Authors Note: The concept for this short one piece came about one day while I was reflecting on the infamous scene from the 1986 Transformers movie. I am, of course, talking about the death of Optimus Prime. The scene got me wondering, how would Pandora Endurus, essentially the Prime of Earth, die? Cybertronians can live forever so long as they maintain themselves unless through an accident or violent death. The following short scene is how I envisioned one of the many potential deaths the Endurus could have. This story is merely creative imaginings and not to be considered cannon (yet?) for my ongoing series: Transformers: Revelations.
Additional Note: I have an account over at Archive of Our Own under the same pen name: Guardinthena. A03 allows me to add my own illustrations to my fanfics. If anyone is interested in seeing illustrations to my works, such as this one, then head on over and check it out. X)
Flocks of exotic birds scattered to the four winds as the Endurus's scream pierced the air. Once she got out the initial pain and overcame the shock, adrenaline hit her systems hard. The word ambush roared through her mind. Inhaling a sharp noisy breath, she curled up off the grassy earth, her strong servos reaching for the spear that had seemingly materialized through her right thigh. With a great effort she attempted to wrench the spear out, but quickly found that it had been launched with such terrifying force that the spear point had buried itself deep into the earth. She tugged a second time, harder, and a third. Still the spear would not budge.
"Endurus!"
Her cranium snapped around, her wild omni-hair twisting and curling as desperation and a twinge of fear doused her refined features. She had been scouting the strange and unique wilds of the planet Gaea with her personal entourage of bodyguards famously known as The Script, an elite group of skilled warriors so designated because its members adorned their frames with painted gold of their great exploits. Some members detailed their victories in written Cybertronian word, others in an ever evolving visual tapestry. Pandora Endurus had been traveling with three members of The Script, the fierce minibot femme Marauder and the sisters Shadowdancer and Moonshadow. She had never known a Script to give in to fear, but there was no mistaking the shrill note that ripped itself from Marauder's vocal processor upon seeing the Endurus get pinned to the earth.
Little Marauder's fear paled to the Endurus's shock and horror upon witnessing a second spear erupt through her chassis, spraying energon across the grass and ripping her spark chamber clean out of her frame. The sisters Shadowdancer and Moonshadow were dispatched with equal vicious efficency that left them both staked to the ground, but whereas Marauder and Shadowdancer had been killed instantly, Moonshadow's was not so clean. The spear had pierced clean through her midsection and severed her spine. The last Script was left clinging to the weapon and screaming in agony.
And then, their attackers materialized from the depths of the dense jungle. They were transformers by nature who had foregone vehicular alt modes in exchange for beasts. The large, hulking mechs were adorned in tribal paints and furs or scales or feathers, depending on the creature of their choice. They were Predacons. Cybertronian barbarians that had set themselves against Cybertron's republic.
Pandora Endurus stared on in horrid fascination at the strange Cybertronian's until the moment one stalked by Moonshadow and, with a twirl of his sword, meant to end her suffering.
"NO!" Screamed the Endurus, to no avail. The blade pierced sideways through Moonshadow's chassis. The light was instantlysnuffed from her optics. The towering mech's pace did not stall when terminating her, but with a skilled motion he retracted the blade, spun it to fling off the energon and kept advancing. Wide-optic, Pandora Endurus wildly looked around her and found more of the strange mechs spilling from the thick vegetation, perhaps twenty in all and slowly encircled her.
Pandora Endurus remembered herself then and phased. Or at the very least attempted too. The spear in her leg emitted a discharge that ripped through her whole body the moment she tried to phase. She gnashed her denta against the newest scream. The pain was white hot and agonizing, burning every cell in her frame. It was such a unique form of pain that the Endurus had suffered on the rarest of occasions. A pain she remembered all too well. She knew immediately that the spear had been crafted with some sort of null net technology that cancelled her phasing ability. She understood too, through the haze of pain, adrenaline and mounting fear, that null technology was such a rare and niche research that she instantly understood that this was no random ambush but a meticulously premeditated strike. Her patterns had become predictable enough to track and she cursed herself for that internally.
Mocking laughter echoed back at her efforts to escape the trap. Anger ignited and burned within her breast. She would survive. She had too. From a subspace pocket on her left wrist she flicked out an energy dagger and meant to slice the spear shaft off and pull herself off of it. She would regenerate the moment she was free, so empowered by the Creation Matrix within her, and from there she could phase out to escape. Her effort went as far as igniting the blade before her servo was violently stomped on. The Endurus swallowed the latest cry of pain as her servo was crushed under the weight of the largest of the mechs, the same one who had personally ended Moonshadow's life. Beneath his pede, she heard and felt her energy dagger break and the energy core fritz. The mech dug his heel into her servo as he shifted his weight then, gracefully for a mech of his size, and knelt down so that he and she were on optic level. He rested his arms on his knees as he balanced on the balls of his pedes.
A dreadfully quiet moment stretched between them as the barbarian leader studied her and she in turn.
And then, at his whim, he said, "The usual questions must be running through your processor right now: who, what, how and the whys. I imagine you must be dreaming up an escape, but there will be none. I know who and what you are, Endurus, though you may not yet know me. Despite my appearance, I am quite learned in many histories and I know you to be a trickster-type. You are clever. You understand that you deal with mechs who are bigger and stronger than you. Mechs who could break you, as I have broken your allies and you. You know this and so you use your wits and clever glossa to steal victory from unwinnable odds. You impress those around you with your unorthodox ways, but I know you for what you are. You are deceptive, deceitful, and mischievous. It could not be more clear than from your victories against Lord Megatron and the galactic starfleet. How often do the records state you tricked Megatron? One account he allowed you to get close enough to his person that you could phase and stab him three times: you slit his throat, stabbed his transformation cog, and severed his hamstring. Another you tricked him into one on one combat with the promise that it would be fair: no phasing and only one weapon of choice. Megatron should have won, but you were deceitful. Your weapon was a new type never seen before. It could transform into whatever you pleased. Megatron thought you had chosen a sword and charged you, only for you to transform your weapon at the last possible moment into a spear. By his own momentum, you gored him." The barbarian lord shook his cranium then, tsk-tsking. "Unwinnable odds. And yet, you win them. The Galactic Council is my next point. You decimated their starfleet with a handful of starships by luring them into an asteroid belt. Your cogsmechs were familiar with the area but not the Galactic fleet. Clever, most called it. I see it for another mark against you, you are deceptive. Or another victory, where you decimated the Galactic Councils military backbone without firing a single bullet or loosing a single spark-because you launched a meteorite on the planet. You broke the Galactic Council that day but left that planet forever changed. You were hailed a hero. A military genius. I see what others do not: the trickster. The coward."
"Your ways will not work on me. No words will sway me. I know your tactics well enough to know that to outsmart the turbofox, you have to be one up on the turbofox. Thus, the preemptive strike. To announce myself ahead of that would be fruitless. The Script are outfitted to phase, same as you. They were masters of the blade. The Script alone would have cut my cogsmechs and I down. That is not to account that you could have also as likely or not fled using your same phasing methods. I hope you can appreciate the lengths I have gone to too learn about you and to track you."
"Who are you?"
"Ah. There it is at last. The who. I am Megazarak."
The Endurus's acid green optics stared back at him, wide and large and round, and though full of fear, were not comprehending the significance of the designation. "What do you want from me?"
"Simply, your termination and nothing less. It is not enough to prove that I could outsmart and trap the Endurus. It is another thing entirely to have the claim that I have terminated you. Many would flock to my banner."
"If you terminate me, Optimus Prime will hunt you till the end of time to see justice done."
Megazarak slowly claimed his full towering height and then drew his sword. "Terminate me?" And he laughed, once, a deep daunting laugh. "Your old mech of a conjunx endura can try. When he falls, so too will your joint House, the Pax-Endura. I will have the mechs terminated and their frames desecrated and your daughters I will take for my own, and then the Prime's united republic of worlds will follow."
"You leave my children alone!" She shouted, a progenitor's fear and ire rising up within her.
He swung the blade up over his cranium and the Endurus, with a flash of defiance, spat on him. The blade flashed in the hot daylight as it liberated Pandora Endurus's cranium from her body.
Silence hung in the jungle for miles around until a member of Megazarak's circle shambled forward. He was a lean mech, gangly and hunched and a once handsome face that had been bent by his dark spark. "Optimus Prime will have felt her termination."
"I am counting on it, Starscream." Said Megazarak as he cleaned the blade of her strange green energon lifeblood and then subspaced it. "It will be delicious to receive word how her termination has driven the Prime to madness and grief. It will make him sloppy come combat."
Stunned surprise passed over Starscream's face. "Y-you really are going to challenge the Prime himself?"
"Yes." He answered with a spartan reply as he knelt beside the Endurus's corpse. He withdrew a long dagger and proceeded to desecrate her frame by cutting open her chassis. "I said before, all the old guard must be reduced to rust."
"And Optimus Prime's united republic?"
"I intend to take it." Megazarak answered, grinning audio to audio as he pulled forth his prize from the Endurus's chassis-the Creation Matrix. The relic shown bright with an inner light upon the clearing, penetrating the deepest of shadows with its burning chemical fire light. Megazarak stared wondrously into its depths. "Now enough of your questions. Bag her cranium." He commanded as he stood with his prize.
"What for?" Spluttered Starscream.
"So I can throw it at the Prime's pedes when we meet! And bring her frame."
Starscream looked doubly concerned then and was almost afraid to ask out of fear of his life. "B-bring it where and what for, Lord Megazarak?"
"The Creation Matrix needs a special housing, no? No metal will simply do. No. No. The Endurus must be immortalized in the pages of history. So, I want her frame melted down and the excess metal used to forge a housing case for the Creation Matrix, just as the Matrix of Leadership has a casing. It is...improper for just anyone to hold such a relic, is it not?"
"Yes, Lord Megazarak. Very improper."
"Then I want it done."
"Yes, my lord."