When things got hard, Megatron had a bath. A soak in CR fluid, his rubber ducky floating happily nearby- that made him as happy as a pig in muck.
Usually it did. But it was now the 24th of December and the Beast Wars had still not been resolved. He was still stuck on this alien world, the Maximals were still around and the Agenda was still unfulfilled. Just two days ago, the Maximals built a small outpost close to Predacon territory borders and the attempt at destroying it had been thwarted.
He was failing.
But what was he supposed to do? Give in? Surrender? That… that might seem tempting at times, but it'd be wrong.
So what to do?
MEGATRON
He looked up, uneasily. "Scorponok, if you're interrupting my bath-time again-"
MEGATRON
That wasn't a voice he recognised, and it was being broadcast on short-range internal Predacon radio. What was going on?
THREE GHOSTS SHALL VISIT YOU, IN TURN.
He frowned. This seemed familiar from somewhere.
YOU WILL LISTEN
And with that, the first spectre began to fade slowly into view.
He recognised this one. The mask of a face, the axe, the blood-purple steel- Lord Straxus. Decepticon leader for millions of years, and infamous for a genocidal cleansing of Cybertron's neutrals during the war.
"I am the Past."
"Are you now."
"You use bravado on me, you undersized speck of rust?! Don't you know who I am?!"
"Dead," said Megatron. "In quite embarrassing circumstances too- a head in jar, really."
Straxus pointed to him, a glare in his optics. "And you think you'll be any different? You're stranded on a Primus-forsaken mudball with no way off, all because of an exploration vessel."
Megatron fell silent.
"Pay attention, 'Megatron'."
And the CR Chamber was not there anymore, and the two of them were inside a throne-room at the end days of Straxus' reign. His head floated in its stasis vat, facing down the imposing form of the original Megatron. In a flash, the head was torn from its resting place and crushed flat.
"I tried too hard," said the ghost. "And this is where it got me. First my body was destroyed by the Autobots. And when I tried to usurp Megatron's form, he pushed my mind out! I was forced to take refuge in a duplicate of his form, but his own damn programming had been imprinted on my mind and that shade of his mind suppressed my own! I was a prisoner of Megatron in my own head!"
"I do have some knowledge of Decepticon history, you know. What am I supposed to be getting from this?"
"I was arrogant and I rushed in with schemes I couldn't hope to fulfil. It left me humiliated over and over until I was finally killed." Straxus turned to the Predacon, and his black optics seemed to resemble the eye-holes of a skull. "The same will happen to you, unless you turn from your path. You-"
"Shut up."
"WHAT DID YOU SAY?"
Megatron sneered at him. "You trumped-up little fool! You actually dare to compare your own dull-minded self to me?! My dear Straxus, you had control of the entire planet. You had the Autobots already reduced to a shadowy rebellion for you. And you blew it! All that time lazing around, throwing people into the Smelting Pool if they annoyed you, throwing your considerable weight around…What did you ever achieve?! What was your big goal for the great Decepticon cause?" Megatron turned away in disgust. "Just to purge Cybertron of the Empties, who would've drunk themselves to death for you anyway. Well done!"
"You dare to mock me?" Straxus voice was an enranged death rattle, but Megatron just smiled at it.
"Indeed I do, dear boy!"
"There is more of me in you than you realise, Archforce."
Megatron paused, briefly, and his confident look slipped just slightly. He shook it off.
"That name means nothing to me. Run along now, you dead fool."
Straxus faded from view, and the Predacon found himself back in his bath. Morosely, he picked up his rubber ducky and gave it a squeak. Archforce? He'd had dreams of being a Transformer called Archforce, ones that sort of fit the gaps in his memories. But what of it? The person in those dreams was nothing like him. Best to forget it.
"Deep in thought, are we?"
Megatron's head snapped up.
"Transquito?"
His old comrade was stuck to the ceiling in a crouch, looking downwards with that stern look he always had. For such an efficient and direct person, he did seem to have a slightly theatrical nature.
"The Ghost of Present? You're dead?"
"Not quite, Purplemink."
Megatron winced.
"It is your name."
"It's more of a pseudonym these days. I am Megatron."
"Very well." Transquito leapt down, landing on the far edge of the CR bath. "And what is the status of your mission so far, Megatron?"
He growled. "There have been minor setbacks."
"Like being stranded on an alien planet in an unknown time, no conceivable way off, stuck in a guerrilla war with a Maximal band who keep you in check, and unknown alien figures watching you."
"As I said, minor setbacks."
"Do you even believe that anymore?"
Silence.
"I thought not." Transquito folded his arms. "Do you know how I'm doing? I'm in the same boat, but the situation has deteriorated far quicker than yours is. The original plan was to distract pursuers from your ship, then try and meet up with you on prehistoric Earth; if we reached their first, we carried out the Agenda. We can't do that. It was all up to you. The entire future of the True Path, of the Predacons… all up to you. You're blowing it."
"I can salvage the situation!"
"Can you?"
"I am Megatron!" he roared, rising out of the CR fluid like a wrathful god. "I can and I will! If it's all up to me, then I will surmount the obstacles and achieve the victory our race yearns for! I will not fail!"
"And when the aliens come? The Vok? Maybe even the Oeth?"
Megatron tapped the tyrannosaur-head on his arm. "Let them come."
Transquito faded from view, but there was almost a smile on his face.
Megatron sank back into his bath, feeling utterly beaten. He had been able to dismiss Straxus, but Transquito, his brother-in-arms, his chosen commander of the back-up mission? It had been bluff. He'd believed it when he said it, but now the ghost was gone…
Bluff. All of it. When the aliens came, he had no clue.
"Megatron."
If he'd been organic, that voice would have made him soil himself. A harsh, thunderous snarl that dripped with contempt.
"I am the Future."
The last Ghost was a walking nightmare, a titan of mottled brown and pale green metal, his face a permanent scowl with a jagged set of mandibles for a mouth and a fanged maw set in its gut. Immense, muscular, imposing.
Megatron faltered. "Wh-what-"
"The universe shall come to know me as Shokaract. And you… poor, doomed little tin god. Do you know what your future holds?"
Again the room slipped away to be replaced with a strange vision. This time it was Neo-Kalis on Cybertron, just as Megatron remembered it- a towering cityscape, all bright lights and activity, and all about the hated Maximals walked in a city that used to be a solely Predacon domain.
"Your world, Megatron. But you want it to be different, don't you? You want a world based on that masturbatory celebration of what you perceive to be strength and a pioneering attitude. Predacon honour and philosophy. A whole world run by and for Predacons. How utterly pathetic."
Megatron said nothing.
"But you've already failed. You've ended up here. Beast Wars…" Shokaract sneered. "You're inside a small bubble and you suffer under the delusion that this is an important conflict. You won't succeed in your agenda. You won't usher in a grand new Predacon empire. You'll die at the hands of your enemy, with no allies left and without ever seeing your grand design. You're going to fight for years, you're going to make your meagre little plans and you're going to suffer humiliations and it will all be for nothing."
And the world changed again, and Megatron was standing in gore. It had been one of the Maccadam's Oil Houses, and every Transformer in it had been brutally killed. He was standing just next to a Predacon with half their head torn off.
"This is the future, demagogue. I am coming and I will bring a massacre on Cybertron. I will bring war…"
The world changed and they were flying over a Cybertronian landscape composed of dull grey hab-units and factories and military bases and ports and dull, beaten-down Transformers.
"…and I will bring oppression. To this and the whole universe. A grand celebration of the Predacon mindset, and war against the galaxy for Predacon gain? No. The future holds a Cybertron beaten down and stripped of its past, of its culture, of its dignity, of everything that separates a Transformer from a smart piece of factory machinery. I will bring a nihilism and a death of souls. I will spread it throughout the universe, turning everything unique into a dull void. There will be no Predacon ideology anymore. It'll be stamped out like the vermin mindset it is.
"And you? Nobody will even know who you were. There is no point at all to you even attempting to resist your Maximal opponents because nothing you do will ever matter when I rise."
He trembled, just slightly.
And then he raised his hand and opened fire on the spectre's head.
"NO! I refuse to accept this supernatural chicanery! You-you try to tell me the future is fixed and the Predacon way is inherently dead?! Do you seriously expect me to believe that, you slag-formed piece of Unicron spawn?! I don't know why you are here or where you will come from and I don't give a damn! Just know this- I will never give up. I will fight the Beast Wars and I will win. I will find the Ark and kill Optimus Prime and change the future. I will usher in a glorious new Predacon dawn and make the galaxy kneel at my feet! And you…"
Megatron faced down the impassive spectre and spat. "If you so much as dare touch my Cybertron, I will see your misbegotten circuitry stripped out and your hollow corpse hung up for Tarantulus to play with! Get out of my sight!"
Shokaract looked at him and chuckled slightly as he began to fade. "You will see, in time."
"Piss off."
---
And then he woke up. And though his visitations were fading from memory, one thing remained- the drive and passion to carry out his goals and succeed. He would do it. He would do it to spite them, whoever they were. He would succeed because he was Megatron and that was his right.
"Predacons!" he bellowed, storming out of his bath. "To me! The stench of Maximals near our border is getting unbearable and it's time to eradicate it!"
---
The Vok.
"We have failed. We thought him vulnerable, that we could take advantage of his depression and use those shades to push him into giving up. It has failed and a peaceful solution to these 'Beast Wars' seems remote."
"Then we have no choice. The experiment will continue to be contaminated. Direct action must be taken."
And they took it, and they failed.
Megatron continued his struggle.
-
(All characters are © and TM of Hasbro. Straxus haunts the original Marvel Transformers comics, and Shokaract comes from the 1999-2000 Botcon convention stories)