Megatron's frame vibrated with the impacts of his enemy's footsteps, shaking the ground.
He found he liked the feeling. In his usual shape, he would barely have felt it. Now, his form tucked around itself, his mass packed so tightly together he was a fraction of his usual size, every step thrilled through him, powerful and dangerous.
A challenge and a threat.
Feeling a hand wrap around him, he welcomed it all.
He knew what the others would say: that he was a fool to make himself small, to tuck himself into a form that the greatest of his enemies could pick up. A form that could not use its weapons unless the one who held it chose to.
That hand, so large against his tiny form, brushed over the metal of his surface, and he snickered, a soft movement of his gears, alive in the massive hands.
No, in this form he could not fire without assistance.
But even in this form, he was a weapon. It didn't matter that someone else would have to wield him. Not when his frame hummed, all concentrated power, and he felt his foe's fingers twitch as they wrapped around the part of him especially designed for someone's hand.
He felt a finger twitch in indecision.
Go ahead, he thought. He'd taken great care to make his intentions clear:
Yes, the latest of my inventions is here. And yes, you're free to destroy it before it harms your allies or your friends.
But only if you use me to do it.
Feeling the finger curl around his trigger, twitching as it resisted him still, he knew that would better undo his enemy than any shot he fired.
"Why are you doing this," the familiar voice of his enemy murmured, the air alive with its rumbling as he raised Megatron to his optic and took aim.
Megatron could have answered. He couldn't move like this, no, but his small shape didn't prevent him from speaking. His vocal apparatus lay folded deep inside his frame, and although that would make his voice tinny and distant, talking was easy enough.
He had nothing to say.
But he did have something to teach. Through this bizarre little ritual that no one in his army, or the army that his enemy led, would ever understand.
They didn't matter. They weren't the ones the lesson was meant for.
Can you feel it now? he thought, feeling the energy build, crackling through his whole frame, alive with its heat and burning.
Do you sense, holding me, what it means to destroy?
You've destroyed many things, in the course of our war. Weapons. Edifices. Enemies.
And every time, it's filled you with regret.
The air around him crackled with ozone as his own energy gathered, a crackling maelstrom, greedy and impatient.
Do you understand, now, what it means to celebrate destruction?
To know that what stands before you must fall - and will fall, because your will decrees it?
He felt the hand wrapped around him tremble, and his frame pulsed in response, greedy and alive.
The hand steadied around him and he stilled, fighting his eagerness lest it ruin the shot.
The bolt of light crackled from him in a burst of heat and light, searing him, scouring him clean of all but what he'd come here for, his thoughts fierce and exultant as he lay still in the other's grip.
Now you see.
Now you understand.
Now you know what means to be one of us.