Megatron Face Turn
"Decepticons attack!"
Megatron's war cry bolstered the Decepticon brigade currently under his command, surging them forward over the ruined bodies and buildings of the battlefield. Their target was the great Autobot fortress Tyger Pax, and within the Autobots had hidden away the ultimate prize: the Allspark itself.
Megatron himself was at the head of the charge, as befitting his reputation as a frontline general. Running by his side was the ever-loyal Soundwave. The walls of Tyger Pax were only a thousand yards ahead, and from them the Autobots were letting loose a hail of gunfire. Megatron ducked and avoided shots as he continued forward, taking shots to his armor where he could afford it and returning fire with his fusion cannon. Several of the Decepticons following him were not so lucky. Right next to him Megatron saw Bonecrusher take a bullet through the head.
Megatron absently noted that Starscream and the Seekers were above dogfighting the flying Autobots but were doing a poor job providing aerial support for the ground troops. Typical. He saw a jet he recognized as Ramjet take a bad hit and fall, spiraling into a nearby building and exploding.
Megatron was close to the gates of Tyger Pax. He transformed into his tank-jet altmode and boosted forward at full speed, opening fire with all his arsenal. The gates of the fortress blew open and Megatron flew in, transforming and skidding to a stop.
The first Autobot he saw happened to be just in front of him. He was an average sized mech, green in color and looking up at the Decepticon leader with visible surprise and horror. Megatron dispassionately activated his Energon mace and struck the Autobot to the side, tearing him in half at the waist and sending the two halves across the courtyard.
"Hound! NO!"
Megatron looked up to see a large red tank Autobot coming at him, backed by several dozen soldiers. Megatron opened fire on them just as Soundwave and the other Decepticons passed through the blown-up gates.
The tank put up a good fight against Megatron but made the mistake of getting too close and attempting to melee the veteran gladiator. This allowed Megatron to skewer the exposed joints in the tank's armor and finish him off with a point-blank shot to the head.
"Warpath is down! Bumblebee, get to Optimus and tell him Megatron is coming!"
"You got it Smokescreen!"
Megatron watched as the small yellow scout called Bumblebee transformed and sped off into the deeper parts of Tyger Pax. Advancing forward, Megatron easily killed Smokescreen and every other Autobot in his path, like an unstoppable omen of death. Ravage was following the scout's scent, directly leading the Decepticons to their prize.
Ravage stopped before a great set of doors, growling and pawing at it. The Decepticons opened it, revealing Bumblebee and two other Autobots on a wide-open balcony. The trio of Autobots opened fire, killing Ravage, Kickback and Dead End.
Soundwave let out an uncharacteristic yell of fury and opened fire before Megatron gave the order. Megatron let it slide and simply joined him in his revenge. The Autobots were quickly felled.
Megatron looked around. "Prime! Where are you? Where is my Allspark!" He heard sputtering and looked down to see that Bumblebee was still alive, unlike his dead comrades.
"Sunstreaker… Springer… no…"
Megatron reached down and picked up the injured scout by the neck. "You were given an order to report to Prime. Well? Where is he? Where is the Allspark? Answer me, bug!"
A great noise was heard and Megatron looked up and dropped his jaw with genuine shock. Up on a higher ledge he saw Optimus Prime himself with his hands on a control console, and the Allspark itself being launched into the sky and into a newly opened space bridge portal.
It had been a diversion. Megatron would have been impressed by Prime if the deception had happened to somebody else.
Megatron saw this and crushed Bumblebee's throat in raw anger, causing a strangled noise to come from the injured scout. Megatron threw Bumblebee over the balcony edge without looking, transformed and flew up to the Allspark. Soundwave called out to him and Optimus Prime attempted to shoot him down, but Megatron's focus was strictly on the Allspark.
Close, so close! Megatron reached out for it.
The Allspark passed through the space bridge, with Megatron also entering mere seconds later.
Unprotected from the great energies of the space bridge, Megatron's body was overloaded with energy and his sensors were scrambled, threatening to knock him unconscious or possibly even kill him. Megatron fought the urge to pass out, his sheer willpower and focus on the Allspark allowing him to power through it.
The trip lasted barely a minute and the space bridge eventually spat out the Allspark and Megatron. Dazed and weakened, Megatron was vaguely aware that he was in orbit over an unknown planet, but that did not matter. The Allspark was just within his reach!
Then the Allspark began to pick up speed and caught on fire, falling to the planet below. Horrible realization hit Megatron that not only had the Allspark been caught by the planet's gravity, but he had too. Too weak from the recent battle and trip through the space bridge, Megatron was pulled downwards and was set on fire as he fell.
He could see through the fire covering him and his almost blinding anger that the Allspark was falling away from him towards the middle of the planet, while Megatron himself was going towards the northern pole.
Down, down, closer to the cold wasteland, then he was knocked offline.
Megatron was not sure how long it was until he awoke. Well, no, it was more like he was half-awake. His sensors picked up a small lifeform before him. At first, he thought it was a Mini-Con, then to his disgust he realized it was organic. Megatron would have crushed the insect then and there had his power not given out again.
Every now and then Megatron would briefly awaken before quickly going offline. Every time there would be more of those disgusting, pathetic organics. At first it was within the confines of his ice tomb, then he was outside, being the transported. The bugs were moving him like he was a damn prop or something! Megatron saw brief glimpses of the outside world, tall plants and mountains, then he was back in a cave.
Obviously, a different cave than before, made of rock, not ice. Primitive structures surrounded him, and the organics scurried about. So, they thought him their captive? Amusing. Megatron was in the middle of fantasizing about how he was going to kill them all when he sensed it. The Allspark, it was near.
But he was too weak to move. And loathe he was to admit it, he was unaware of what armaments the organics possessed. They were obviously smart enough to keep him on ice. But let it be known that Megatron was a long-term planner. If he could, he would gain their trust, and maybe their loyalty, and set up a power base on this planet for the Decepticon Empire.
It took some cycles, but Megatron learned. Their language was laughably simple, but he had to admit it took an infuriatingly long time to learn compared to the quickness of simply scanning a worldwide network. This race was primitive.
One day, he spoke to them. The organics reacted with excitement and panic, scrambling about like the bugs they were. They asked him questions. What he was, his name, where he came from, what he wanted. He told them a half-truth version of his story, that he was Megatron, a Cybertronian explorer in search of a sacred artifact.
In turn, he asked them his own questions. They were called Humans, and he was currently being held under the Hoover Dam by Sector Seven of the so-called United States of America on the planet Earth. Megatron barely cared, but it was good to have some reference.
Megatron continued to feign niceties and asked how long he had been here. When asked in return if he meant how long on Earth or how long since he had been found, he said both. The humans explained that their carbon dating pegged his crash landing at about twelve thousand years ago. Oh, so he had been gone for a fair while. He began to worry for the Decepticon cause, and if it survived his absence.
The humans continued to explain that they had first discovered him in the Arctic in the year 1897, and that the current year was 1936. Ha, such a short time.
Megatron struck a deal with Sector Seven. In exchange for shelter, he would help advance their technology. The humans accepted. It was all a ruse, of course. Megatron deliberately put on an act of being honorable and naïve like that fool, Optimus Prime. Megatron knew these humans did not actually trust him but saw the pragmatism of gaining a technological advantage for global dominance. Apparently, humanity was even more divided than Cybertron ever was.
The humans first allowed Megatron to walk free in 1942. America had recently entered the so-called Second World War as a part of the Allies, and Sector Seven wanted his help. Megatron was sorely tempted to slaughter them all, take the Allspark and burn the planet down, but he reigned in his temper and accepted the human's audacious offer.
He would not be revealed to the rest of the world, of course. Information was power and Uncle Sam wanted Megatron to stay a secret. Fair enough, he supposed. Megatron's influence would result in the creation of advanced military weaponry and vehicles, radio communication, early computers and even the atom bomb. A slow start.
Megatron was given reading material, and limited access to cinema for the sake of entertainment. It was a great source of information. He was finally given reference for what Earth was like, political powers and the general state of the world. He was already planning his takeover.
But something strange happened. In 1946, as Megatron was reading the old philosophers of Earth's past, he was reminded of his own past. He remembered how he had once been a slave in the Golden Age who rose as a rebel hero. He remembered his early success, how he won from convincing others to follow him. How he began to lose when others began disagreeing with him, such as Orion Pax.
For the first time in millennia, Megatron began questioning his life choices. It was only a small thought at first which he easily dismissed. But as the decades wore on, the doubt grew. Watching humanity progress through the Cold War, the oil crisis and countless "small" events, Megatron could not but help draw parallels between the humans and the Cybertronians. He could not but help compare his own actions to the many dictators who inevitably failed.
He began to ask himself what it was all for. Domination? Conquest? Glory? Yes, all those things and more. And over the years, Megatron slowly, very slowly, became unimpressed with himself. He had set out to return Cybertron to glory, and might have, but instead brought it to ruin and forced the hands of others for the sake of his own pride and ego. What was the end goal?
The Allspark was that goal, of course. It was literally in the next room over in the base. When Megatron was taken off the ice in World War 2, the first thing he had done after stretching his legs was to walk right up to the Allspark and place his hand on it. At the time it had been with smug anticipation, under the belief that he had already won. But now whenever he did it, it was with a sense of melancholy and regret.
His relationship with the humans also changed. He viewed them as pawns at best, and their alliance was cooperative but tense. But that changed in 1984 when Russian spies discovered his presence. A paranoid Soviet general had then launched a nuke at the United States as a preemptive strike. When Megatron first heard the news, he left the Hoover Dam base for the first time in decades and intercepted the nuclear missile in orbit around Earth. He redirected it to outer space and set it to explode in the cold vacuum.
It was all covered up, of course, and the Soviet general "disappeared". Many Sector Seven agents were angry that Megatron had left the Dam without their permission, but many more were grateful for saving them. As more years passed, the Dam became less a prison and more a home. Megatron was allowed a few more freedoms.
Megatron tried to justify to himself why he had saved the humans from a third world war. The easiest reasoning was that he had done it to save himself, the Allspark and his plans. True, true. But what Megatron did not immediately realize was that he had done it out of genuine heroism, and a wish to atone for past sins.
It was sometime during the mid-1990's that Megatron swallowed his pride and accepted that he had been wrong. He wanted to laugh at himself. After four million years of war, all it took for the Decepticon Leader to repent was a vorn alone on some backwater planet living amongst tiny organics.
It frequently occurred to Megatron just what the hell was he going to do once he returned to Cybertron. He highly doubted either the Autobots or his own Decepticons would accept his new outlook on life. How was he going to talk them down? Would they even see him as their leader anymore? Was Optimus Prime even alive?
Thoughts like that continued to plague Megatron's mind even today, during the summer of 2007, as he casually walked down the giant tunnels of his former prison. He absently looked down at the crude data pad made for him with internet connection, looking over the morning news. More about the War on Terror, a consequence of human choices decades past.
He went over to the computer console in the main room. Around him the humans scurried across safety catwalks and the floor, going about their business. Megatron minded where he stepped. Almost bored, he logged in and checked through his reports. As a part of the agreement he made long ago with the humans, he was assisting in the improvement of their tech. He was no master engineer but compared to these humans he was a genius.
Megatron knew he was only delaying the inevitable. Either he would find Cybertron, or Cybertron would find him.
An alarm sounded.
"Attention" the announcer said. "Multiple NBE's detected in Earth's orbit. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill."
Megatron stilled. They were here. Did they know he and the Allspark were here? … There was no point in putting it off.
"Megatron," one of the lead Sector Seven agents said. "We're going in. If these are your people, how do you wish to proceed?"
Megatron thought on it for a moment. "They are here for me. I will tell them where I am, and I will tell them to stand down. I want to stop any destruction before it begins."
He looked at the satellite imagery on his console screen, showing fifteen Cybertronian signals now scattered across North America. Giving a sigh, Megatron sent out his IFF signal. Almost immediately seven of the signals began converging toward his location, while the other eight regrouped to a different location.
As the humans said, it was time to face the music.