Heavy.
His breath tore through his cyclers and fans, exiting his colossal frame littered with casually thrown wounds. It ravaged its way out of his vocaliser and was caught in the stinking wind. That wind whipped through the Grand Pit of Kaon, bringing with it the stench of a dozen offlined mechs and femmes. All of them he has barreled through for his freedom, and this final contender will soon join the scrapyard around them.
For ten millennia he has labored for his freedom, accrued notoriety untold across the face of Cybertron, and now his final test begins. His venture is the venture of all the Underfoot, every Vehicon and Seeker indentured to a master of untold cruelty.
Megatronus will pay the price for their freedom in the blood of his enemies. Now, only one remains.
They stare into each others optics across a field of death, a veritable no mech's land.
Megatronus's blade is heavy set into his arm, long and thick and resilient. A finer blade he had never seen, though it had been forced into his unwanting arm by his sadistic masters. Even heavier upon his massive limb was the fusion cannon, currently inactive as it would violate the Grand Pit's rules of engagement. A thinly-veiled excuse, Megatronus thought, to set the odds against him.
No matter. The corrupt agenda of Cybertron's affluent would begin its slow burn this day.
His blue optics settled on the mech before him, Blackout, and he began to walk towards him, pedes shuffling and kicking up dirt and bits of his victims. Blackout smirked, red optics crinkled in murderous amusement. His roto-like weapon began to spin menacingly as he, too, started to walk towards his opponent. Blackout's frame was the same color of the raw rock Megatronus had once tunneled through in his youth. Endless digging in the bowels of Cybertron's mines, drilling through the natural core of the planet in search of Energon deposits. Whatever he found would be put into the systems of Cybertron's families the globe over. None but the tiniest fragments were afforded to those of the Underfoot race, those who did all of the backstrut-shattering work. They were left to starve, drained of all resources with which to power their circuits, in their ghettos and hovels.
The crowd said nothing, every optic focused completely upon the two, striding across the wasteland of lost life towards one another. Megatronus's blade drifts across the ground. Friction paints a white-orange scar across the technoscape. He can almost see, in his mind's optic, the same line across Blackout's chassis as the two halves of his frame share a parting embrace before collapsing to the ground.
They were close now. He could see every metal component and copper wire in his opponent's optics . . . and the savagery, the lust for what he thought would be his next kill. The Underfoot mech cared nothing for his race. But also, in those scarlet orbs, Megatronus saw something else.
Fear.
A smile cracked open his faceplate. One tear of uncertainty in his opponent's mind was all he required.
It was over in less than a second.
They had met. In a flash, Blackout was on his knees, Megatronus's huge blade pointed at his neck cables, a gaping, energon-pouring wound where his right arm and weapon were. The cut was parallel with his frame. In a wild slice, the momentum from Blackout's spin had taken the arm right into his opponent's path. Easy prey for a hungry weapon.
He rolled to the side and swiped at Megatronus with a clawed, undamaged servo, but the blades on his digits caught on his rival gladiator's chassis armor. With a swift sweep of the blade, all Blackout's limb below his wrist fell the the ground.
Again, the massive weapon was pointed at his neck cables, poised to sever each one at a moment's notice.
"I yield, Megatronus," he rasped, the chittering mass he called a vocaliser barely open. "The title is yours. Your freedom is won."
Megatronus chuckled, his optics hardening cruelly. "Why would I give Sentinel Prime's cyber-dog mercy, even if he yields? To yield, in this place. . . in this world, to yield is to die, traitor to your race."
And with that, Blackout's helm tumbled to the ground, the red dying from his optics and the blue pouring from the open wound where it once was. The crowd went wild, and Megatronus turned to them, smiling and flexing his arms. A few femmes in the crowd fainted, and others bore their sparks to him in reckless abandon. He laughed long and loud. Too much high-grade.
It was finally over. Now, perhaps, with all of the fame he had accrued, the one mech he needed to listen to him might lend his audio receptor.
In the Grandmaster's Hall, Iacon . . .
After he had been patched up and given his Rite of Release, he trudged on through hordes of fans and Recorder bots with their photoreceptors. The flashes of them periodically blinded the entire crowd, and Megatronus growled and almost roared as deep as his vocaliser would, though he managed to stay his servo.
The halls were brightly lit, smooth grey walls covered in ornate patterns of gold and red. Holo-paintings lined the patterns, displays of Grandmasters past and present. It surprised him, and altogether fascinated him. Megatronus had only ever been beholden to grime and dust and dirt and blood in his dwellings. To see such splendor, even as a veritable celebrity to Cybertron's billions, was a rare opportunity.
While enjoying the decorum, one of the Recorder-bots managed to slide in front of him, press a servo into his chassis and stop him dead in his tracks. A microphone was pressed into his faceplate, and the bot looked to his partner, holding a camera blinking crimson.
"Megatronus," He began in a loud, authoritative voice, making sure to switch his optics back to the camera. "Tell us, what does it feel like to have emerged this far out of the Underfoot district, enough to, of course, have an audience with Grandmaster Halogen himself?"
Megatronus at first sputtered out a random collection of syllables and sounds, never had he been proficient at public speaking, especially on record. His brows knitted in annoyance, and as he was about to shove the Recorder-bot out of the way when a shrill, rasping cry echoed from the crowd.
"SCRAPLET! I SWEAR THE RETCH BIT INTO MY PEDE! CALL THE ERADICONS, QUICKLY!"
It was as if the a herd of Dinobots had begun to thunder through the hall. The crowd broke into a frenzy, desperate to avoid the carnivorous creatures. It was widely known throughout Cybertron that Scraplets were never alone. Whole swarms of the creatures would rip through the less financially sound cities across Cybertron, leaving only shredded shavings of steel where whole mechs and femmes had been.
When all was said and done, and the rabid populace had been sent running for their lives, only one mech was left standing. Or, at least Megatronus thought it was a mech.
It was a Seeker, judging by the lofty-looking wings on its backstrut and the delicate features. A grill framed its faceplate, and red facial crests adorned its forehead. Its primary colors were differing shades of grey and sliver, along with regal dashes of red, so it was, in fact, an Underfoot. If it was a mech, Megatronus was most confused by the high-heeled, feminine pedes that its lower half ended in. Its - or Megatronus assumed now, his - servos ended in sharp, razorlike claws, not unlike those of Blackout.
"Anything for the Shark of Kaon," he said in the same high-pitched, gravelly tone. "You seemed as though you required a little space."
Megatronus raised an eyeridge, frame stretched and calm with the lack of attention. "More than I can say, Seeker. Thank you, . . .?"
"I am Starscream, master of the Flight Sports of Vos, son of Magistrate Cyclonus himself. I came to witness the coronation of the king of Kaon's fighting pits! A historic day, I'm sure you know. It has been at least a thousand vorns since anyone came anywhere close to finishing off that lug Blackout." Starscream smiled, a wolfish grin that played across his faceplate. And yet, it displayed no malice.
"He . . . has had it coming for quite a long time," Megatronus replied, rather sheepishly. "He turned his back on those who made him from nothing. Death was the only justice afforded to him."
"No . . . bad history, I hope?" Starscream's faceplate twisted as if he'd ingested rusted energon. His glossa exited his mouth and he gagged. "Always . . . delightful, really, participating in old feuds. Makes the vorns pass quicker." He chuckled under his breath, and then stalked over to Megatronus, clutching his bladed shoulder armor in one slender claw.
"It was sarcasm, you know. Only a poor joke." He patted the larger mech's shoulder armor.
"I'm afraid I'm . . . a little out of touch."
"Well, no matter,"Starscream replied, a sigh escaping his vocaliser. "I was on my way to Grandmaster Halogen to discuss the budget for this vorn's flight sports. Would I be in the way of an accomplice?" He shrugged his servo in Megatronus's direction.
The bigger mech's blue optics followed the limb as it went back to Starscream's side. "I was on my way there myself. Why else do you think the Grandmaster would allow an Underfoot mech in his palace?"
"Well for one," Starscream replied, now walking down the hallway at Megatronus's side. "Bloodline." His own red optics drifted to his crest, one of the few splashes of color on his otherwise boring frame. "Do I look like an Elaborate to you? Well, my grandfather was one, but that's so far off the main CNA pathways that it hardly matters. Vos is the one place where a mech can escape the caste system, and I had broken those bonds since before my mother was sparked."
"I haven't visited," Megatronus said back. "The pits have been my home for all my life. I never knew my father, but my mother tells me he was a . . .Dinobot."
Starscream was incredulous, staring Megatronus square in the faceplate. "Dinobot? We haven't seen one of those marauders since the war, not since Commander Bonecrusher drove them back."
Megatronus strained his recollection files, stretching them as far back as he could. The Dinobot War had been millennia ago, long before he had ever become a gladiator. He hadn't known of the conflict from anything but heresy and rumor from the huddled bots in Kaon's ghettos. He'd been but a youth then, training his endurance and protoform in the heat and stench of Cybertron's core. No lick of the war had ever touched him, no ounce of its horrors had ever touched his mind. The Grand Pit had seen to that.
"I've never paid it much mind. Wherever my father is, he wasn't there when my mother and I were drowning in filth." Megatronus's optics became slits and they glittered in rage, his frame's power system involuntarily routing energy to his optic filaments. They glowed brightly for a moment before returning to their normal state.
Starscream stopped him, walking in front of Megatronus and pressing his servos into his companion's chassis. The Seeker's faceplate was etched with a nervous look, and he bit his lip components. "C-calm down, friend. Shall we go to see the Grandmaster?"
"Yes, I suppose."
The two trudged on towards the council chamber, chatting and laughing about various conquests. Finally, the bright silver, exquisitely carved doors greeted them. Starscream bowed and gestured to the elaborate entryways. "After you, Master Fighter."
Megatronus wasn't listening. Though he indeed opened the doors and walked through. His focus was entirely within himself. What lay ahead for him? What did the next few minutes hold for him? Would Halogen and the council even bother to heed his words? Would they even receive him? In all his life he had never seen their respect for tradition extended to Underfoot mechs and femmes. Perhaps they'd simply throw him from the hall before he could voice his demands.
Or perhaps their consciences were not as dead as he thought. Perhaps their neural nets weren't so fried that they would continue to hold an entire people in bondage. Whatever the outcome, he had to forge on.
The doors opened, and a voice, deep and baritone smooth, spoke to him.
"Megatronus, enter my hall. Speak before your Grandmaster and your Magistrates, and be made a free son of Primus."
Hope you all have enjoyed this first chapter of the story of our favorite 'Con warlord.
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