Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers. Just the plot and OCs.
Thank you all so much for reading and reviewing! I'm so happy you've decided to give this story a shot. I hope you enjoy!
Chapter 1
Dripping Claws
What is it about darkness that scares bots so much?
It was a question that had plagued him all of his life. What he can remember of it anyway. For he's never understood it.
This fear others have.
He's watched them though the vorns, you know. Because hunting is just as much about watching as it is action.
He's crouched unknown and unnoticed feet away from a life he could snuff as easily as snapping his fingers and simply watched. Watched the way them all shy away from lingering shadows. How they scurry like glitch-mice for a source of light.
They run scared from the shadows even when they don't know there really is something in them.
It's something that doesn't make since to him.
For as long as he can remember he's been at home in the dark. Shadows meant safety in a way light never could. Darkness wrapped him up like an old familiar friend—if he had any of those—and welcomed him back in with open arms every time he wished for it. In the dark he vanished. In the dark, he thrived.
He had never feared it.
At least, maybe not after he had become a part of it.
He could wrap his mind around that concept. Of that being the reason others feared the dark, but in all his seven hundred vorns of rather comical existence he'd never got why so many ran from the shadows into the arms of the light.
Didn't they know what lurked out there was no better?
Couldn't they see it.
He could see it just fine.
Because he was a creature of darkness, and as such he knew that monsters were not confined to shadows.
They could walk in the sunlight just as easily as everything else. Hiding in plain sight. It was just they preferred the way prey shook, optics wide, sparks pounding as they searched desperately for the source of death stalking them where they couldn't see.
Fear smelt very good, believe it or not, after you smelt it enough.
However, fear mixed with dark.
Well that was just it all the more fun, now didn't it?
Things got more intense in the dark. Every sense working overtime to try and make up for the lack of one. Adrenalin pounding through tubing and cabling driving the fight and flight instinct that dominated all animals. No matter how seemingly advanced they might be.
For all the Cybertronian race's advancement and technologies at the end of the orn they were still all just animals. Some skittish of the dark and some at home in it. The ones that were going to survive, well if anybot had bothered to ask Meister—maybe before he killed them—he'd have no problem answering that shadows lived longer then light.
The audio shattering scream made the two dark audio horns atop the shadow colored mech's helm tilt back in an effort to try and relieve him of some of the pathetic sound, but considering he had to be standing pretty close in order to be pealing back strips of protoform from strut there wasn't much to do but sigh about that.
Still, that screaming was becoming awful annoying.
"Hey now," He drawled, leaning forward around the struggling mass of what was probably supposed to be an attractive shade of red. Personally, Meister thought it was kind of ugly. "Can ya knock of ya caterwauling? Ah's tryin' to work here."
His answer was another, longer, louder sob filled scream as the horribly red colored fool tried to desperately shake himself loose from the coil of chain that had him hanging from the ceiling.
Meister stared in response.
Bright blue optics hidden behind the gleam of a red visor while the black mech stood there with his arms crossed over his chest just out of kicking range from the dangling frame in front of him.
"Ya know," He drawled, angular faceplate smoothing out into a wicked smirk. "Meh last client was much more agreeable then ya's bein'."
The red mech just let out another sob filled cry. Twisting back and forth as much as he could on dislocated arms hanging from a support beam of his ceiling. Both his legs were broken but that didn't mean he could weakly kick back and forth.
Not enough to hurt, but well, it was the principle of the issue.
He was a professional.
He didn't get kicked by wanna be black market dealers.
As he leaned back away from the limply kicking mech he lifted an optic ridge over the rim of his visor. Clicking his tongue against his teeth while he lifted a hand to pick at the energon staining his claws. It was still sticky, rolling in warm streams down from his claw tips, seeping into the joints of his knuckles, and then down over his arm.
He smirked at the image and the way the dangling mech whined pathetically because of it.
"Listen," The mech—Meister was pretty sure his name was Flash, Clash, Dash? Oh whatever he didn't care.—choked out around his whine and crying. Meister cocked his helm to the side as if he as listening. In all reality he was just watching the way the energon seeped out of the slashes he'd already so artfully arrange around the mech's torso. "Wh-wh-whatever the-they're paying you! I'll double it! Ju-ju-just stop!"
"Payin' meh?" Meister didn't bother to stop the chuckle that purred out of his engine. "Where ya gettin' off this nonsense of payin' meh?"
If it was possible for the mech to look anymore stupid then he already did hanging up there by broken wrists the way his faceplate twisted up with that sure managed to accomplish it.
Meister was slightly impressed.
"Bu-bu-but—I'll triple it then! Please! Anything!"
"Triple ah nothin' still nothin', mech." Meister snickered, stepping forward again. Swatting the flailing legs out of the way with a flash of claws until he was smiling that smirk he had perfected in the back alleys of Polyhex when he was fifty vorns old. "Ah ain't getin' paid."
"Bu-bu-but you-your Me-me-is-meis—"
"Meister?" The smile bloomed while his visor flashed. "Yea, Ah is. Thing ya should know though, mech. Ah only work for the jobs Ah don't wanna do. Stuff Ah like, well now, that's free of charge."
"Fre-fre-free!?"
"Yea," Meister chuckled, smile twisting into something animalistic and wild as he bared all his teeth, the few sharp ones in the corners of his mouth glittering with the points of the fangs. "Ya is dyin' for nothin'. Sad ain't it?"
And with a swipe of black painted silver claws he struck for the life he'd come all the way up town to take.
Oh how he liked watching energon drip.
There was just nothing else quite like it in this whole messed up world.
One choked gurgle of dying breath and the poorly colored red frame sagged in the restraints from the roof. Claws buried in the center of a chest he had spent the better part of the night slowly pealing back the armor and then protoform from to find the spark chamber underneath. Such meant that when he punched his claws forward just now he'd punctured straight through the fine covered of spark glass in the center of the chest. Overly long—for his size at least, but then upgrades were upgrades for a reason—claws sliced through the thin barrier with what some would have considered a sickening 'squish' to find the whirling ball of blue life hidden under it.
Sparks themselves were easy to destroy once one had easy access to them, and though Meister's hand was now stinging and slightly burnt he yanked his arm back out of the quickly graying with death frame to smirk up at his work.
The things these spoiled rich folk thought wouldn't come back to bite them.
He was still amazed by it even after all these vorns.
Another click of his tongue against the back of his teeth, he settled back down flat on his peds from where he'd risen to his toes. Sticky arm shaken a few times sent splatters of energon flying this way and that. He paid no mind to the mess, it was nothing compared to the lake of the slag forming under the now dead frame swinging from the rafters.
Instead of giving it another thought the dark painted mech strolled away from his work to the cluttered desk he had been circling a little while earlier this evening.
Half empty cubes of highgrade—as if waste was a thing acceptable, for the upper class, the dark mech reminded himself, it was for there was no fuel shortages or rationing among them—littered around piles of datapads and file folders. Tonight's now very dead blubbering windbag had been a member of Iacon's city board. One of the lowest ranks there was in Sentinel Prime's government, but still a title that earned resources and so called power.
Not enough to do much, but enough to twist simple minds into thinking they could do things.
Like stick their overly polished peds into the paychecks of those far more qualified to murder then they were.
To be blunt, Meister didn't much care that the now dead keyboard clicker had been trying to dabble in the drug trade of a Dealer with enough sway to tap the Shadow Stalker on the shoulder and flash some credits under his noseplate. That wasn't the reason he'd taken the job of killing the fool.
Oh no.
Meister turned down the credits and killed the glitch anyway because he hated entitled high-bred fools and because he wanted something in return.
See, the black mech with the gleaming red visor that nowadays everybot and their shivering sparkling called Meister didn't give much of a damn about politics. Sentinel Prime and his damn Council could all burn in pit for all he cared and he didn't mind sending a few of them on their way if they strayed into his cross-hairs but he wasn't into the whole 'be the change ya wanna see thing'.
He much preferred just gutting random glitches and leaving their frames hanging for others to find and gawk over. After all, a murderous reputation was all a mech really had in his neck of the woods.
He most surly was not going to go stand on the sidewalk outside the Senate Building, Palace, or any of the other political wastes of space between here and Towers City with signs and peacefully protest.
Oh no.
Things that went bump in the night didn't protest.
Besides, he wasn't killing off political officers because he wanted to change the world.
No.
He was killing off political officers because it paid well when he was itching for something he couldn't steal easily and filled him with a sick kind of self-accomplishment. That, and it was getting him closer to what he really wanted.
It was getting him closer to Kaon.
The pit hole of all pit holes. Where all good monsters dreamed of going some orn. Because name Meister might have made for himself across the shadows of this world since the orns when he was a skinny youngling hiding in the back allies of Polyhex holding a glass shard knife, but he wasn't satisfied.
No.
He wanted much, much more.
Getting into the Rings of Kaon was no easy task though. Not if a bot didn't want to be owned while doing it. Meister had no use for collars or brands and slavery just wasn't really all that high up on his things to get done now list.
So, that being the case, it meant he had to try and get into the seedy underbelly of their world the hard way. Or maybe the fun way.
Kind of depends on who was asking.
Why, some might ask, would any sane bot want to get themselves down into the place most dreams went to die?
Well, it was simple really. Bots were more scared of what lurked down there in the darkness then they were of him in his shadows. That and the creatures that thrived down there were not bothered by the notion of a rat that crawled along the allies of the surface.
That irked the dark mech kind of a lot.
So, obviously, he needed to get down there and rectify that horrible misconception that whatever it was that lurked down there was worse than him and what he did on the surface.
Yeah.
It might also be possible that Meister wasn't completely sane either.
Maybe.
Oh well.
He hadn't worried about that prospect since he stopped calling himself Jazz in his own helm though, that wasn't something likely to change anytime soon.
Most didn't bother to wonder about it, but the truth was, Meister hadn't become the thing he was overnight. The Shadow of Death from Polyhex hadn't been born Meister. He hadn't even been anything close to what he was now until somewhere around fifty five vorns. When hunger, abuse, and fear had taught a mechling wielding a glass shard knife that the first time he spilled energon didn't have to have been an accident.
So, it became something besides an accident, and so did he.
After that, things had just sort of happened. Most of it he didn't remember, didn't bother to try. Shadows had been safety since he was a sparkling. He understood them better then he did light. With time though, they became useful and in them he learned the lessons all dark things did.
Then, he learned how to use them.
Now at the ripe age of seven hundred vorns the dark mech had lived longer then he ever should have. He had outlived his city, his breed, and his rights to breathe. He had lived through an Age of Sentinel Prime's reign and he was not impressed.
If anything, he was sort of pissed off.
Not most of the time.
Most of the time he really didn't care overly much, but every now and again, like when that now very dead glitch's file had been shoved across a sticky bar room table to him he was reminded of why it was he didn't like most bots.
Or . . . any bots really.
Most orns he sort of hated them all.
Kinda.
If those who knew his name thought about it they'd probably say one of the reasons he was killing the high class was because of what had been done to his own breed's city. For what had been done to his breed. Because Polyhex was hardly a page in a history book now. No bot wanted to remember what they had stood back and watched happen to thousands while doing nothing about it so they didn't.
Sentinel Prime got his way for the citizens of his world were too ashamed of what they let happened to want to remember it. So an entire breed was forgotten. Washed from the records of history with their own energon. Just like the Tribes.
And no bot had cared, at least, not until it started happening to them.
Now the chaste system was leaving an entire build type as less then alive. Now it was overworking whole types and leaving them to starve by the hundreds of thousands. Now those that were once considered well off and lucky were feeling hunger pains for the first time in their lives because those at the bottom of this damned class ladder were striking out against what they were being forced to do before the Guard was shotting them in the streets.
And all these city bots of the middle class were calling it barbaric, not because the lower class was being forced to work until they died or shot in the street for refusing. But because if they weren't working then there wasn't enough fuel to feed the masses. And the middle class starved while the high class took what there was.
So the middle class started protesting the lack of fuel, not the things that were being done to cause and because of it.
That was why he was killing high class, and the middle class, and . . . well most bots to be perfectly honest.
Well, that and because he could.
And wanted to.
But mostly because he could.
Spoiled, polished, goody-two-peds, with nothing better to do.
Pit, it was times like these in which Meister was glad he technically didn't existence.
Outside of his criminal record that was.
However, that was just a name, none really knew what he even looked like. Well, at least none that could do anything about it. Those that wanted to find him, didn't have to look all that hard. The underbelly of the world knew him well, and they knew what he wanted.
They also knew his favorite place this side of the Rust Sea to get a drink.
Tarn was a city on the brink.
As all the lower cities of Cybertron's pecking order it was built on industrial labor and the back of miners digging in the dirt. There were only five high cities known to Cybertron; Iacon, Praxus, Crystal City, Towers City, and Vos. Everything else was what were known as labor cities. In this age everything between Kaon to Simfur were dirty, dangerous, and over crowded. Often lately the sites of riots in the street and labor strikes as the miners, builders, and hard labor workers of their world tried to fight back against a system that was using them to death.
It wasn't working, not on the surface at least.
Sentinel's Elite Guard were slaughtering rioters in the streets for abandoning their work post and in sighting unrest while in the high cities bots wrote signs and waved them over their helms as if like they were doing something to stop it.
Kaon had been the first city to fall. The mining city itself, with a pit dug in the dirt that was said to go so deep it touched the core of the planet. It was the main supplier of fuel for the entire planet. It was the sole reason the society Sentinel had created could function as it did. Because of these big mechs and femmes digging in the dirt, some never having seen sunlight, for the energon to power a world that was wasting it. When the fuel rations for the workers had been cut to a third four hundred vorns ago or so and miners started dying in their recharge from lack of fuel or keeling over while they were working the unrest as the high cities called it started.
Meister was still blown away by the concept of these polished fools being surprised that their poky electric sticks hadn't been enough to stop a revolt of hungry miners with sparklings dying of hunger in the night.
Sentinel called it an atrocity, waved his fingers, and Elite Guard fought back pick axe and sledge hammer wielding miners with plasma rifles and canons.
Kaon's streets and mines were littered with the frames of the dead within a cycle, but not the miners' frames.
Oh no.
The miners sent the Guard crawling back to their master with half the force dead. Then, it got worse.
The fighting was still going on now, Sentinel had gotten not so much smarter but more lethal with what he was sending to try and stop the rioting. The miners had the advantage though. Most of them had been born and raised in that labyrinth of mines. Once they left the cities' surface in smolders they retreated down into the depths of the world where they could live quite easily as Sentinel's dogs chased their own tails trying to hunt them.
When Kaon's fuel production shut down the only other mining city had been forced to pick up the slack. Problem there was, Tarn was in no way capable of handling the demand put upon it. It didn't have the number of workers needed nor the equipment and by that time news of the protests had already spread.
So when harder shifts and less fuel was suddenly forced on this city was it really a surprise when it started rioting in the streets too?
Tarn didn't have the endless mind shafts nor the number of workers that Kaon did and so fighting back was harder for them. There was rumor floating around the shadows of the world though. One that said Tarn was getting help, that Kaon was being orchestrated.
Something was going on in the shadows of the world and Meister wanted to know what. Only way to do that though was to get himself down into the Rings of Kaon. The only piece of the city still functioning because it wasn't legally supposed to be there.
The only question, was how.
Claws drumming in a long forgotten beat he had never managed to fully get out of his helm, Meister sat alone at a back table in a bar near the border wall of Tarn's miner district. Outside the now familiar sounds of shouting and hollering could be heard like the beat of a song none were really listening too. The shooting hadn't started with such heat in Tarn yet but it seemed sometime this morning an important data clerk had been found murdered in his own home. The local Guard were tearing through the streets trying to find the one that had done it.
According to Enforcer intelligence a well-known mech by the name of Meister was suspected because of the nature of the killing.
The dark mech sitting alone in the corner hid a dangerous smirk behind the lifted rim of his stolen highgrade cube and gloated to himself.
Come and get meh. He chuckled to himself, taking a long drag of his drink while letting his visor covered gaze wonder about the crowded bar. It was fairly full. Bots looking to avoid the outside trouble or just taking a break from their part of it. Many didn't even notice the mech painted like shadows sitting alone in the corner and those that did balked a little and went away.
Meister doubted any of them knew who he really was but that didn't mean they weren't warry of something that seemed to breathe unstable. However, the dark mech was sitting in this bar on the bottom side of an unstable city after he killed a nameless no-body with the intention of getting noticed.
It was sorta the point.
An overgrown white painted, red opticed mech that liked ice chains a little too much sliding into the seat next to him wasn't the kind of noticed he was going for though. In fact, he almost choked on his drink when the huge mass of mech plopped down into the booth next to him holding a rather large bottle of high grade in one fist and a handful of credits in the other.
Meister would deny he flinched from the large weight sitting down next to him to his dying orn, but he had no trouble wiping out the curved knife he favored from his subspace. He should have expected that shoving the pointy end of it up against the big mech's neck cabling would get him nothing but snorted at though.
He should have gutted the big glitch for it out of sheer principle, but well, old debts and slag like that.
"Hi," The big white mech rumbled, turning his helm to look down at the much shorter black mech that was now shoved into the back corner of the booth beside him. The action pushed the pointy end of the glass like knife into the thick cabling of the mech's neck, but he wasn't bothered. He didn't even look nervous.
Damn Meister wanted to punch him.
Why wasn't he punching him?
He should be punching him.
Or driving the point of that knife into the vulnerable wiring it was poking at.
Yeah.
That was a good idea.
A brilliant idea even.
That would make that smug look glittering in those red optics go away.
But Meister didn't.
Instead he left the knife pressed hard against those sensitive neck cables while curling his lips back over his teeth in a sneer.
"Shatterproof."
The white mech grinned, scared, square faceplate with his tall audials standing from the top of his helm and the tattooed black streaks running down in thick lines under his optics to the edges of his smug full lips.
"Oh," He chuckled in that deep, storm like voice of his. "So ya haven't forgotten my name? I'm touched, Jazzmeister. Really."
Meister snorted, slowly lowering the blade away from the bigger mech's neck. Flicking it back into subspace with a twist of his wrist for they both knew he in no way needed the jagged blade if the bigger mech made him angry.
"Ain't forgot. Just don't care." Another long swig of his highgrade hid another smirk as the big mech bristled before trying to brush it off with a flutter of plating.
"Ya sure know how to keep friends don't ya, Jazzmeister?"
"Stop callin' meh that." His gaze narrowed into a thin slit. Only the light shining through the deep red of his visor. The hide didn't matter though because here before him sat one of two of the only bots left alive on this planet that knew Meister's real optic color. That knew who and what he really was.
That still bothered—or dared maybe—to call him by his real name. The one that as far as he was concerned died when Polyhex fell to rust six hundred vorns ago. Jazzmeister was a youngling that had shivered cold, and hungry in the dark. Meister was no longer that bot. He never would be again.
Shatterproof of all mechs in this world knew that. Then again, that was the only reason he knew Meister's real name.
Shatterproof snorted, lifting the big bottle of highgrade from where he had sat it on the table. Pulling the cork from the top, tipping it back in a long swig. Lowering the bottle back to the table after the drink he then tilted his other hand out to spill the handful of credits between them.
Optic ridge lifting over the rim of the visor Meister flicked his gaze over the pile of glittering brass and copper credits. Together that wasn't a bad sum.
Huffing, he took another sip watching Shatterproof while he flicked his claws over the pile of credits making them jingle. Several optics from around the bar looked their way but neither paid it nay mind. Somebot around here was dumb enough to try and steal from either of them then they were dumb enough to die.
A Tribe mech the world had forgotten and a Polyhex relic none had ever known about were not to be toyed with by a bunch of wanna be rebels. Meister might be interested in finding out what it was that was going on in the shadows of Kaon but Shatterproof didn't care.
Mech never had.
"I'll call ya what I like, Meister." The big white mech finally chuckled out, swishing the highgrade around in his bottle as he left the pile of credit around in favor of casting his fire red gaze up to find that deep red visor. "Think I earned that."
The black mech bit back a snarl, claws tightening around the cube in his hand.
"Whatcha want, Shatter?" He finally snapped. "Ain't seen hide nor wire of ya in two hundred vorns. Was beginnin' to think ya had gone and gotta ya self killed."
"Want?" Shatterproof questioned. "Nothin', mech. Ya name just been coming up in quite a few places I been lately. Thought I'd track ya down and wonder what it was ya was thinking. Well, that and Foxy wanted to."
He didn't choke on his next drink of highgrade but it was a near thing.
Swallowing hard before he could spew the mess all over the table before him, he twisted in his chair to look up at the mech that considered himself his friend no matter how many time Meister attempted to stab him over the last four hundred vorns.
"Foxy?" He murmured once he finally got the energon down his throat.
"Yeah." Oh how Meister truly did hate that smug smile. If he didn't owe the bastard he'd have killed him long ago. "Foxy."
He then was forced to follow the long, sharp white claw pointing across the table to find the lean yet curved, blood red colored frame draped across the bar on the other side of the crowded room.
Well Primus damn it.
Taking another long drag of his drink until he reached the bottom he watched that finally shaped femme turn from the chatting up she was doing to some idiot fool. Hand patting lightly at his side while he grinned like a glitch having no idea she was currently robbing his subspace before she walked away. She swayed away from the drunk fool. Waving over her shoulder with one hand while the other clenched around something shiny she hid before her. Slipping her way through the crowd she all but danced over to the back table. Drawing optics and long looks on her way until the stares realized what was sitting at the table and snapped away.
Meister didn't even bother to wonder if it was him they feared this time though.
He wasn't the one with a death promise oozing out of his very energy field for all those that looked at that femme.
No.
That was Shatterproof.
The dark colored mech didn't care who looked at the femme. Why should he?
Meister rolled his optics. Turning his attention away from his growing company in favor of putting down the now empty glass. He avoided the pile of credits—he'd find out why soon enough—and instead reached for the bottle Shatter had sat on the table. Snatching it up he poured a rather generous amount into his cube.
He was not going to deal with these too idiots sober.
He just wasn't.
Slamming the now less full bottle back onto the table he swiped up his cube again. Taking a long steep drink just in time for the dark red painted femme with the pale white faceplate and piercing red optics to slide into the other side of the booth across from them. An award winning smile on her attractive faceplate that Meister had no doubt could charm the armor off many an unsuspecting glitch.
The few shiny energon crystals she placed on the table before her were proof enough then that. Considering she'd just swiped them from a mech's subspace while she chatted him up and he hadn't even felt the tingle of her breaching his failsafes.
Because before Meister now sat the best pickpocket to ever grace Cybertron's dull atmosphere with her presence. Her and her very big muscle of a mate smiling at her from Meister's side now.
And pit they were making gooey optics at each other again.
Primus he might be sick.
Choking on his own breath he looked away with a twisted expression of discuss, sticking out his tongue and groaning like a sick sparkling while he shook his helm back and forth coughing.
Shatterproof seemed to find his discomfort and discuss amusing—bastard always had—while the pretty femme across from them rolled her bright optics. Smiling that smile over at Meister until he couldn't resist looking up to find those startling bright optics.
Damn femme.
He never had been able to ignore her. It was what got him into this mess with the two of them in the first place. All those orns ago when a half grown mechling had snuck into a detail shop and tried to snatch whatever he could get his claws on.
He'd instead got himself caught by that blinding smile and bright optics. Struck dumb like any stupid mechling would in the presence of such beauty until this big hulking white shadow beside him had snatched him up and shook his little thief self like a rag doll.
Meister—even after all these vorns—wasn't sure how to describe what it was that happened next. He just knew he didn't get killed and the mated pair didn't hurt him like they should. They weren't kind to him either, but well, shadow lessons never were. That had been in Tyger Pax some five hundred vorns ago in a time that Meister didn't like to remember.
The only thing he kept in his mind from that time of his life when killing had still made him sick in the shadows after he did it was these two. These two who he should hate for tossing him back out on his aft time and time again after he broke into their shop trying to steal from them with a leaking noseplate and a sore helm. These two who had kept throwing him out until the orn in which he finally pulled the mesh over their optics.
Shatterproof still had the scar from that night running along his left cheek.
Meister had been sure he would die that night, but instead he had gotten a dark chuckle out of the big mech with the leaking faceplate pinning him to the wall over a broken safe and then he had had . . . friends.
Sort of.
He kept showing up, they let him. He learned the ropes of the shadows, they taught him tricks every now and again.
He grew into a monster that's name made other shake, but they were two that didn't when they heard it.
Because they knew that twisted smile of his wasn't going to be pointed at them. Because honor was something only monsters of this world had left. And sadistic killer Meister might be, but he was in fact not an oath breaker.
Even when he wanted to be.
Like now.
They were messing up his plan damn it!
"Foxtrot," He greeted the femme through gritted teeth, taking another long drag of the drink he had stolen. "Lookin' good."
"Always am, young mech." She chuckled airy back at him. That sweet, melody voice of hers only adding to her almost unnatural beauty.
He bit back his natural sarcastic response in favor of looking over at the big mech leaning against the table beside him. Shatterproof looked very smug.
More smug than usual.
Was he missing something?
A bit of unease swirled in the bottom on his tanks in a way it hadn't since he was small. It had been so long in fact since he was wary of other bots that he almost had forgotten the feeling. He didn't enjoy having the feeling again now.
He took another long drag of his drink hoping it would make it go away.
"Whatcha want?" He whisper hissed at the both of them after he dropped his now empty drink back to the table. Shatterproof tipped the bottle over his cube again refilling it once more.
Meister took another swig just for something do as the femme shrugged.
"We're just looking for you, young mech." She said as if it was the most normal thing in the world to say.
Okay.
So Meister was starting to get seriously confused here.
Optics narrowing into a thin slit behind the red curve of his visor he tilted his helm at the pair of them. Taking another sip of his drink he flicked that narrow gaze between them thinking. Sure they had gone long periods of time without seeing or talking as Meister had grown older. He hadn't needed nor wanted their help in a very long time and they were in no way looking to be responsible for some other mech.
It was a sort of partnership that lasted between them because Meister honored the debt he owned Shatterproof of having not killed him all those vorns ago. He'd knocked off a few annoyances for them over the vorns and they'd even worked a few jobs together when they all liked the profit or purpose.
However, the dark mech wasn't kidding when he said it had been over two hundred vorns since he saw either of them. They'd parted ways in Simfur a while back after Meister had killed some very important senator just because he could and the backlash worried the mated pair.
He hadn't held it against them and though they did their usual share of cursing at each other for farewells he hadn't thought much more about it until now. Once or twice they'd cross his mind but not enough to care.
He didn't have friends.
He didn't care.
And last he'd checked they hadn't really cared about him.
So what was going on here.
"Why?" He huffed at her, knowing better then to growl at her while Shatterproof was sitting at his side. Sure, now he could hand the mech his spark on a platter but that didn't mean in the past he had been able to. There was still a measure of respect swirling down in Meister's spark for the big mech.
He might not care about them but that didn't mean he wanted to fight them either. He owned them after all and while most like him would have done anything within their power to make that truth go away as soon as possible he wasn't like that.
Maybe he should be.
With others he was.
But with these two . . . no.
He'd never quite figured out why that was either.
Huh.
That might not be a good thing.
He took another drink, turning his attention to Shatterproof this time as it was the big white mech that spoke.
"Like I said." He said. "There is a lot of talk goin' around about ya. Enough that somebot wants to meet ya."
Meister perked up.
Or . . . well . . . he tried.
His mind perked up but his frame wasn't so much agreeing with the concept. For a nano he stalled. Catching on confusion boiling in his gut he didn't understand why he tried to pick up his hands and they didn't obey.
He then tried to twist his helm down to look at himself and that didn't work either.
For a nano he sat in confusion, not understanding before it clicked in his helm.
He tried to twist his helm to look up at the big mech sitting smugly at his side and the femme smiling sweetly at him from across the table but his vison was rapidly clouding out. Still, he managed to growl out a low note.
"Ya drugged meh."
Shatterproof snickered at his side. "Yeah, Megatron wants to meet ya. Seems ya gettin' what you wanted, young mech."
With that, Meister pitched forward toward the table before him the whole world fading into darkness.
Waking up to a helm-ache fit to split his processor in two wasn't a new concept to Meister. Quite the contrary, he spent more nights drunk then he did sober as of late. Part of it was spite out of the fuel restriction and part of it was just because he could.
He didn't enjoy the way it made him feel or the way it made him less good at what he did, but he did like the way it made even more bots shy away from him when he was that way.
However, this time when he came too with the feeling like somebot was driving a pick axe between his optics he didn't quite know why it was he felt like that. For a few nanos after consciousness found him he didn't move.
An old habit he had picked up from his youth in a box on the street. For there was no telling what you might hear when whatever it was that was around you didn't know you were awake. This time though, as he found himself hunched over in a chair he realized without even having to open his optics that he hadn't put himself there by his own choice.
Waking up in handcuffs tended to bring that into focus very quick.
Where most would have panicked and startled flailing around trying to get out even while their processors were still catching up with what was happening around them Meister just hung limp. Instinctively not allowing his frame to so much as shudder with waking.
It had taken vorns and vorns and vorns to rewrite such basic coding inside himself but eventually he'd gotten it right. So now, he hung limp. Processor slowly overriding the blurry haze of whatever had been in that . . . drink.
Oh yeah.
He'd gotten his dumb aft drugged.
Drugged by Shatterproof and Foxtrot.
Huh.
Maybe he was going to have to reevaluate that whole honor bound not to kill them thing.
Because yeah.
Drugged and waking up sitting in a chair with his arms handcuffed behind him and to said chair. Not good.
Not good at all.
This wasn't on his list of things not to get pissed even at sort of friends about. This was in fact on one of his other lists.
The 'kill-the-idiot-that-did-it list'.
It wasn't often a very long list. Because nothing stayed on it very long. He tended to eradicate whoever it was that was on it from existence with extreme vengeance.
Resisting the urge to click his tongue against his teeth in frustration Meister kept himself loose. Optics closed tightly behind his visor and audio horns still as he sat there limply. Casting out his sense of hearing and smell he tried to assess as best he could what was going on around him.
Colored his visor might be, but it took quite a lot of effort to keep it from showing the shine of his optics behind it. It was not a program he could run and still look like he was out cold.
At least, not very well.
He was more willing at the moment to take his chances with figuring out what was happening to him with his optics shut.
So.
Cold, hard, very sturdy chair beneath him?
Check.
Handcuffs humming with energy dampeners?
Check.
Smell of dirt, grim, and cold?
Check.
The heavy pressure in the air that only came with being deep underground?
Check.
Not a lot of sound, no echoes, no wind, not even any ped steps?
Check.
Huh.
So he was chained up underground in some small room on a chair in the middle of it and he had been left completely alone.
His optics flashed open with a gleam behind his visor allowing him to find himself trapped all alone in total darkness.
Slowly, with a crick in his neck that only time in an awkward arrangement could bring, Meister sat himself up right in the chair taking in the inky nothingness pressing in from all sides. The only light around him was what coming off his visor as he cast his attention this way and that.
They'd left him all alone in a dark room chained up with no idea why he was there, how he got there, or what was going to happen next.
For a nano he sat there staring into the darkness until finally he clicked his tongue and shook his helm.
"Amateurs."
It took him a grand total of three klicks to mute his energy field, dislocate his wrists, and slip his hands out of the cuffs.
Fraggers hadn't even used good cuffs.
One pull in of his energy field out of their reach and they clicked off as if he was dead.
Pathetic.
The hardest part of that was snapping his wrists back into place once he got them loose. That hurt like the pit, but he ignored the pain in favor of pushing himself up from his horribly crafted prison seat to pitch his gaze around the darkness.
Another two klicks of carefully reaching out with his field and then stepping—in case of trip wires or explosives, mind you, he was bored not stupid—brought him to a firm wall. Reaching out he splayed his hands along the surface.
Cool hard stone and metal is what he was met with, but not the refined texture of the stuff once it became building materials. No, this stuff was still alive, deep in the world in which the cities dug it from.
So, yep.
He was right about being underground.
Not that he thought he could have been wrong, what with the smells and the sounds, but one always liked to make sure.
Right?
Right.
Sliding his palm along the surface, making sure to keep his energy field out and searching around him, he circled the room in search of the door he knew had to be there somewhere. There was always the chance with underground holding rooms that the door was actually in the roof and it was more drop down pit then room. However, if that was the case then his chair wouldn't have been in the center. It would have been in the way of the door and the way in and out if that was the case.
That meant the door was in one of these walls. Likely, judging by the size of the room, a large one to accommodate large bots.
He found it moments later without trouble.
A dip in the stone, an instep, and then the unmistakable smell of grease.
So, not an electronic door then.
This one was manual.
Which meant there would be no panels to hotwire and codes to crack. This door was all about pure strength.
Pity.
He was looking forward to ripping apart some wiring.
Placing himself in the center of the sliding rock door Meister allowed himself to think for a moment. Rubbing absently at his smarting wrists that he was going to make somebot pay for later he thought about his options and his reasons.
"Megatron." He mumbled the name to himself, rubbing his palms along the wall. "Shatter said Megatron."
He clicked his tongue.
"Who the pit's Megatron?"
Was that the so called orchestrator of the chaos happening in the lower levels of Kaon that was spreading up into its neighboring city of Tarn.
"Wha' kinda name is Megatron?"
And why did it sound kind of familiar?
Oh well, no matter.
He'd figure it out after he got out of this rock box.
Hopefully he'd get to kill somebot for it too.
A bit of scratching and scraping around in the dark got him a hand hold he knew had to be there. See, logically there shouldn't be a way to open a door like this from the inside. Kind of defeated the purpose, but Meister had been willing to bet after the lack luster state of his bindings had come to his attention that whoever it was that was thinking they could lock him in a box wasn't one of those smart enough to realize that.
When his claws hung in a small groove made for claws near the upper right side of the slab he was proven right.
Now, the hard part, making his relatively small in comparison to most other mechs frame move something that was likely made with the intention of miners in mind.
Meister, as was pretty obvious, was not built like a miner. Or even a big mech.
He was slight and built for speed, but he had never let it get in his way before.
It took some leverage, and a lot of cursing but he did manage to get the huge slab to move. He'd kind of expected there to be some big guard on the other side, but afterward he supposed that was giving these fools too much credit.
When he poked his helm though the gap in the door he just made he stood there for a few moments looking back and forth down an empty, lit with lanterns stone hall kind of hoping some random guard would jump out to try and shot him.
He was very disappointed.
"What?" He grumbled to himself, slipping out of the door and picking a direction down the hall. "Did Ah get snatched by a gang of blind sparklins'?"
And how could Shatterproof and Foxtrot have anything to do with such rank amateurs?
Seriously.
He was becoming insulted.
Sure they weren't anywhere near as good at murdering bots as he was, but they hadn't survived the fall of the Tribes by being stupid. What was going on here?
He wasn't sure, but he intended to find out.
He walked for quite a few hallways until he finally found something worth doing anything about. Two large, dull grey painted mechs with red optics that looked like they were meant to be guarding something but were instead goofing off.
Visor glinting when he caught sight of them, Meister didn't even bother with trying to hide his approach.
Nope.
He simply strolled around the corner, pranced right up to them, skipped, hopped, and dug his claws into their necks before they could so much as stop staring at him. Ripping backward he landed in a crouch watching their big frames fall to the ground with a thud as energon gurgled up from the slices in their necks.
They were dead before he straightened back out of his bend.
It was rather merciful if he did say some himself.
Stepping over the rapidly greying death frames he continued on at his skip down the hall looking for the next bot. Trailing a line of energon from his stained claws as he went.
Six more random bots fell dead—some with screams some without—before Meister finally came across something worth his while. Or more accurately, it found him.
Another random stranger had fell gurgling his last breath on his own energon at Meister's clawed toes when the dark mech looked back up from his chuckling to find something different standing in his path.
Tall, lean, lanky, almost sickly thin for a mech's frame. He was a sleek silver kind of grey that looked more like smoke then any other color paint Meister had seen before.
It was kind of intriguing and warranted a pause from the dark mech as he straightened to take in the stranger.
He was at least double Meister's height with rather thin looking plating that still had a strong air about it. It was those knowing red optics shinning back at him from a sharply shaped black expression holding faceplate that stood out the most though.
Lowering his energon dripping claws the shadow colored mech tilted his audio horn tipped helm to the side. Staring down the hall with a dark smirk curling his lips Meister regarded the long mech with the very pale red optics while energon dripped, dripped, dripped from his claws.
A long klick passed in which the two stood silently at different ends of the hall staring at each other until finally Meister grew bored. Tipping his helm to the other side he drawled out, flicking his hand splattering energon as he went at the dead frame at his peds.
"These ya clowns?"
The tall smoke colored mech didn't reply. He didn't so much as twitch. He simply stood there at the end of the hall with his arms loose at his side staring back at Meister as if he was evaluating something.
It was unnerving in a way that Meister didn't want to admit too.
When his lack of an answer spread onto several more klicks the black mech became sort of annoyed.
Smirk slipping from his lips he narrowed his gaze behind his red visor at the long mech.
"Ah don't like bein' ignored." He hissed, stained blue claws flexing at his sides. "This joke show on account a ya or Ah gotta be killin' somebot else?"
Silence.
Those pale red optics only stared back at him from an expressionless silver faceplate. Staring back at it Meister took note that the slimness of him went into his faceplate as well. High cheek struts and slim cheeks. A very distinct point of his jaw and a sharpness of his helm.
He looked like a flier, but no wings hung at his back.
Meister was slightly confused.
Because the mech was tall but he didn't seem quite big enough to be a flier and with no visible wings the speedster really didn't get it.
He didn't want to bother with it either.
So he didn't.
When he was refused an answer again he let the growl he'd been keeping held tight in his engine since he woke up out.
The deep grumble of his high performance engine echoing around the empty hall around them. Bouncing off the cold stone in pitches and echoes that amplified it until it was nearly the only sound to be heard at all. Even over their own internal systems.
Meister relished in it.
For there was nothing like sound to have bots quaking in their armor.
He had used it plenty of time before.
The long mech at the end of the hall just kept on standing there though.
Meister snarled at the lack of reaction and charged.
Bonding down the hallway at a sprint he wasn't sure what he expected but the tall mech standing there watching him come wasn't it. Halfway through his headlong charge maybe he should have stopped to consider that there was a reason the mech didn't bother so much as lifting a weapon in reaction to his snarling and charge. He didn't though, much to his later embarrassment, he was too busy being pissed that all this had happened in the first place.
So he charged, claws poised with full plans to gut this idiot too before moving on to find either his so called friends or whoever it was that paid them to pull this. He ran, he leaped—
And he got caught mid-air around the throat by a flung out silver something.
Crashing back into the ground in a skidding slide he went helm over heels four times from the force of the throw before crashing back into one of the hall walls.
Pain seethed through Meister's neural net. Pings of hurt alerting him to the deep gash some rock had cut into his back, but also to the searing cuts now around his neck. Cuts that felt like some talon or something had taken a hold of him and then tossed him like some sparkling's toy.
Scrambling back upright he flipped back to his clawed toes, optics wide but hidden behind his visor as he snapped himself back around to face the long mech who . . . had . . . tentacles?
What?
Meister stalled—he'd deny it under pain of death—but he did.
Crouched there on his clawed toes he snarled and glared but he stalled. Optics wider then he'd like to admit as he stared back down the hall at the tall mech standing there exactly where he had been but now with several long coils of flexing and hoovering tentacles slipping from slits in his side plating. They were twice as long as he was, wiping back and forth around him like angry snakes, thicker then Meister's arm as they swayed about. Each tipped in three talon like claws that opened and closed freely on their own.
In all his vorns in the shadows of this world Meister had never seen anything like it. At least, not on anything alive.
He'd seen the likes of which on quite a few sparkeaters as he was running away from them, but . . . on a living mech?
This mech was alive right?
He had to be.
That was no sparkeater.
Meister has seen sparkeaters. He knew what one of those damned things looked like and alive most certainly wasn't one of them.
This mech, even if he had weird appendages, was most definitely alive.
Refusing to give ground like the clenching in his tanks said he needed to do, Meister forced himself up right. Teeth bared in a low snarl he flexed his claws by his sides while he glared back at the mech and the twisting limbs snaking around him like they had minds of their own. Now that he was watching them sway before the mech he could see one of them was dripping in energon. Three pronged claws coated in it.
His neck stung at the sight, reminding him of the tears in it that were slowly leaking down in thin streams of blue against the dark color of his armor and cabling.
He made Meister leak.
Nothing had made him leak in vorns.
"Okay." He snarled, engine roaring in his chest. "Ya has ta die now."
The tall mech didn't seem impressed.
In fact, he didn't seem anything. For he still lacked any kind of expression while he stood there with those knowing pale red optics staring back at him while twisting snake like appendages swayed back and forth in front of him.
Every instinct in Meister wanted to charge again. Charge and swipe, and scratch, and pull, and tear, and cut until the damn swaying limbs and the still mech that owned them stopped moving. He had learned his lesson though. Charging headlong into this one wasn't going to work.
Even if he wanted it too.
His right hand flexed while he stepped forward in a twist to hide the searching limb. Yanking his glittering glass like knife from subspace was as easy as a flick of his wrist while he kept growling toward the tall glitch.
Those pale optics watched him, but he didn't care.
Each step measured as he eased his way forward. Watching those twisting limbs sway to keep track of him. Growl still low in his chest he stepped left, faked a charge, and threw the knife.
The glittering blade flew the same time he threw himself into another sprint. As he figured it would one of those swaying cable tentacle things caught the knife and flung it away, but it missed him when he charged after it. Another two did catch him though.
One around the neck again while the other wrapped around his torso. Picking him up like he was nothing. Hauling him off the ground. Seemed the mech and his many limbs didn't see the second knife coming though.
A thunk into a shoulder followed by a low hiss was Meister's only reward before he was tossed into another wall. This crash came with a bent audio horn and an ache in his side, but scrambling back to his peds he managed to miss both his knifes getting thrown back at him.
They clattered into the stone wall behind him, but he didn't reach for them. He was too busy keeping his optics on those pale red ones that narrowed now when they looked down to the thin line of energon leaking from a gap in his shoulder plating.
His expression didn't so much as twitch but those pale optics were narrowed. When they flickered back up to find Meister's the tentacles twisted almost angrily but the shadow colored mech just snarled back.
For a nano they stared at each other again, assessing, weighing, planing before finally the tall mech spoke.
"Unadvised." It was a low, cold, calculated kind of voice. The likes of which nothing Meister had ever heard before. Crackling in a way that only came with lack of use, but powerful in a way only few could be simply in a voice.
It was striking enough that Meister paused at the first sound of it. His aching audio horns flinching back from the sheer presence of it before he could muster up a hiss of his own.
"What the frag was that ya walking bell fish?"
"Attacking me." The mech elaborated. If that could be called an elaboration. Meister sort of doubted it. "It is unadvised."
"Oh yea'?" The shadow colored mech couldn't help but cackle at that. Not allowing himself to be unnerved by this mech that had already thrown him off attacking twice and wasn't so much as twitching a lip at not only the stab wound leaking down his chest but the fact that he gave the knives back. "And whys that?"
"Failure." Was his simple answer.
It sort of pissed Meister off.
He didn't stop to consider if charging again was a good idea, but he snatched up his knives and did it again anyway. He actually managed to get pretty close too. Hacking off the end of one coiling tentacle and digging his knives deep in another only for another grip to suddenly be had around his neck and with a very hard smack to a stone wall behind him the world went black.
Poor Meister, he really thought he'd just roll right over him. Mech will have to learn the hard way that Soundwave is no pushover. Takes quite the mech to keep up with Megatron after all.
So, what did you think?
If any of you have read GG then you've heard of Foxtrot and Shatterproof. *slightly evil grin* Yeah, I love those too and have decided to throw them into this universe as well, but disregard almost everything you know about them from GG if you have. They are very different and have a very different purpose in this story. Though cookie points to any of you who have already figured out just who they really are in this story. Don't worry you've go a bit to figure it out if you haven't. I'm just curious to see if any of you can guess it.
Anyway, the story really begins now. Meister is quite the character isn't he? I'm very interested in seeing what you all think of the change between him and little Jazz from the prologue. After all its been seven hundred vorns for him. He's lived and done a lot. You'll see some of it as we go along but the only real important stuff is touched on here.
As for now though, welcome to the beginning of an uprising that will turn a whole world to ash and one shadow stalkers place in it. It's going to be quite the ride. I look forward to seeing what you all thought about this chapter!
See you all next chapter!
-Jaycee
P.S. I have decided I am going to make a separate blog for this story. Hopefully I will have it up sometime next week so check out my profile for the link if you are interested in dropping by.