A/N: My first thought when Megatron got left behind in Nonsense World was, "What will happen when he meets this world's Starscream?" And so this sprang into being. My intention is to write it in a series of sort of vignettes, which I will pick at in between other projects, so be on the lookout! I'm not 100% sure what's going to happen in future vignettes, so I gave the work a mature rating to be on the safe side.
Also, for various reasons, I thought it might be interesting if Functionist Universe Starscream was forged Starscream. Stranger things have happened.
He should have been listening. Normally, he would have, but there was the whole business with the victims of the riots in Rodion, the increasing pressures from Two of Twelve's faction, and of course their allies in Tetrahex, who just couldn't understand why they weren't fighting! And then there were the sparks that someone had managed to appropriate from the Council, and Anode kept asking what they should do with them because she was pretty sure that she knew where they could get ahold of some weird collector's stash of sentio metallico, but should they wait for that or just build some bodies? And half their entourage had been down with holoflu last solar cycle, including Megatron, and then he'd had to do twice as much work to make up for the time they lost to that, which meant that he hadn't gotten even half the recharge he should have lately.
So, it wasn't his fault if he wasn't paying as much attention as he should have been while Clicker was explaining to them where they were going next and whom they were meeting there. All he caught was something about a prince of somewhere whom the council had constructed quite recently and placed on a throne of some place whose name Megatron didn't recognize. Apparently, he was proving more volatile than the council had hoped, and Terminus had suggested that this might be a sign he was at that age when he could most easily be persuaded to reject his pre-programmed worldviews.
Megatron didn't really remember the rest of the conversation, but he was certain—absolutely positive—that no one ever told him this prince's name. Because he definitely would have remembered that.
Of course, he also might have had some small warning if they had traveled by normal routes—might have recognized some of the surroundings, might have put them together with the words "infamously vain" and "bit of a diva" that Clicker used while describing their appointment—but they'd teleported in and then traveled underground. If he'd seen the golden spires and the glass domes jutting out of the cliff faces, and he might have felt some niggling of suspicion.
As things were, it wasn't until he was standing in the private meeting chamber and someone approached the blue, white, and red mech sitting on the stupidly ornate thing that Megatron couldn't bring himself to call a throne in the front of the room and said, "Megatron the writer to see you, my lord," that pieces started falling into place like that Earth puzzle game that half his troops had gotten so enthralled with back in the day.
Because then the mech looked up, expression haughty and only half-interested, and his optics met Megatron's, and the old warlord knew—he just knew. It didn't matter that he looked completely different, or that he was several million years too young. Back of his neck, tips of his fingers, edge of his spark; that was Starscream.
"Megatron, sir? Are you alright?"
Clicker was nudging him, but Megatron couldn't reply, his mouth still hanging open as he stared at the mech in front of him.
"I might have guessed; the mighty Megatron is little more than a senile, old miner with a bad case of lockjaw," the foreign Starscream sneered, his voice grating through said miner's audials in that unique way it always did. "Either say your piece or get out of my palace already!"
"Megatron?" Terminus whispered, also nudging his comrade.
A strange, high-pitched whining noise escaped the miner's gaping mouth, rather like the noise a rusty balloon might make if someone was letting the air out of it very, very slowly. Terminus glanced back and forth between his one-time student and the prince. He had no idea what had tripped Megatron up, but he knew that they needed to make this meeting work, and the arch of the young jet's brows said that it wasn't going to if he didn't do something fast.
"Er… I'm afraid Megatron is simply struck by your immense beauty, Lord Starscream," the old mech invented hastily, trusting that Megatron would play along.
Starscream's crimson eyebrows shot up. On Terminus's left side, Megatron's jaw finally clamped shut with an ominous clang.
"I am suffering no such affliction," he growled.
"I should hope not," Starscream sniffed. "I must inform you that I am not in the habit of entertaining geriatrics."
"With a glossa like that, I'm surprised you entertain anyone," Megatron snapped back before he could stop himself.
He heard Clicker loose a small gasp, one of the two mechs on either side of Starscream (Megatron was willing to bet all of Cyclonus's fortune it was Skywarp) snickered, and the young prince reeled back, blinking rapidly. Then, he steeled himself, and his purple optics narrowed, his helm tipping back so that he could look down his nose at the both of them.
"You're quite bold for an industrial class," he remarked before turning to the mech who had snickered earlier. "Skywarp,"—Cyclonus's fortune was safe, then— "if you've got nothing better to do, then find some refreshment for our guests."
"What!?" Skywarp started back at the sudden address. "Why do I have to do it? There are, like, a thousand servants just standing around doing nothing!"
"Because you've been pissing me off all day," his trine leader snapped back at him. "So either find refreshments for the horny miners or I'll let them refresh themselves on you!"
Skywarp rolled his optics and then popped out of sight with a flash of violet. On Starscream's other side, the third seeker (Megatron wasn't sure that they were seekers in this universe, but he couldn't help thinking of them as such) gave a little sigh and shifted slightly.
"Did you want to say something, Thundercracker?" Starscream asked him.
"Nothing, Lord Starscream," the larger mech replied in that "I am so done with this" tone that only Thundercracker could achieve.
"I didn't think so." The prince sat back in his throne and crossed one leg over the other.
Megatron felt like he had been hit by one of Brainstorm's more creative inventions. He looked around the room wildly, half-expecting (and seriously wishing) that an alternate universe Soundwave might materialize in one of the corners.
It wasn't that he had never considered the possibility that there might be a Starscream in this universe (he'd already run into a couple of mechs that he'd vaguely known on his own Cybertron, after all), he'd just never imagined their first encounter to be anything like this—never thought he would look so different, or be so young!
"Do you have something against my wall hangings?" Starscream demanded, and Megatron turned back to him at last.
He did, actually—the things were hideous!—but that was beside the point. He needed to compose himself. He needed to get this right, and not just because they wanted this arrogant young prince's support in their revolution.
"I apologize, your highness," he said. "You bear an uncanny resemblance to someone else I once knew, and I'm afraid I lost myself to the surprise."
Starscream snorted. "When in your miserably long life could you have possibly met anyone even close to my calibre?"
"Last time I visited a recycling plant," Megatron replied before he could stop himself. He closed his eyes with a groan as the seeker once more reeled back in shock. Clearly, this universe's Starscream was not accustomed to being insulted so openly, and clearly, old habits died harder than Megatron had thought.
To everyone's relief, Skywarp popped back into the room then, a tray of extravagant-looking drinks balanced precariously on one servo. Megatron didn't miss the disapproving look that Terminus shot him when he downed one in a single gulp and reached for another.
A message pinged over their private comm channel.
::Are you alright?:: the older mech wanted to know.
Megatron frowned, trying to think of any way he could possibly phrase in ten words or less the full complexity of this situation.
::He used to be my second-in-command. We used to frag.:: he settled for.
He didn't have to look at the other mech to know that his mouth had just dropped into an "oh"; he could feel the bewilderment rolling off him.
::You…and him?:: came the reply a few kliks later.
This time, Megatron sipped at his energon without responding. How? How could he ever explain what had happened between himself and Starscream—the insane whirlwind of concupiscent rapture, agony and frustration that had been life with that stupidly splendid seeker? How did he explain that this was simultaneously the mech he dreamed of waking up next to every time he recharged, and the reason he woke up swinging if anyone roused him unexpectedly? And how could words ever express the crushing shame and guilt he felt any time Starscream's face flitted through his memory?
Over 100 billion lives were on his servos, and somehow none had stained so dark as the only one he could never bring himself to actually take.
"Now—Megatron, was it?" Starscream was saying, pulling the old warlord back to his current universe. "I've read some of your promotional materials, and I must say, I'm thoroughly underwhelmed. Did you really think that this was enough to start a revolution?"
Megatron allowed himself a deep intake before he replied.
"We are not aiming to start a revolution in the traditional sense," he explained. "There will be no guns, no violent overthrow of the current regime. We seek only to open the optics of Cybertronians everywhere until it becomes impossible for things to stay the same—peace through empathy."
"Sounds weak," Starscream sniffed, snapping his digits at Thundercracker.
The other seeker unsubspaced a datapad, which Starscream accepted and began scrolling through, curling his pedes up underneath him on his throne so that he looked like a sparkling relaxing in a favorite reading chair.
"This part here," he said, pointing to a section of the datapad and starting to read. "'There may be those among you who feel that your weapons are your burden—that because you wield them, you must use them to break the walls of this prison. To you I say that this would be little more than an extending of the prison's walls. The Fucntionist Council does not believe a mech with guns in his servos could use those servos instead to lift his brethren….'" He trailed off, scowling at the screen in front of him.
"What about it?" Megatron wanted to know, though he already knew. That was the look Starscream got when he had just realized that he actually agreed with Megatron and was looking for a new line of attack.
"It's stupid," the seeker snapped, looking up.
Ah, yes. That one had been popular when Starscream was younger. If he couldn't out-logic Megatron, he would just insult him.
"So, you aren't interested in joining our cause?" Megatron pressed.
"Well, hold on, I didn't say that," Starscream said, raising a digit to his lips.
Megatron bit his own glossa to distract himself from wondering if those lips would taste the same in this world.
"I think this could be interesting," the seeker prince said after a moment.
On either side of Megatron, the tension fell out of Terminus and Clicker's frames, but their leader was too well-versed in Starscream's behavior patterns to relax so soon.
"However—" Here it came… "—I think your little group could use some different leadership."
And there it was.
He couldn't do this anymore.
"We're leaving," Megatron announced.
He saw the shocked look on Starscream's face just before he turned and headed toward the door. His entourage looked back and forth between the flustered prince and the retreating philosopher before scrambling after their leader. They didn't ask any questions until they were out in the long, gaudy hallway once more.
"Sir, this could be a great opportunity!" Clicker protested. "Shouldn't we at least try to negotiate?"
"If I stay in that room with him one more klik, I'm going to shove his over-inflated helm through the back of that stupid chair," Megatron growled.
"That kind of fragging, eh?" Terminus muttered in an amused undertone somewhere near his shoulder.
Megatron shot him a glare.
"We can find some other over-polished royal to support us, or…" he trailed off when he heard a familiar voice calling out from behind him.
"Wait! Wait, wait… Frag, why are your legs so long!?"
Megatron stopped mid-stride, not quite believing his audial sensors as the distinct sound of a pair of thruster-heeled pedes came scurrying down the long hallway toward them. A dainty, clawed servo grabbed hold of his shoulder and attempted to tug him around. That failing, the seeker made a noise of frustration and waited until the old miner turned to face him.
"Was there some snide comment you forgot to make?" Megatron asked, glaring down at him. There wasn't as much of a height difference as he was used to, but it was still enough.
"There's no need for all that," Starscream huffed, shifting awkwardly beneath the older mech's gaze. "I just… I didn't…"
He was wringing his servos now and avoiding Megatron's optics altogether, which gave the former warlord cause to raise his eyebrows because this was an attitude he had only ever seen Starscream assume once or twice in his whole life. It was what he did when…
"I'm sorry, okay?!" the Seeker finally snapped. "I didn't mean all that stuff, it just came out. I don't know why."
Megatron reset his optics several times, and then his audial sensors. Just in case.
"I didn't… I don't actually want…" Starscream continued. "I don't actually want to take power from you, I just thought that, as a figurehead, I might be able to reach a different demographic than you, and… Have I met you somewhere before?"
A smile quirked Megatron's lips for just the briefest moment, and his shoulders relaxed. Young Starscream was a shockingly honest Starscream, apparently.
He motioned for his entourage to give them space. Clicker opened his mouth to protest, but Terminus took the little 'bot by the shoulder and steered him away down the hall without hesitation.
"It is a good idea," the miner conceded when they were alone. "As a matter of fact, it's the proposition that I had intended to extend from the beginning, but you need to be 100% on board with my ideas if you're going to do it."
Starscream made a face.
"I just don't understand why you're so adamant about this whole peaceful resistance thing! I mean… War is brutal, I get it, but do you have any idea..." The seeker trailed off, working his jaw back and forth as if it might physically pain him to finish whatever thought he'd been going for. "The Functionist council deserves worse," he finally snarled.
"Our aim is not for vengeance against those who have done wrong, but true freedom, both mind and body, for those whom they have wronged. Nothing will change in our society until the people themselves change, and no amount of force can ever change a spark," Megatron explained, feeling the truth of the words burn in his own spark as he stared at the mech in front of him.
"Is that the wisdom you've learned after however many millions of years you've been rusting away on this planet?" Starscream groused.
"Yes," he replied emphatically. "Yes, Starscream, it is."
The seeker sighed and rubbed the heel of his servo against his forehelm, like Megatron was making him tired and exasperated.
"Fine," he relented at last. "We can try it your way. Whatever it takes to stick it to those council fraggers. But seriously, have I met you before? Even in passing?"
"No, you haven't," Megatron assured him, and Starscream frowned at him thoughtfully.
There was a part of Megatron that wanted to ask the young prince what he personally had against the Functionists—it sounded like a bit more than adolescent rebellion—but there was also a part of him that knew it would be so much harder not to strap on a fusion cannon and blast down the door of their fatuous meeting chambers if he learned that they'd done something to this younger and so much more innocent version of his seeker.
And he was so very young and innocent compared to the Starscream that he was used to. Megatron knew that it wasn't the same, but he had a feeling that it just might work—he just might manage to do right by Starscream this time around.
"Of course," the seeker mused, tapping a digit to his chin in thought. "I wouldn't mind if you were to make me your second-in-command, name me successor to the whole operation, if you know what I… Megatron? Megatron, where are you going!?"
But, of course, it wouldn't be Starscream if it was easy, now would it?