Two black shapes, like ghostly arrows, darted across a late-afternoon sky, stark against their sallow backdrop.
"With this, we're slowly raising the ranks, BB!" Starscream voiced blithely as they glided into their makeshift arc fortress, transforming and touching down upon the metallic landing bay into a refined kneel. The larger jet simply skidded to a halt, leaving the slighter transformer in its dust, shrieking tires scouring the once flawless surface. Starscream fanned the remnants from his optics with a sigh, hands on his hips as he strolled to his partner's side. "Watch how you're landing! I've told you… don't mess up my wax-job," he huffed, brushing at his still shining arms and thighs for emphasis. Leaving that hanging, he looked up, business in his stare, "Is that… is that 'matter' still intact?" if his nose garnered the ability, the flawless muzzle would have wrinkled.
"Roger." The hulking tank-turned-jet replied, deep voice echoing with finality, as the giant transformed. He held out a vial, its lower regions occupied by a translucent liquid which swilled as he jiggled it, as if to demonstrate the lack of fissures there.
"Ahh. And we got it all gathered before those idiots even set off from port," the air commander turned up his hidden nose at the two smart-talking jet-bots, Dirge and Thrust, who had settled down to a game of cybertronian block stacker (mere cyberling play), whilst Dirge boasted about how he was going to knock up some real taste into the Predacons evening meal of energon cubes and electrolysed oil. One thing that Starscream could tolerate about those simpletons was the skill that they could put into a simple feast. Simple brains for simple banquets, the air commander quipped to himself, strutting along with his thrusters packing hot air.
"Ahhh~! That's good~!" he continued on, happily, "Then, let's take the stuff to Megastorm, first," they walked sided by side, Starscream chattering bullishly along the way, "It's best to cosy up to him right now… Galvatron hasn't been himself lately…" he mulled, holding his muffler-clad chin. Galvatron was a great warrior, one of the very greatest the entire fleet of Cybertron had ever known and feared, and, no doubt, his power was devastating, but also… there was something else, besides that brutality harboured within the potent giant. Something that did not quite panic the jet-former, but a sentiment that certainly unsettled him somewhat… couldn't shed a flood light on it, but…
"Either way, it's best to go to 'little brother' and scratch his back first, don't you think?"
BB pondered nothing, but gave time for it. He didn't want to force the smaller jet into anything unwise. Reckless thought led to prison. That brought suffering like flies to a carcass of flesh. A suffering and a fear that could rob you of your voice.
He gave pause, "…Roger…"
As always, Starscream pinpointed and considered his partner's unvoiced doubt, "Hm. Well, Megastorm is the first rung, right? It's just as the training room - it's like the HammerStall ladder. It's not wise to scale two rungs at a time. Always start on the lower, then…" he demonstrated with deft black hands, as though he were climbing, the precise mechanisms in his arms and shoulders barely raising a sound, "keep going, like so." He turned a yellow glance up at the larger predacon, who stared down, voicing nothing but giving his partner his undivided attention. His unquestioned loyalty.
"And then force them to… budge up and make way for the top." Starscream's clenched fists opened out like exploding firework blooms, before letting them fall to his hips, "That's where I want to be."
BB nodded once, looking at the tiny vial in his hand, and then towards the door to the predacon leader and second in commander's quarters, "Roger."
"Eh? Of course, I respect both of them, Lord Galvatron particularly, but…" he looked at his hands, and then clenched them tight, "I have my own path. Starscream, Hellscream, was meant for great, great things. I'll do anything to get there. No sacrifice is too great, no hardship too trying, no fear unconquerable—ARA!" He slammed into something.
Pushing free, the air commander let his eyes travel up a strapping torso (one foreign one to his own), a venerable, rigid, frame. One bulging with the dullest and then the brightest of colours, and a strange under layer of cybertronian flesh that was somehow 'smoother', and 'softer' than the hard-as-diamonds metal scales above it: A 'side-effect' to adapting to this planet's atmosphere.
The Emperor of Destruction himself. Galvatron.
He looked up at Galvatron like an ill-equipped hiker looks at a high, snow-capped mount. He slapped up a two finger salute, heavy heels clicking together with soldierly grace, "Lord Galvatron!"
Aqua eyes glared down at him like shards of hoarfrost, and a moment of quivering panic set through the slighter predacon, a tingle of ice coursing up his spine as the gargantuan warrior stepped closer to him, the leader's mere shadow threatening to crush him. A black hand drew out, the smoother-seeming digits sharpened into talons— Starscream forced himself into stock-stillness. Heheardheheardheheardheheard—and the Emperor plucked the vial from BB's grasp.
Starscream's eyes sparked, "Uh."
"This is it?" Galvatron rumbled through gritted teeth, regarding the vial, "You took samples from each of species you encountered." What could have been questions were statements.
"Yes. Every single species we encountered – even what the computer deemed 'rodents'" Starscream answered formally, before his face distorted into something that resembled nausea, "It wasn't a pleasant task, my Lord, but we got it done!"
The predacon leader nodded once, optics never leaving the liquid, "And you covered each maximal transformation."
Again, Starscream nodded, turned to BB, and nodded once more, chorusing a "Roger!" Each Maximal, and then some. It was a cruel, vile task! Why not send them off to hunt down and bomb each maximal, flush them out of the forest like, well… 'rodents'? Of course, they had tried that countless times. It was a fool's errand. Like finding a single discoloured but working chip at the heart of Cybertron itself.
"Understood." The Emperor rumbled his thanks, eyes lifting briefly from the vial and its natural contents, to the two jet-formers, "I am content with your efforts. Good work." They were the simple, short words of a commander seldom pleased by his underlings. It was a rarity, and the words came out struggling, yet despite that, seemed to breathe life into even the solemn BB, whose optics brightened.
"You are dismissed until further notice." He finished, about-turning. The gargantuan form diminishing into the light of his chamber, leaving both jet-formers to stare after him, awed yet still searching. Just what did their leaders have in store for the Maximals, which required such foul research into Gaia's species population? They both stood there for quite some time, as though they expected to be called up for service that very minute, until the slighter of the two grew tired of waiting, and tired of scheming. He was altogether drained.
"Well, well, I'm starving! I thought I'd lose my appetite with that collection, but a breath of homeland air really sparked up my gut again! Let's see if we can bribe some energon delicacies off that idiot Dirge, hm?" Starscream voiced finally, giving his jagged chin a final mulled rub, and then guiding the big transformer away by one winged shoulder, "Don't worry yourself, friend. I'll do the talking."
***
"They got it, huh?" An emerald and ebony predacon asked of the cerise giant as he placed both palms up for his brother's offering. Galvatron bore his clenched teeth, gave a gruff grunt, and placed the vial in his sibling's hands. He gave a shake of the head, red horns glimmering, before he leaned back against a cybernetic pillar that was a foundation defence for their ship computer's brain.
Megastorm looked at the liquid and swilled it, seemingly rapt and revolted. He then smirked, ebony face crunching into glee, "Kuku... I bet that fool of a jet Starscream lost his appetite collecting this..."
Galvatron growled, but voiced nothing. He guessed that Megastorm had not fashioned the task in order to appal the air commander. The Emperor did not prompt the Duke that it was better to endear yourself to your underlings rather than garner their hatred. It was a lesson the brat would be forced to learn over time.
As if sensing the lecture, the younger of the brothers stopped smirked, and stared into the clear liquor reflectively.
It had been pure chance to have witnessed it; a true wonder that he had seen it so intensely, given how minor the signs were. Still; Megastorm noted these things down. The small details, deliberation and calculation were what secured victory, rather than raw, unbridled desire and fire-power. He cast scarlet eyes to his elder sibling in some kind of futile accusation, and paced towards their mother computer.
It had been when they scoured through some of the surveillance reels that they had set up about the woodland of Gaia, more exactly, around the forest, plains and high-mounts of the little planet. He had been told at that time by his venerable brother that, through his now acute senses, a duo of mammal females, those which Lio Convoy adapted form of, had come into what the age-old Gaia computer had deemed, "heat".
Megastorm smirked at that. It was an odd, but somehow fitting word for it. Cybertronians did not have a set schedule for this period, as hatchlings could be bred at any point in a millennia, yet eons ago it was not unheard of for females, and even a faction of the more forward males to excrete their own 'perfume' as a 'lure', if their bodies called for that workout of surplus energy. But, it was always controlled, always harnessed. They were not animals, after all.
However, the autobot descendents in Convoy's unit had undergone a radical change in body, instinct and mind. They were not so easily labelled.
Megastorm had witnessed it through those surveillance tapes. He had witnessed the usually composed and earnest leader of the Maximals waver in his duty; struggle to keep his new, semi-organic body under control. Amidst that wild bravado and power was vulnerability, and the predacons made it their business to exploit any Maximal weakness that they bore witness to. It was the scent in the air that had provided that weak spot; the scent of "heat". Of course, it hadn't been strong enough, given the vast difference of the species, and Lio Convoy had overcome it after a while, never quite surrendering to his raw impulses, but that didn't matter. Megastorm had seen it. Galvatron confirmed what he had witnessed. He'd gotten ideas. Then THE idea.
The tank-turned-beast-former placed the vial in a compartment of the core computer, closing the latch firmly. With the right adjustments… they would be helpless. So far gone that they'd have to somehow get release, or simply burst... Megastorm guffawed to himself, looking over at his older brother who glared into nothing, and simmered. The tank-former clenched his teeth beneath his lips, cheeks flushing violet with heat. Big brother didn't approve.
The younger predacon frowned, pouting heartily against his brother's love for head-on conflict and battle, in favour of his own plans. Galvatron was a fool, anyway! Never thinking about how he'd get to the big picture…!
Even so, he did admire his brother. In fact; he loved the big lug, feared him at times, after all; he was no reasonable machine. The emerald-plated younger brother paced over to the glowering predacon, arms open wide.
"Nii-chan, you'll see, they'll be defenceless! Then I—we—you and I, Emperor Galvatron will emerge victorious! You'll see it, it'll work!" he chirped, endearing himself, beaming at the rose-clad warrior as he plucked the vial from the chamber in the computer where it had been set. It returned in the form of a beaker, with a filter placed atop it. When Megastorm first snapped it free, the hem of the filter unearthed slightly, and he gasped, wheeling and peddling back with the beaker still in his hands, trying not to inhale the air. He could not resist a faint sniffle, and he heaved a sigh as his brother stalked to his side; content that the formula had no discernable scent, or pleased that the liquid had not leaked into their atmosphere. It had been treated with carefully engineered Cybertronian DNA. To the Maximals, it would be a formidable concoction.
Galvatron stomped to his side, broad, bulking arms still folded tight over his chest. He sniffed the air, and a nose which could now wrinkle did so, "Hrhn."
The larger of the two clenched his fists, gritted teeth grinding, "I loathe this underhanded approach, Megastorm…"
The younger brother winced and the rebuke, and looked at the other with beseech in his eyes, "'Nii-chan! It's not underhanded!" he searched his data banks for a motive to affect the daring dragon, "After all… we still need to get it to their base – it should be guarded, don't you think?" Galvatron closed his eyes to the whining in his little brother's voice. How it irked him. How it frustrated him that it swayed him so.
Continuing on, the calculating younger beast former brightened, "Now, we need to somehow get this into the Maximal base," he beamed, holding up the beaker like it was his first hatchling, "The wisest course of action would be to target their recharge chambers. Evening is approaching – it's the best bet."
"You forget the Magnaboss components." Galvatron prompted, stepping up to the motherboard and scattering his gigantic digits across the keys, bringing up a hologram of the brigade, Lio Junior, Skywarp, and Santon, "Barring the cu—the young lion, I don't recall the two other beasts sharing the Naviship."
Megastorm waved it off, "Yes, yes! But, alone they are no match for 'nii-chan, right? You can blast their afterburners with the others when they are under the influence of this~!" the mixture of maximal 'love juice' was lofted again. It seemed to give off a faint blue glow.
The Emperor basked in his younger brother's praise. He was not above seeking the little scheming brat's approval, a grave flaw in his astounding design, but he didn't consider it just then. His gritted grimace melted into a clenched grin, "I see." Apparently satisfied, he then placed mighty hands upon jutting hips, "Issue an order to Starscream. Have him report here. He is our most esteemed and rational soldier. I trust only him in such an…" he sneered, "underhanded assault."
Megastorm snapped a salute, and outright galloped the length of his brother's chamber, out of the sliding door, and towards the lower rank quarters.
Galvatron watched him leave, smirking at the sudden spark that had been thrust into his younger sibling. It was good to see him excited. Good to see him act rash and brazen, just as his Emperor Brother. He felt a stir in his lower abdomen, but dismissed it as a trivial semi-organic function. This new body was a nuisance at times, but all things considered, it served him well. He paced towards a window, looking out into Gaia's warm, late afternoon. His aqua optics glittered like hot-springs at a boil,
"Let's see how you cope, Convoy… when you want to fuck everything that moves."