Chapter 3:
1;
Optimus hadn't seen Megatron face to face in a few years, the last time having been on Aquatron when they each had lost a number of troops to Sharkticons. The two hadn't fought then, only spoken, discussed how to get out of the situation with the least amount of casualties. Before then, they had met three times after having left Cybertron, each time on a different asteroid field in which their troops would have a brief skirmish and then fall back, Megatron always gaining the upper hand, but never managing to actually wipe them out. Throughout the war, this was the pair's fourth duel, and each of the first three had been won by Megatron.
The tyrant's mace swung down into Prime's arm, knocking his axe off its trajectory to strike Megatron's face. Megatron's thoughts turned back to before their first battle, a sort of precursory to any sort of real fight, mainly because it was more of a simple sick beating than a genuine one-on-one. Prime had still been Pax, Cybertron had still been at peace, albeit greatly oppressed, and Megatron still had so much to do.
He was in complete control of Kaon already, and had enormous influence with the authorities in Tarn, Helex, Vos, Blaster City, Protohex, and Tesarus. He had scheduled a meeting to discuss politics with Cybertron's High Council, a meeting to be headed by Sentinel Prime himself.
Megatron, trusting the young bot that he saw as his friend, and an important part of Cybertron's future, a brother to him, told Orion Pax that he had planted a sniper on the building opposite's roof. He said that if the council refused to listen to him (and he thought that to be quite likely), he would have a sniper remove Sentinel Prime from the equation permanently. Then the rest of the council (authority would fall to Senator Ratbat, who shortly after would come out as a Decepticon sympathizer himself) would be forced to listen to Megatron, and to realize that the world would be changed by him regardless of whether they liked it or not.
Orion had called him a monster, and only a few short minutes later, Megatron had left him on the floor of that room, in pain, and silent.
Pax, of course, had quickly informed the council's head security officer, who had entered the chamber only moments after Megatron had begun to make his proposal to the council, informing Prime that two Decepticons had been arrested outside, a bot named Forestock, who transformed into a sniper rifle, and a bot named Amp who had been attempting to use said sniper rifle.
Megatron had barely managed to avoid punishment for this, claiming that he was entirely unaware of these rogue followers of his, but the council entirely dismissed everything that he said from then on. They weren't interested in the words of a terrorist.
2;
Bluestreak had a gun pointed right at some con's head, an Insecticon from the looks of it, an orange one. He knew that Powerglide and Warpath did too, but waited for Blaster's signal nonetheless. There was always the satisfaction of blasting a con to kingdom come, but that didn't mean that there weren't parts of this that he hated. Where was Scrounge by this point? Or Jackpot? Sights? Groundpounder?
It had been so many years since he had seen any of his dearest friends, and to make it worse, he couldn't even know if they were alive or dead. Elita-1's party had lost contact with the Ark only a few weeks after it had left Cybertron, and who knew how many other ships had left Cybertron on that very day alone. He remembered Protohex again, and again he couldn't help but think that destiny had shown him before that he wasn't lucky enough to keep all his friends around forever.
The coms opened up, and he heard Blaster call out the order to attack. He was moving instantly, huge rifle firing as quickly as it could, Warpath and Powerglide doing the same. The orange Insecticon fell to the ground, dead, apparently a clone, as did the next two that he brought down.
The rest of Blaster's group had jumped over the half of a bulkhead door, and were charging towards Slipstream's party with them. Regardless of the outcome, Bluestreak knew that this wouldn't end exactly the same as Protohex, because this time there was a gun in his hand, and this time he wouldn't go down without a fight.
3;
Sideswipe glanced over at Sunstreaker, a look of fear on his face, to find it mirrored perfectly by his brother.
"Hound!" Sideswipe called out, getting to his feet and facing his ranking officer, quickly getting his silent, albeit calm attention. "The Seekers must've blown off one of our shield generators when they were shooting at us. There's no way we can cover the entire ship with just the two. The atmosphere is gonna do some major damage to the ship."
"Wheeljack?" Hound asked the crew's resident genius.
"Nothing I can do anymore," Wheeljack said, looking down at his command board, clearly attempting to find a way around the problem. "From what I can tell, the best option we have would be to jettison the back third of the ship before we get transformed into a freaking fireball ready to rip every one of us apart."
"Is Prime still outside?" Hound asked, his voice beginning to pick up a subtle bit of anxiety.
"Still fighting Megatron," Wheeljack confirmed, "but even if he got inside now he wouldn't be in the safe zone for the break."
"Jazz is back inside?"
"That's right."
Hound patched himself through to the ship's resident commander with Prime still outside.
"Jazz? Can you hear me?" Hound asked, a bit more anxiety coming out now.
"Hound? Yeah, loud and clear," Jazz replied, seeming to grunt as he did while blaster fire sounded around him. "What's goin' on?"
"One of our shields is down, and our best chance of survivin' this is to break Section C off from the rest of the ship," Hound explained. "That means we've gotta get everyone into Sections A and B, and we've also gotta get Prime back in here as soon as we can."
Jazz sighed, and across the ship he stopped firing his blaster for a second and took cover, letting the rest of his team take over temporarily. This was a bad situation, and they both knew it.
"How much time do we have?"
Hound glanced at Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, the latter of which gave him the answer of no more than ten minutes before the ship was forced to enter the atmosphere.
"Ten minutes," Hound replied finally. "Tops."
Jazz sighed again.
"Let me handle this from here," Prime's second in command replied. "Either Ironhide or I'll give you the all clear when the time comes… In the meantime, just do what you can on the technical side of things."
"You've got it, Jazz," Hound began to reply before he was cut off by the radio transmission being ended on the other side.
4;
The axe skimmed by no more than an inch away from Megatron's head, the Decepticon leader barely managing to dodge the oncoming blow. In an instant, the roles were reversed, Megatron's mace swinging accurately into Prime's own head, tossing him to the ground, a few tiny pieces of his helmet being cast out into the void of space. The gravity wall was beginning to fail. That wasn't a good sign.
"I almost feel sorry for you Optimus," Megatron said, standing over his proclaimed brother's body, staring down at it with a sense of disgust and mild pity. "All of this effort, all of these years running and trying desperately to fight back, all to lead to this."
Optimus began to crawl desperately away, seeing that the airlock was only a few meters away, and knowing that the second he began to stand, Megatron would blast him with his fusion cannon.
"And now, upon your own very ship, we stand… well, I stand, with you fallen before my feet," Megatron said, now smiling. "Cybertron is mine, its moons are mine, and now every Autobot in your ship is MINE."
Megatron lunged forward, grabbed Optimus by one shoulder, pulled him upward, and wrapped his other hand around his old friend's neck, leaving them staring into each other's optics.
"Everything belongs to me, now," Megatron growled, the smile gone, replaced by one of ferocious menace. At that moment, more than anything else, he was that old gladiator, pretending not to enjoy the slaughter, but adoring it all the same. "I can do whatever I want to any of them, and I know that whatever survivors that make it to that tiny speck of dirt are going to regret not giving up on their rise to the surface through the Well of Allsparks. They'll wish that they had died on Aquatron or during the war back home. They will know the meaning of torment in a way that not anyone has befo-"
Optimus's head blasted forward at a speed even the great and mighty Megatron could barely comprehend as he released the Autobot leader, energon flowing from above his optics into them.
"Get off my ship!" Optimus cried out as his energon axe emerged from his arm and sliced across Megatron's chest, more energon now pouring from there. Optimus's left fist rammed Megatron's face, throwing him to the ground as Optimus had been a moment before.
Megatron was back on his feet quickly, not giving Prime the chance to bring his weapon down and finish him for good, instead leaping onto his adversary and letting them both crash into the Ark's exterior. Now, the pink-purple flow of liquid coming from Megatron's head began to slowly pour away onto Optimus instead of into the tyrant's own, revealing them slightly, piercing slits of hatred filled red.
"You try to disable my optics and I'll tear out your SPARK!" but Megatron's hands were nowhere near Prime's spark, instead seemingly trying to plunge his long, powerful fingers into his former comrad's own optics, irony clearly not lost on the mighty Decepticon.
For a few moments they struggled together there, Optimus gripping Megatron around his wrists while his enemy's fingers drew ever nearer to Prime's optics, until eventually the Matrix bearer pushed the gladiator off of him, a few meters down the flank of the mighty exodus ship. They stared at each other before leaping back to their feet, the energon pouring from Megatron's head beginning to stop. The battle's conclusion, something that anyone might expect to come from a long building climax of punches, and elegant strikes, some blocked and dodged, others hitting home, instead ended terrifyingly quickly.
Prime's right fist blasted through the void of space towards Megatron's head, and not half a second before the two metallic beings collided, Megatron moved slightly to his right, reached out his fusion cannon, and fired a hole through Optimus Prime's chest.
5;
Autonomous Maximus, perhaps one of Primus's greatest and truest sons, moved for the first time in billions of years. The Keeper watched as Maximus's right hand clenched into a fist, his subconscious mind fearing for his lost brother.