he was the correct choice, and he had a feeling Soundwave knew it, too, but needed more proof to be sure. “Determination will be made after Straxus’s termination.”
Rumble wrinkled his nasal ridge. “Who did I miss in that list? Jhiaxus? No, wait— you’re not thinking of letting Shockwave lead?”
Soundwave made a noncommittal noise.
“All he does is stay up in the stupid tower Straxus made for him and tinker with his Autobots prisoners!” Rumble began to wheedle. “You don’t even like him! He doesn’t even like you! I don’t even know why I bothered to specify the ‘you’ part, he doesn’t like anyone, except his pets and science experiments!”
“Shockwave: is no friend of mine,” Soundwave concluded. “Shockwave: is not suited to a leadership position with his scientific preoccupations.”
“That’s what I’m saying! Then who’s left but you?” Rumble pressed.
“Soundwave is thinking about me,” Megatron interjected. He gave the mech a meaningful leer. “Isn’t that right?”
There was a begrudging pause. Soundwave lowered his chin slightly. “Correct.”
“You!?” Rumble practically choked on his own oral solvent. “What do you mean, you? You’re some no-name captain! You haven’t done anything but sit on your aft in an office in the middle of nowhere for an entire vorn—”
“You’re forgetting I led at Tyger Pax,” Megatron snarled, halfway rising from his seat. Soundwave laid a protective hand on Rumble’s shoulder, pushing him away slightly to shield him. “I won at Tyger Pax.”
Soundwave whispered something to Rumble, in hushed tones beyond Megatron’s range of hearing. Rumble’s expression shifted, and he turned his helm away, giving a little sniff of disapproval but voicing no further objection. After a brief period of tension, Megatron eased back into his seat.
The flight was long, more so because the silence made it awkward. Megatron was not one for small talk, and neither was Soundwave, meaning that Rumble and Astrotrain were carrying on some annoying dialogue about pranks they’d pulled. Once or twice Megatron came close to objecting- his former private turned flyer captive, Dead End, was apparently the source of great mirth for Astrotrain- but he knew a rise was what the shuttle wanted and he wasn’t inclined to give it to him.
It was properly night by the time they arrived in Vos. Astrotrain’s cabin was windowless, so Rumble’s first view was when they were stepping off onto the balcony of the Winglord’s Palace. The CO gave a punched-out gasp, his optics aperturing to their widest, staring down at the beautiful vista of their planet below. Megatron hadn’t appreciated it the first time, and was still not keen on looking this time, either. He was quite happy to gaze at the solid marble floor beneath his pedes after the tank-churning trip in Astrotrain instead of ogling the suicidal drop to the solid ground five miles below them.
“It’s incredible,” Rumble stepped closer to one of the broken palisades, trying to get a good look. “The Sea of Rust looks so tiny from up here! Look, there’s Crystal City, there’s Tarn, there’s Kaon—”
“Be careful,” Soundwave murmured, uneasily, and placed a hand on Rumble’s shoulder. He gently pulled him back from the edge of the dock, peering over it with the most emotion that Megatron had seen him display. He was worried, hovering, and keeping a very tight grip on Rumble’s shoulder as if he were worried a strong breeze would blow the minibot right over the edge.
Conjunx amica? Megatron had seen them in the mines. It was weird for a standard-class ‘bot and a minibot to be amica, especially in threes, but he supposed it was technically possible. It would explain why Soundwave had nepotismed the completely combat-unfit Rumble into a communications officer position in Quasar Canyon; had he been trying to protect Frenzy and Rumble by getting them posted there?
After a moment, shapes began to move from within the palace. Starscream was first, slow and plodding, his heavy cloak swaying behind him. It had been festooned with even more strings of gold and jewels than Megatron remembered, ornamental cords of braided precious metal to signify his office. His molded horns were longer, and the ruff of fur and feather around his neck bristled with upturned fangs, like that of a herding cyberdog defending against wild turbofoxes. The train of his cloak gave an audible scrape as it walked, trailing with razor-sharp teeth. Skywarp and Thundercracker were right behind him, bedecked in gleaming cloaks of their own.
Other warriors spilled out around them in formation. Their multicolored optics gleamed wickedly in the dark. Megatron recognized, from the pack, the flier who had taken Long Haul captive; her hot red gaze was cautious and reproachful. Wounds he hadn’t thought about in decacycles suddenly seemed to sting; his knee had been fully repaired, and yet just remembering that night in Quasar Canyon made it throb.
She had murdered Long Haul’s mechs, innocent ‘bots just doing their job. She and her soldiers had murdered Sparkheap and Jumble, mechs so harmless they’d been put in Quasar Canyon just because their incompetence or good nature would get killed anywhere else. Megatron hadn’t even been able to attend their funerals.
“Soundwave?” Rumble’s voice shook slightly. It broke Megatron from his thoughts, and he glanced back at his fellow Decepticons. Rumble had shifted back, quailing behind Soundwave’s leg like a frightened mechanimal. Soundwave had one hand set on his helm, body defensively turned to shield him. His unoccupied fist was clenched. His frame stood taut and ready.
“It’s alright,” Soundwave soothed, softly. Megatron didn’t need to be an outlier to tell he wasn’t certain that was the truth. “This meeting: is merely diplomacy.”
There were about two or three dozen flyers when the procession was all finished; their wings and claws and teeth were all sharpened, their bodies clinking and clacking with gruesome trophies. This, Megatron assumed, was his honor guard, the highest ranking mechs and the most ferocious warriors. He recognized Starscream’s bulky green doorguard; lurking somewhere in the back so they could loom ominously was a handful of shuttles, including the pristine-white doctor Jetfire.
A little show of power, but Megatron was certain they intended nothing more to stand around and look mean. Starscream did have a flair for ostentatious ferocity.
“Welcome to Vos, Colonel Soundwave,” Starscream’s tone was light and airy. “I believe we have something for you.”
He stood aside; Skywarp and Thundercracker shifted back, and all of the flyers settled into attention. From the depths of the Vosian Palace, tentative and uncertain, emerged a little red-and-black minibot.
“Soundwave!” She exclaimed. Her cautious steps became a full-on, out and out sprint. Soundwave’s entire body immediately slackened of tension; he dropped to a knee, throwing open his arms in anticipation of her embrace. She ran at him, colliding with an intense hug.
“No love for Rumble?” Rumble asked, face screwing up in a grin, and she gave a wordless exclamation of surprise to see him. Soundwave looped an arm around him, cradling them both to his chest without so much as a sound. His visor dimmed; Megatron wasn’t sure if he was trembling, or his chassis was shaking from how hard the two minibots were squeezing him.
“Touching, isn’t it?”
It was remarkable how Starscream could be so quiet when he wanted to; Megatron was so transfixed by the spectacle he hadn’t heard him approach.
“Indeed,” Megatron said, side-eyeing him, not wanting to completely remove his vision from Soundwave and his minibot duo. “You didn’t torture her, did you?”
“We have higher standards than that.” Starscream gave a haughty sniff. “So, no.”
Megatron gave a little antagonized grunt. “Astrotrain gave me some colorful anecdotes about him and Dead End.”
Starscream waved a servo, visible only as a slight ripple in his cloak. “They were playing.”
“The way a cybercat plays with a glitch-mouse,” Megatron riposted. “Don’t let Astrotrain near Dead End anymore.” He turned fully towards Starscream, pumping air through his heat exchangers, feeling a sudden tension in his chassis. He held out his servo. “These are for you.”
Starscream, bemused, held out his spidery claws. He tilted his head when a couple of fat, uncut rubies spilled into his grip.
“And what are these?” He inquired.
“Rubies,” Megatron grunted. “I need to cut them for you before they’ll look like what you’re used to; they don’t look like much now, but they will when they’re finished.”
“Thank you?” Starscream hedged, evidently unsure of the gift’s form and function. He pocketed most, but held one up for inspection. “They are enormous; what were you intending I do with them?”
“They’re a… proposal gift.” Megatron finally supplied, resisting any impulse to fidget. Squirming around would compromise his position, his appearance of authority. “An official declaration of ‘I do’, if you go in for that sort of sentiment. Which I usually do not. But I thought an exception was in order.”
Starscream gave him an odd look, one Megatron couldn’t quite place. Before either of them could go on, Megatron’s attention was grabbed by the trio of ‘Cons.
For a moment, Megatron couldn’t figure out what was happening— it looked like Frenzy was crawling into Soundwave’s chest, until he realized that Soundwave’s chest was some sort of storage compartment, and Frenzy’s alt mode was some sort of lumpy rectangle designed to fit in there. She curled up, content; Rumble hesitated a beat or two, but he folded and clambered in, shortly sealed in behind Soundwave’s chest-glass.
“Primus below, he’s a tunnel queen,” Megatron realized, not meaning to speak aloud but doing so anyway. In retrospect, it seemed obvious; the hollow space in his chest cavity should’ve immediately given it away. “They’re his children.”
“As in, physical reproduction, code recombination, that sort of thing?” Starscream made a face. “You’re allowed to do that? I suppose ‘Colonel’ is a high enough rank to be allowed to breed, but still… the only ones allowed to reproduce on Vos were the Winglord’s family and their chosen mates. Especially after the war…”
“It has nothing to do with his rank— it was before he was a colonel, before he had any rank.” Megatron murmured, lips pursed into a thin line. Primus made the bulk of the Transformers, new ones bubbling from hotspots on the surface of Cybertron, but accidents and death happened frequently in the mines under the Functionist government and the planet only produced a new miner once every few vorns. With increasing demand and quotas to reach, it was easier, faster, more efficient to also have a queen who bred and nursed a new generation down in the tunnels— a breeding mech could have six new fully-trained mechs from gestation to adulthood in the time it took Vector Sigma to squeeze out one.
It also meant the queen in question was often- and repeatedly- impregnated against their will. Most frequently by the overseers, who were considered to have better-quality genetic material than the average miner. It was a thankless, hellish existence— as a result, regular miners like Megatron had come to develop something of a reverence for the queens, making them work shorter shifts (because of course they still had to work) and topping up their energon allotments through donation.
No wonder Soundwave fled the mines to become a gladiator. It was counter-intuitive, but that life was probably safer for his progeny than sending them to work themselves to death in the tunnels, and a good bit less strenuous on his frame. Rumble and Frenzy were probably around four or five hundred years old, on the cusp of biological adulthood for Transformers— it seemed likely they were his last litter from his time in the mines.
Guilt pricked Megatron, and a little bit of empathetic sorrow, but he smoothed it over. When he controlled the Decepticons, there would be no more of that. No more overseers. No more long shifts. No more forced breeders. No more Functionism, no more corruption…
Soundwave began to approach them. His hollow chest cavity was now fit to the bursting; Megatron could faintly see Rumble’s flank pressed up against the frosted glass. He dedicated the tiniest thread of processing power to wonder if it was comfortable or claustrophobic, being squished inside another ‘bot in concert with four or five other siblings. He had been planet-born, and had never had that experience for himself.
Skyquake shifted to stand in front of Starscream before Soundwave could get too close, to head off any attack, but the Winglord waved her down.
“Frenzy: is in a state of adequate physical repair,” Soundwave trilled, laying a servo over his chest. “Soundwave: will consider her safe return acceptable and unworthy of retribution, provided the Winglord’s assistance in the removal of High Lord-Commander Straxus.”
“My plans have not changed in that regard,” Starscream replied, smoothly. It must’ve been the truth, because Soundwave gave a small nod. “I will assist you, as I promised. And, without further adieu, I bid you official welcome to Vos, or, rather, Vos under Winglord Starscream’s leadership. You are allowed to wander wherever you wish, given that all four of you are rather confined to the palace grounds on pain of a deadly plunge from the lower atmosphere, but while you are within our walls I will heavily frown upon stealing any of our things, roughhousing with my soldiers, or otherwise doing damage to the estate.”
“Compliance,” Soundwave intoned.
“Of course,” Megatron nodded slowly.
“We weren’t expecting you so late, so I’m afraid the festivities will wait until tomorrow.” Starscream gestured to his troops, which straightened up, snapped their wings in some sort of flyer salute, and tromped back inside without further complaint. Skyquake and another ‘bot- one whom Megatron did not recognize but shared her construction down to the last detail, besides a difference in paint- did not move. Neither did Thundercracker or Skywarp. The four were his highest honor guards; that made sense.
What didn’t was how Jetfire lingered in the palace doorway, giving Starscream a hesitant, mournful look. It struck Megatron, a superior officer always looking for subordination, as odd; he filed that away for later.
“Why don’t I show you to your chambers for the night?” Starscream interrupted. He gave Megatron a playful look, a fang dimpling his lip. “You will find it more comfortable, more hospitable, than a cell.”
“Or the berths they gave us at Quasar Canyon,” Megatron agreed, with a grunt. His mind turned to Crankcase; he couldn’t lead his way out of a straight tunnel, much less the entire Quasar Canyon garrison.
“The companionship may be better,” Starscream hinted again, with a little more impatience.
This time Megatron did not miss the insinuation, as thick as his helm and shallow his knowledge of flirting was. He tried to ignore the sudden incremental increase in his core systems temperature, and most certainly did not allow it to get to the point where his cooling fans switched on. His gaze slid somewhere safer, away from Starscream’s evocative grin, landing at a neutral point at his hunched shoulders.
“Is that so,” Megatron mumbled, while Skywarp tried to keep a straight face and Rumble let out a muffled guffaw from inside Soundwave’s chest. “Take me to my quarters, then.”