Okay guys! I'm pulling a certain bot in early, but since he's a bit of a mess, so is the narration. Yes, I made him digress often on purpose-fried processor and all. A convenient way to go through the exposition, no?Also, SS didn't interrogate Harry because they're kind of stupid. Panicked and the highest rank there called a pretty awful shot. Remember, most top brass didn't know about this, which meant the sector is almost self-governed.
Disclaimer: See PROLOGUE
Megatron had gone insane. His logistic system was shot, his processors had melted, his heartdrive was glitching. The decepticon was in terrible condition.
Who wouldn't be? Crashing violently into a planet of organic material and freezing his aching, body to the ground had been painful enough. Apparently not, as the fleshies saw fit to discover him millions of years later and roughly bundle him in a tin box headed for a facility of torture.
Megatron had thought he'd known pain and known it well. His imprisonment in ice had made him jaded and exhausted- surely there was nothing more to be done to him. Then those filthy maggots dropped him onto a platform and set to burning him alive with liquid nitrogen. In an intensity and focus the cold caves had spared him of, they kept even his programs from booting. It was excruciating and constant, a torture Megatron hadn't even considered using on his enemies, it was so unreliable. Even the leader knew he would have said anything to get away from the paralyzing damage.
After promising his vengeance and recognizing humans as the single most disgusting, uneducated, violent creature in all the cosmos, they still left him speechless in the end. They still managed to steal away his hate and leave him even colder inside.
They found the Allspark and they began to experiment on sickly, ruined prototypes.
Created rotten and tormented, the prototypes would scream and scream in anger and fear. The sound would find Megatron no matter what state of mind he was in and never leave his helm. The garbled, mad howls of premature infants dragged from the Allspark only to be tossed back just as quickly in a flash of lights and a pop of electricity. It would never leave him be.
He was a decepticon, ambitious, ruthless, proud. Lord Megatron would never have stooped so low as to torture protoforms for amusement or curiosity. To construct armies and raise soldiers was one thing, and a very attractive thing as well, but to poke and snicker at horrific mistakes was beyond him.
Megatron, steaming internally, wracked with hurt and humiliation and planning vengeance with each passing astrosecond heard a sound that stopped him in his tracks. The decepticon leader knew then, without a doubt, that he had lost all sense. For it was simply impossible for him to actually be hearing the cry of a newly activated sparkling.
With the alarming shortage in energy and power upon Cybertron, Megatron hadn't even heard it there in what felt like a billion vorns. Protoforms had been for war, wired into consciousless soldiers who couldn't function past their mission- the obedient, emotionless Soundwave was clear proof of that.
Not for thousands of decacycles had protoforms been for sparklings. Had protoforms been given a true spark and not a program's imitation.
To activate a sentient and fully dependant being with no armor or circuitry for battle and a constant need for specially graded energon was murder. They would starve within the hour, and even if they survived, the sparkling's smooth and incredibly thin plating would be useless against the constant attacks and turmoil of the masses.
Who would condemn a precious child to die with so many others suffering alongside them? No one had the gears to even make the attempt.
And so Megatron concluded he had broken under the torture and was now swimming in delusions. Because if a sparkling couldn't exist on its own planet, it sure as Primus wasn't surviving on this one. Megatron resolutely ignored the weak whine of a distressed sparkling and to his relief it sooned quieted.
He sat in his icy chains and enjoyed the silence until a few white coated insects bolted through his chamber. Their disgusting, fleshy appendages were being waved frantically, and their sticky wet faces were making far too much noise. Fiery fury flickering in his spark chamber, but was dulled as his senses picked up more than slime and shouting.
The white fleshy bags were absolutely coated in the Allspark's energy signature.
It wasn't like when they brought a protoform into existence and watched it cave in on itself. Forcefully yanking all the energy they could get from the unwilling Allspark left them with barely a residue signature. But now, Megatron could practically taste the cube on his glossa.
Dragging his meandering, distracted thoughts together, the leader tried to figure out what the Allspark had decided to do willingly. It certainly wasn't going to gift a spark to a puny, barbaric techological device the humans had. Their primative sciences were one of the reasons the protoforms were ruined, after all.
Gathering his small pocket of energy and pulling up all the programs he had managed to protect from the insects, Megatron let out a very faint wave of energy to brush against the Allspark- part reminder and part inquiry.
He could just barely remember doing this during his occupation as High Lord Protector before the war. It was almost comforting, the way the relic never failed to respond and let an ancient ghost of electricity waft over his form. With that ghost Megatron could detect a few crackling bits of data. It was a fuzzy, unfocused image only partly decoded. The decepticon set to decompressing it eagerly, pleased with having something of interest to investigate.
The process took much longer than it would have in any other situation. The leader was drained and distracted, his programs being forced into action instead of smoothly reading it automatically. Despite his problems, however, Megatron eventually opened it and was left to stare at the image in pure unadulterated shock. Faintly, in the back of his helm, Megatron decided he was getting sick of the feeling.
There, crumpled in what appeared to a small human cell, was unmistakably a sparkling.
It's gleaming, colorless body was unpainted and completely unarmored. Its two tiny arms tapered into five thin servos each, which lay splayed on either side of its frame. Its legs were spindly and long, stripped of most plates and panels parental units usually prepared for the sparkling before its activation.
The frame was flickering and jittering restlessly, wires pulling and rotors spinning constantly. The chest was just a wall of components with a spark chamber glowing steadily in the center. It was thin and curved lightly without the bulk protection and specialized additions gave. The faceplate was really only a vaguely flat oval that pointed to a chin, featureless save for the large set of optics and a miniscule mouth piece. All in all, the sparkling was smaller than one of these insects and held a standard shape.
All in all, it was the most vulnerable and defenseless thing Megatron had ever seen, even after his run in with humans.
Megatron lost a few of his programs in his utter rage and frustration as he understood the situation. The blasted glitching Allspark had decided to create a sparkling in the middle of a primitive human lab. A sparkling that didn't have a parental unit to guide its functions and protocol, a fuel source that could provide sparkling grade energon, or enough armor to protect itself from even the impact of tripping over those skinny peds.
The decepticon leader decided it was not, in fact, he who had gone insane, but the world around him. Primus had dropped off the face of the universe, the Allspark was committing indirect murder, and humans had somehow managed to get their filthy paws on one of the greatest mechs to ever gift their puny planet with his presence.
When had he ever thought obtaining that wretched cube had been worth the trouble of any of this? Perhaps the maggots' disrespectful treatment of Megatron had managed to knock a bolt back into place since he was finally beginning to question his purpose for being there in the first place.
Megatron would ponder his errors at a later time, however. Right now his processors couldn't run all his data in unison and he needed to focus on the matter at hand. He had a newly activated sparkling to address. A cybertronian infant who had absolutely nothing in the way of guardians and needed constant, specialized and intense care at all times. Something no insect could even aspire to attempt.
He could almost feel frost dripping from his helm as his gears whirred with frustration. How could the decepticon leader assist the tiny cybertronian, no doubt, wasting away like all the cursed protoforms before it while he was trapped in nitrogen and ancient damage?
Megatron thought long and hard, forcing his rusted processors to run at full throttle, putting all his energy into the dilemma at hand. How could he help something when he couldn't even help himself? There was no way Megatron could rely on his decepticons, the filthy cowards were probably scattered throughout the stars with only the snivelling Starscream for guidance. As much as it pained him to say it, he was near useless as well, held captive in his own frame.
Megatron would rather offline than attempt contacting a meatbag to attempt peaceful negotiation and instruction involving the sparkling, and he probably would as soon as they realized he was conscious and moderately able minded.
So it left him only one, wretched choice.
His very spark shrivelled in its chamber as he forced his unwilling circuits to obey his outrageous demand. Truly, this could be the very action that broke the mighty Megatron. With an inperceptable shudder that managed to get to his peds even past the ice, the decepticon leader commed the closest autobot he could access and delivered the information regarding what had happened to him after crash landing, the fate of the imbecile fleshy's optic adjustments, and the location of the worthless Allspark.
It seemed he would have to help those mangy self righteous martyrs find the primative lab himself, which wasn't truly a suprise as it was no secret that Prime was a horrible navigator and all his soldiers were glitching scrap heaps.
Still, that sparkling better survive until the autobots arrived, Megatron just put far too much on the line for anything less than absolute victory on all agendas.
And THAT, according to me anyway, is why a certain autobot scum knew so much about Megatron's involvement with the Allspark. What do you think of Harry's design? I did some sketches to get something solid going, he's much more humanoid than most renditions- kinda like iRobot meets a marionette.
Also, I should explain that protoforms and sparklings are different on most basic levels. They both require parts, programing, etc. but sparklings need much more of everything and have a spark that needs constant power and stabilizing. Also, because of their complicated...everything...they begin functioning on a very needy level in comparison to protoform insta-useful activation.
