Faith of the Lost
It was a job for someone else, perhaps Waspinator or the new fuzor, Quickstrike. Inferno would have done it without complaint, although he might have been confused that the dead drone had possessions of his own to be cleared out of the room before someone else could use it. In the ant's warped world, everything belonged to the colony as a collective, and therefore to the Queen. Having possessions of one's own was a foreign concept to him. He still would have obeyed the order had it been given, however, which was part of the reason Megatron didn't give that order, to him or anyone else. To them, it was a duty and a possible treasure-trove to loot through.
To him, it was goodbye.
Strangely, it really hadn't struck him as REAL until then. The loyal follower was gone, his slightly daft questions and comments never to be heard again. The quasi-friend had died, his remains melted into the lava and nothing but his memory lingered in the corners of this room. Megatron opened the door and looked around, struck again by the scientist's tidiness. The table was placed just SO. The equipment transplanted from the lab it belonged in arranged just HERE. He wasn't entirely certain what the scorpion's last project had been, and he peered at the myriad of tools and tubes on the table in mystification. Glass, plastic, and steel looped in a methodical combination that made no sense to him whatsoever. It was an oddly reassuring effect of order and mystery that reminded him weirdly of Scorpinok's personality. The scorpion had been open and trusting in ways most Predacons couldn't afford to be, reading like a display screen to Megatron's experienced optics.
…except that during the weeks leading up to the screaming, fatal fall into the lava, the screen had blurred. Scorpinok had pulled back, something closing inside him that rendered his thoughts a mystery. Megatron had been busy himself and had presumed it had something to do with this new experiment. He scanned the table again but quickly gave up trying to understand its intricacies. Maybe if he found the scorpion's notes, he'd give them to Tarantulas with orders to finish it. He couldn't quite understand why it had been so important to the scorpion that this invention succeed, but surely there must have been some sort of value in it to have changed his behavior for those weeks. It hadn't mattered all that much that Scorpinok hadn't been around since Inferno had arrived by then, and Megatron had indulged his interest in…whatever this was.
In a way, it was a shame that Scorpinok had been so involved in his invention. They had been drawing apart, Scorpinok's doubts in him becoming more evident even as his loyalty stayed steady. Megatron knew the scorpion would have guarded his back in any fight, but at the same time, he might have started to ask why they were fighting. It was a conflict of interests, the Predacon staying loyal but the friend drifting away, and neither of them knew what to do to stop it. Megatron had purposefully, angrily, held himself aloof, refusing to acknowledge--as he always had--that they had ever been anything like friends at all. Neither of them had ever actually SAID anything about it, but there had always been that look of…of something, when Scorpinok had looked at him. Something that set him aside from other 'bots that had started out loyal to him as their commander. It was, he thought as he sorted through the few personal belongings on the shelves, the biggest difference between Inferno and Scorpinok. Inferno was a soldier, pure and simple, with no thought of his own; Scorpinok would think for himself and then follow Megatron's lead anyway.
It made all the difference, now that he stopped to think about it. The other Predacons tolerated or outright hated him, and Inferno treated him as, well, royalty. Scorpinok alone had treated him as someone to listen to, possibly argue with, and look up to. He'd been a bit slow, known it, and relied on Megatron's intelligence to command his own limited intellect, putting his brief moments of scientific inspiration at the tyrant's feet. He hadn't blindly obeyed, but he'd obeyed because he believed. Or, at least, he HAD.
Something had changed. Something that Megatron hadn't wanted to think about but had to now, sorting the few possessions the scorpion had left behind. The doubt had increased, the reassuring look decreased, and the only Predacon he could even think of as being something approaching a friend (with qualifications, of course, because tyrants just didn't have friends, nooo) had become a soldier. A loyal soldier, yes, but just a soldier. He could wonder, sitting on the room's lone chair safely away from maliciously curious optics, why it happened. Had it been, as had been explained in an awkward, round-about way, that Megatron had failed the scorpion? Had he reached too far and fallen short of success, but in the reaching distanced himself from the one 'bot who truly cared if he succeeded?
Then WHY, in Cybertron's name, had it happened? Why then, and not earlier or later? If it had been a gradual thing, what had triggered the realization and resolution to cut them apart? Megatron would have never done it, refusing to acknowledge what bound them even that much. It had been up to Scorpinok, and the scorpion had approached it in his usual fumbling, honest way that Megatron recalled in an analysis that pained him (but he wouldn't admit it, noo). There had been more than just forgotten, fading friendship in Scopinok's secluded behavior for the past weeks. He had noticed in a vague way but hadn't let himself think of it. He'd had too many plots coinciding at once, and other minions that were useful--why should he waste his time puzzling over one Predacon's behavior? He'd dismissed it as involvement in an experiment because it was easier that way. But…there had been real betrayal in Scorpinok's hunched shoulders and turned head.
Betrayal of what?
Megatron let his mind tick as he placed the scraps of living into a box of plasteel. Normally he'd at least pretend to be taking a deceased subordinate's belongings to the designated heir, but as far as he knew, Scorpinok had cut all such ties to follow when he called. That left him with a box of CyberBee parts, datapads, and a dissembled missile. He had no idea what he'd do with it, but he'd rather have it under his protection than let the other Predacons steal whatever they wanted from Scopinok's things. He avoided thinking about why he cared enough to do this himself. Even if he thought about it, it wouldn't make sense. Nothing about this made sense: Scorpinok's changed behavior, the clinically neat room, the crazed confusion of glass and metal on the table, the technobabble notes--and what the slag was so important about this invention, anyway? Had it been just to occupy Scorpinok's mind? It didn't make sense, and it didn't help Megatron understand what the underlying reasons all were.
There had to be something. There was ALWAYS some reason in common. He sighed, giving up for the moment, and brought the box to his own quarters for safe keeping. On a whim, he downloaded the project notes and sent them to Tarantulas. Perhaps the spider knew what they were about. Moments after the files were sent, however, the Predacon computer alerted him to an incoming message. He read it over and frowned.
Tarantulas had said, quite simply, "There's no way you could have designed this. It's brilliant. Where's the rest of it?"
The tyrant couldn't decide if he should be insulted or amused that the spider had, for once in his miserable existence and unintentionally at that, given Scorpinok's work the title of 'Brilliant.' He eventually settled for being slightly annoyed and sent off a message directing Tarantulas to meet him in Scorpinok's quarters.
The spider was already there by the time he walked in, fussing with obvious delight over the table. Whatever the thing was, it was enough to make the conniving spider drop his guard and show his admiration of it. "Ingenious. Are you certain, tehehe, that Scorpinok built this?" Transmetal claws ran covetously over tubes and collectors with the kind of reverence only another scientist could understand. There was a brief hesitation and an inquiring glance at him--for permission, Megatron realized with concealed surprise--before Tarantulas began transferring the entire, complex mass onto a cart he'd commandeered from where it had been propped against the wall. "Shell-Head never seemed the kind to come up with something like this. What was it originally for?"
The spider was looking at him, again. He feigned indifference and waved his hand over the table. "Why ask me? It is Scopinok's work, is it not?"
Tarantulas' chuckle had the harsh edge of real laughter in it this time. "Since when did that moron do anything that wasn't for you, in one way or another?" Still chuckling, he tenderly placed the last component onto the cart and checked that it was stable before wheeling it from the room. His voice floated behind him, "Your plans have always included us all. I think you proved that quite conclusively recently."
He stared after the spider, turning that over in his mind. The ticking picked up the pace like a timebomb reaching the final countdown after being fed an additional nuclear insight, but he let the ideas simmer as a more urgent thought leapt to the forefront of his mind. "Tarantulas! What does it do?" he shouted. Only silence answered him, even the creaking of the cart disappearing as he looked out the door into the hall. The spider had vanished. "Treacherous arachnid," he growled, retreating back into the room to think.
This time, he sat on the recharge platform. The room was mostly featureless with the table's extravagant centerpiece and its accompanying flock of notes gone. In place of the Scorpinok he'd known, all that remained were clues and shadows left in a form familiar only by what it had been previously. There was bitterness in that thought, but he couldn't make himself examine the reason for it. A part of him was uneasy over what he'd discover about himself if he did. Instead, he sought to solve the puzzle; retreat, betrayal, and an invention built for him…but why would the scorpion have built him something without coming to him first? Had they been so estranged that Scorpinok avoided him out of principle? The loyal scorpion wouldn't have turned anything against him, so Tarantulas had to be right: the thing had been built for him. Maybe as a surprise? What purpose was there for a surprise, if they had become nothing but commander and subordinate?
Frustration made his head ache, and Megatron stood up to pace. There was a link between it all, there HAD to be, and he just had to find it. It was something about the timing, he knew it! Everything seemed to come back to Scorpinok's withdrawal from him, supposedly to work on his project but more probably to nurse wounded feelings. If the timing had been right, then the break in their peculiar friendship would have been clean and natural, marked only by Scorpinok's (not his, never his) realization of it. The timing had have been wrong to have caused a different reaction in the scorpion. The timing..?
He stopped and stared across the room at the recharge platform, not really seeing it for all the intensity of his look. The timing was important, and there was something familiar about it as well. He counted back the weeks, trying to remember why it was significant. Nothing but the scorpion's odd withdrawal came to mind that week, however. He hadn't paid much attention, busy with other things and able to depend on Inferno's unquestioning, ungrudging support.
Ah, yes, Inferno. It had taken remembering the dead to realize why he valued and yet despised the ant. At first, Inferno had seemed the perfected version of Scorpinok, but he saw now what was lacking in the ant's vacant worship. No matter how much he enjoyed the blind loyalty and unquestioning support, there was always something missing in the madly-grinning face that stayed upturned to him. Every once and a while, Scorpinok had turned away, and it made him regret the missing scorpion's death all the more. While he didn't like to admit his mistakes, it was best to have someone who would point them out with something other than a gun.
Megatron winced. He hadn't wanted to think that. Since he couldn't unthink it, however, he might as well admit it.
So. It had been a mistake. His, in specific. What his mistake had been, exactly, he was determinedly not-thinking, because he had the sinking feeling that it was a mistake compounded upon mistake, and there was no way to correct this engorged error. Besides, he was struggling with his ego and self-image enough over just admitting something was his fault. It was more of a subconscious acceptance than real admission, anyway. A minor concession no one needed to know about. Scorpinok had taken that entire chain of mistakes to his molten grave, and it was for the best, really.
He noticed, suddenly, that he was staring at something more than the platform. Underneath it, there was a dull gleam of light on glass that he guessed correctly was another datapad. When he pulled it out into the open, he hoped snidely that it was something essential to Tarantulas' meddling with Scorpinok's invention. It would serve the back-stabbing arachnid right. Unfortunately for his hopes, it turned out to be an archival datapad, meant for read-only and downloading. A series of parallel scratches were etched into the glass of the read-out, deep enough that the screen would have to be replaced to get rid of them and too evenly placed to be anything but intentional. That was curious in itself, but the sloppy hiding place of the datapad contrasted sharply with the meticulous organization characteristic of the rest of Scorpinok's belongings. Either it had been accidentally knocked under the platform and never found, or...
Megatron thoughtfully sat down, then lay down on the recharge platform, letting his arm hang down to the floor. As he had suspected, his hand came close to where he'd found the datapad. Convenience, then, or carelessness. While it wasn't unknown for the other Predacons to poke around in their fellow warriors' rooms, Scorpinok probably hadn't worried about anyone searching out this spot. What was it? Some light reading for the scorpion before he went offline for a rest period?
The mauled screen lit to show an index. A familiar one, and Megatron's optics widened in surprise as he read over the book headings. When had the scorpion downloaded this? He had a somewhat eccentric archive, and he was fairly certain this had to have come from his collection. It was an…unusual reading choice. Part of it might have to do with the planet they had been searching for, the Earth Scorpinok had not lived to discover they had actually found. It was still an odd thing to read. Megatron skimmed through the index again, finally seeing that two books were highlighted by frequent use. Even as he reprimanded himself for his interest in a 'bot dead and gone, he opened one of the files and read through the short chapters as if they were a window into the scorpion's mind.
And they were.
He would have missed it if the verses hadn't triggered something in him. The ticking of his mind stopped short, stuck on the words that completed a puzzle he wasn't sure he wanted to see in its entirety. "'Was not Esau Jacob's brother?'" he quoted in a soft murmur, fitting piece to piece and unraveling a story that disturbed him on whatever level allowed for such things as regret and friendship. "'Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.'"
Troubled, he pored over the book again, even looking up the story behind the names and hoping with a kind of listless hope that he had been wrong, but it was the lowest, most uncontrollable depths of his mind that had connected the dots first. Just as he couldn't make himself disregard Scorpinok entirely, he couldn't turn away now. He reread the verses again, then opened up the other highlighted book. This one was longer, the chapter subjects more diverse, and he wouldn't have seen anything in particular if not for the scratched glass of the screen. The scratches were perfectly parallel, and spaced to fit exactly between the lines of text. Once he noticed that, it was only a matter of time before he fit the scratches to the verses they underlined.
For a long time afterward, he simply read and reread the short lines. Slowly, his optics rose to study the abandoned table and its missing burden of desperate inventiveness. The ticking thoughts had stopped, the shrapnel of the bomb lodged in memories and previous assumptions, changing his perception of the situations past and present. Scorpinok's withdrawal, and this new experiment meant to please, meant to vie for the tyrant's favor, and the timing had been all wrong. It had been Megatron's mistake. Not that week, but the week before, when a damaged stasis pod had birthed a soldier that had taken the place of a 'bot who had been a friend, been a loyal follower, and who had been forced to see too soon that he was losing the chance to stay at Megatron's side at all. Maybe it had been the gradual loss of the friend that had alerted (but not offended, noo) the tyrant, but reacting by replacing the scorpion completely had been the wrong choice. He could see that now, but hindsight was always much clearer.
Rising, Megatron made his way to the door. There was nothing he could do here, besides regret too little and too late the circumstances leading to Scorpinok's death. It wasn't like they had been friends (not real friends, never real friends), and it wasn't like he really cared what Scorpinok had died thinking. In the end, Scorpinok had been just another soldier, and Megatron would not allow his memory to haunt him. That would require him to feel guilty, after all, and he didn't. Some regret, yes, but just as the scorpion's belongings had been packed away into a box for safe keeping, so would Megatron close up all the thoughts connected to this room and its dead occupant. When he walked out the door, everything would be left behind.
But he hesitated, standing in the threshold. If he had been the one lost in the lava, the other Predacons would have celebrated, or in the case of Inferno, found a new Queen and moved on. This soldier, unique among the Predacons, would have mourned his passing. Out of respect, Megatron at least owed him a word of farewell. Hadn't he realized today what he had lost in losing Scorpinok? Surely that deserved that some closure.
He searched for words, but all he could find were the words Scorpinok had obsessed over for the last few weeks: "'The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?"'"
Although he hadn't intended them to sound so, the questions came out slightly accusing, asking in the undertone why such a lack of faith in the scorpion's 'Lord.' Yet Scorpinok had been the one rejected, replaced without explanation and taken out of favor to wonder in ignorance if that was it. To wonder if his position had been taken from him because of some enlightened choice, or if he had done something wrong. Had he ever wondered if his commander had screwed up, or had he always assumed that he was the one to blame? There was no evidence of doubt left behind. Scorpinok had sought an answer to something without a solution or even a clear question.
Knowing his mistake, the Predacon tyrant gazed distantly at the table that had once held an offering of all the best in Scorpinok and repeated the question as if he could change what his response would have been.
"'…will you not be accepted?'"
.
.
This will require some explanation.
I seem to be using quotes to inspire these things recently, and this ficlet came from Genesis 4:3-7 (not all of the verses, just the middle part) and Malachi 1:2-3. I know it seems strange that I, of all people, would quote from the Bible, but I have a somewhat extensive knowledge of the book.
From that, I chose one of the many viewpoints held on the Bible passages and ran with it. I've been told that Cain failed the Lord because his offering wasn't a representation of everything he had. God did not favor him because he was too independent to surrender fully, basically. Unlike Inferno, Scorpinok couldn't give up the last of himself to Megatron and become nothing but a drone. Unlike Cain, the scorpion blamed himself and tried to make up for his shortcomings in Megatron's optics.
At the same time, however, Scorpinok was also like Esau. I feel terrible for Esau. I read the footnotes in Malachi, and apparently the apostle Paul explains the hatred of Esau as predestination. God CHOSE Jacob. I can't help but be pained for Esau's sorry life. The guy never had a chance; God chose to hate him. Megatron chose to favor Inferno over Scorpinok, despite Scorpinok's unwavering loyalty. The scorpion was the one discarded, the one thrown into self-doubt. I think it says a lot about Scorpinok loyalty and identity that he blamed only himself. I'm sure Megatron picked up on that, too, far too late.
I think it's a completely different take on one of the most ignored Predacons.