Rian Moeru: And the next chapter is up! Are you guys enjoying this fic? o:
Shade Penn: I sure am enjoying writing it!
It had been over a day, Jack was sure of it. It couldn't not have been at least twenty-four hours since he had been tossed in here, and still no one had come to tell them that they could have a break. No, they just kept working and working, his fingers starting to ache from the non-stop drilling. And the others were not perturbed by how long they had been at it- even longer than he had! Didn't they ever rest?
Were they just expected to work until they dropped? The thought made Jack freeze, but he gritted his teeth as he was beginning to think that wasn't as impossible to believe the longer he stayed in this one fragging tunnel! And to add insult to injury, Jack spent all this time doing all this drilling and he'd yet to find anything other than what had amounted to scrap.
It wouldn't have bothered him as much, if not for the fact for all he knew the amount they dug out of the metal walls determined how much they got to eat. Jack didn't see any of the other mechs in the tunnel find anything but small shards of energon and alloys he couldn't identify, then depositing them into a crate beside them.
Metal dust from the wall got onto Jack hands, and he was surprised not to be covered in it. He paused in drilling in another spot, and shook his hands loose of the stuff. He grimaced the dust covered the edge of his vent. 'And poor air control. Does no one inspect this place for safety violations?' Jack thought sullenly. His frame ached from standing for so long, from working for so long. Jack lifted his arm against the metal wall, and leaned his forehead on it. 'Just a moment, I want to relax just a moment…that can't be too much.'
Not even a second had passed before he thought otherwise, as the moment he did however was when a guard struck his back with an electric whip, causing him to convulse and sputter as the shocks ran their course, Jack going to his knees.
"Back to work, slave!" The mech spat out, with Jack struggling to regain himself. He stood shakily on his legs, and it took a second too long for him to start the driller again, resulting in another lash.
"I-I'm working!" Jack couldn't stop the retort to stifle it in time, and he yelped as he was hit with another lash.
"No talking back!" The guard shouted.
Jack almost dropped the drill in his effort to get it quickly back into the wall. 'Where the frag do these guys go? How did they know I was just taking a moment?' he thought. The thought of them watching made sense, and it grated on him. 'If they've been watching-they've just been watching us work! How can they not know when it's time for a break at least?' Though if he said that, he'd likely get something broken, and he was in no hurry to test the waters just yet.
'See, I'm working,' Jack thought darkly. The whip had hit him hard enough to hurt, but he couldn't tell if the plating had cracked or broke. The last thing he wanted was to bleed out. 'I hate this,' he thought vehemently, 'I hate this place!'
Footsteps alerted him that the guard had moved on, but he didn't dare stop, even for a moment. The work was endless it seemed- hours upon hours passed until he lost all sense of time in this dimly lit place and still he had found precious little. His crate had next to nothing in it, which meant even less to eat for him. The others were faring better than he, having generous amounts of metal and energon inside and Jack couldn't help the spark of jealousy that arose. Or the desire to steal from theirs.
He shook his head. No, he wasn't a thief! And they needed the energon just as much as he did.
It was with a sense of hopelessness when the next guard came around, finally giving them their break, but only after he finished checking their progress for the day. His dread grew the closer the mech grew to his location.
A clang rang in his audio receptors, and Jack whipped around to his crate, where some seemingly valuable metal had just been placed. A silver hand was withdrawing, along with the mech it belonged to, and went back to his station. Jacks optics widened, his mouth agape.
'He just…w-what?' Jack was both incredulous, and relieved. He couldn't believe this mech had just helped him, after everyone just straight up ignored him up to this point. It left him confused as well as everything else, but when the guard came he stiffened, who checked over his contents, noted something off in his holographic list, then moved on to the next one without so much as a word or nod in his direction. Jack let out an anxious breath. That was good, right? He didn't say anything to the others either.
Jack looked over to the mech that had helped him, who was the one being observed now. The guard said nothing still, going past him once finished. In the dim lighting, Jack thought the fellow slave looked familiar, but it was hard to make out the details. He needed to thank this guy...
So tentatively, Jack started on his way over. He wasn't sure how to approach this, so he decided being careful might have been the better option. The guard had thankfully left by the time he was close enough to the mech he wanted to thank. He could tell he was silver, but not much else. He looked around as the other slaves were making their way to what was probably a tunnel out.
"Um, can I talk to you for a-a klik?" Jack stumbled over the word, almost having slipped up and called it a 'second.' The mech looked at him, features still mostly hidden by the dim lighting, but Jack saw the blue optics the mech had locked on him. "Why…why did you help me?"
He was regarded heavily with those sharp optics, before the mech spoke, and the instant he did a sense of dread began to flood through Jack's systems.
"You know what the outside world looks like, do you not?" A deep, rumbling voice asked him as the figure strode forward into the marginally brighter light.
Jack stared up at the taller figure, his spark pulsing erratically as his optics widened. Now he knew why the mech looked familiar, and the voice… Little had changed, but…Jack would recognize him anywhere. 'Megatron.' Jack took a cautious step back, mouth slightly agape, staring wide-eyed at the mech.
The first thing he noticed that his face wasn't nearly as scarred as it had been in his time. It looked...younger, than he remembered. He supposed it made sense, but it was still a little surprising that Cybertronians looked like they could age in their metal bodies. Megatron wasn't quite as bulky as he had been either, lacking the spikes that decorated his shoulders. No fusion cannon adorned his right arm, a very relieving sight to Jack.
The mech raised a brow at his lack of response, then scowled impatiently. "Well? I know you were brought in from outside." Megatron pressed irritably. "You weren't made in here like the rest of us."
'Made in here?' Jack thought. He already knew so little about Cybertron, about the things they did. Just one more thing to be confused about. Terrified as he was, the confusion kept him from flinching outwardly at least. "I don't know what you mean. Haven't you ever been outside?"
Megatron's jaw clenched, optics glancing away before locking back on him. "No. Almost my entire function I have been kept down in a mine."
"That-that can't be possible!" Jack's thoughts stalled, fear and suspicion overtaken by the disbelief that such a thing could be possible. "Why would this be possible?"
Megatron narrowed his optics slightly, but let out a rough scoff. "You must have been a sheltered little mech."
Anger replaced fear, and Jack glared up at him. "I'm not little." He retorted. "And you never answered my question."
"And you never answered mine." Megatron snapped back.
"I-" He started, but what could he say? 'Yeah, I spent my life on an organic planet you later come to dominate, and now I'm here in the past to stop you from ever starting a war.' That would go over so well. "I...yeah. I came from outside. I fell into this crevice, and the guard there just threw me in."
Megatron didn't look surprised. Jack wondered if this was a common occurrence, or the guards were so terrible it wasn't hard to believe. Neither option made Jack want to stick around more than he already didn't want to.
"You were quite…pitiful." Megatron answered, somewhat bluntly and Jack frowned. "You had no wear from being a transfer, and you acted so lost." He crossed his arms, frame tense. "You would need all the fuel you could get to stay functioning."
Jack stared at him. 'He helped me…because he pitied me?' he thought indignantly. As much as the reasoning burned, Jack couldn't help but grudgingly know it was true. He was only digging up scraps, and that's probably what he would have gotten to eat. "And where would I get this fuel?"
"Through the tunnel." He gestured to where everyone else had gone, leaving the two alone. It made Jack more than a little nervous to be with just Megatron down here. "Yours will be labeled with your given designation."
"Right, my designation." Jack repeated to himself, and couldn't help stepping back from him. "Though, if I'm not registered here, then that means they'll have realized I shouldn't be here let me go!" The realization came swiftly, rising his hopes up.
And Megatron went and crushed them. "Unlikely. Even if you weren't on their records, they would never admit to making a mistake and you will have likely received a new designation already."
It sounded like this had happened before. 'Do these guards honestly just toss random mechs into the mines?' Jack thought. "And what kind of things are so valuable that they can just get away with it?"
"Energon, rare alloys; someone has to dig it up." Megatron replied. "As long as it gets done, no one cares about who or how."
"But that's...barbaric." Jack murmured as Megatron gestured for him to follow him through the tunnels. Jack hesitated, but decided to follow him anyway. There wasn't anywhere else for him to go and he needed the energon like everyone else down here.
Jack still kept an optic on Megatron though as he stayed just out of arms reach in case he got violent. He didn't even know if that were a valid prediction, but he'd rather not chance it. "This place is terrible."
"You have not been here for very long." Megatron said darkly. "There are much worse things that can happen. You'd better learn to adapt quickly."
Jack shivered. This sounded like the Megatron he unfortunately knew. Up ahead, he could hear more commotion, and he stopped once he reached the end. His optics widened, and he stared around the room. It was dingy as the rest of the mine he saw, but it was the only thing that looked like a room so far. Mechs of different shapes and sizes, with different colors to their worn-down armor were sitting around and drinking their rations, which Jack grimly noticed were either half-full, or just barely above a sliver short of empty.
"Let me guess," Jack said sullenly, "we get terrible conditions and barely any fuel, and the guards get the rest of it?"
"And whatever else they want." Megatron said tersely.
Jack didn't like the sound of that, but didn't want to think about it right now. He couldn't believe either he was talking to Megatron and the mech wasn't trying to kill him. "Do I just go up to a guard and ask for my rations?"
"Your share is delivered via the slots." He gestured to the walls, were there were square holes, the perfect size for cubes. "When you're finished, you place the cube back into the slots. Failure to do so will result you with no energon for your next break." Megatron warned him. "You'll know what cube is yours with the one that has your designation on it. The guards have likely already given you one, so I suggest you find out from them where your station is." He said,
"Right." Jack said quietly, and walked up to one of the supervising guards, who noticed his approach but did nothing. "I-I'm a new arrival; can you tell me what my designation is?"
The guard snorted, and Jack flinched as the guard held the clipboard up to him, a brief flash of light scanning his face. The image appeared on the other side of the board, and below his picture was a short series of letters and number reading J-23. "See this?" he pointed to the name at the bottom. "Remember that and don't waste our valuable time."
Jack bit back his sharp retort, and nodded. "I understand." He said, and quickly caught up to Megatron, who had picked up his own cube, which Jack noticed had a D-16 scratched into it. "Er...what does that mean?" He asked, pointing to the scratches as he picked up his lone cube.
"My designation. So others know not to mess with what's mine." Megatron murmured, opening his rations and taking a sip.
Jack glanced at the scratches, and looked down at his own cube. 'Megatron wasn't even his name.' he thought, a bit incredulous, though he grimaced as he remembered what little of Ratchet's story he could. 'Megatron was a gladiator, it was a name bots chanted when he won…so this is his old name?'
"So I don't even get to keep my name." Jack grumbled.
"What the guards will call you is one thing, but they don't care what we call each other." Megatron replied.
"I see." Jack said quietly. "So what's your real designation?" Megatron looked at him with a hard stare, and Jack cringed as he realized his mistake. 'He's always been in the mines, never knew anything else.' "Right, sorry." He awkwardly took a sip of his energon, holding a label of J-23. He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it tasted…odd. There was something grainy about it, like it wasn't filtered-which wasn't a stretch to believe- but there was something almost sweet in the flavor.
"So, do we get to sle- er, recharge?" Jack asked. "Or are we just expected to work until the next break?"
Megatron gave him a curious glance at his slight slip up, but said nothing about it. "The next break will be when you're allowed to recharge for a joor." He informed, sitting on the floor. Probably to rest his legs, Jack assumed. He did the same, but with fair distance between them.
Jack's mind supplied the substitute for the word, and he wondered how this worked still. Although, a 'joor' wasn't much to sleep and learn. 'Guess I'll need to figure it out when I'm awake then.' he thought. "And when will that be?"
"Whenever they think we're close to dropping." Megatron replied.
Jack leaned against the wall. "Of course it would be." he griped, sipping on his energon.
Megatron regarded the new mech strangely. Jack squirmed uncomfortably in his plates. It was hard to believe that he was sitting here, talking to Megatron like everything was normal. "What is your designation?" The future warlord asked him. Jack stared down at his cube. What was he supposed to say?
Jack ran through several ideas, but nothing just seemed to fit, and if he stalled too long Megatron might get suspicious. He had to keep himself from taking a breath he didn't need to calm his nerves. His grip tightened on his cube, and he squared his shoulders. "It's...Wayward." his lips twisted into a bitter smile. "And given everything that's happened, it makes a... funny sort of sense."
"Does it?" Megatron asked, slightly amused by his statement. "And I suppose you earned that designation through your terrible sense of direction?"
Jack huffed. "Haha." He said flatly. He drank down another sip, and grimly noticed that it was almost gone far too soon. "So, what do the sectors look like? Anyplace I'd need to stay away from if I want to avoid getting hurt?"
Megatron snorted. "You will get hurt, it's just a matter of staying in working condition so they don't send you to be scrapped."
Jack stared at him. Slowly, he rubbed his brow. "I can't believe- well, I can, but – it can't all be bad, right?" he asked, almost desperately. Just some inkling that he could survive this with his sanity intact. "There has to be something to do where we don't get beaten at every second."
"The pits." Megatron rumbled out gruffly, and if Jack were still human he would have paled. "Fighting in the gladiatorial pits pf Kaon. Win, and you receive extra rations, cleaning supplies, an extra break before returning to the mines. If you get to the top you can even buy your freedom." Megatron placed down his cube into his specified slot once finished, where it shot back up to the top.
'They had gladiator fighting?' Jack thought, searching his memories for any mention of hearing about this. If he had, it wasn't coming to him. What he knew about gladiator fighting in his own time sounded similar enough. "And…what if you lose?"
"You die, usually." Megatron replied. "In the pits, all fights are to the death less you get the crowd to like you."
Jack was quiet for a moment, taking in the words as he finished off his own energon, and copied the gesture of placing it into his slot. "How can this even be legal?"
Megatron made an odd sound. It was low, and grating, before Jack realized he was chuckling. "We are the lowest of the low, no one in the higher castes care or take notice than what entertainment they can get from it."
"But that's..." Jack started, confused. Afraid of what was going to happen to him down here. Hadn't Ratchet mentioned that Cybertron was in it's 'Golden Age' just before the war? "That... isn't right. It isn't fair."
"Mention that to the guards and you'll be lashed as you were before." Jack shuddered at the thought of being whipped again, wrapping his arms around his legs, resting his chin on his knees.
"And…I take it not everyone's going to be as pleasant as you?" Jack asked tentatively. It was a rude thing to ask, for sure, but Jack needed to know.
"And what do you think you'll do with that information?" Megatron drawled.
Jack looked at him incredulously. "So I know who to avoid!" he whispered heatedly. 'Like you,' He wanted to add, but both fear and suspicion kept it unsaid.
Megatron's optics narrowed. Then, he grinned. "And what would you give me in return for such valuable information?"
Jack's shoulders sagged, glancing away before rolling his optics up to the ceiling. 'Figures.' He thought. "What do you want? I don't really have anything on me."
He barely had to wait even a second before Megatron gave his answer.
"Tell me what it's like outside." He demanded without hesitation, optics piercing into his soul. Almost desperate Jack would say. It wasn't hard to figure out why though.
Jack glanced down at his feet- pedes? He wasn't sure what he could say though, but he figured there was something to be said about fair-trade. "Alright," he said carefully, thinking about just what he could bring up. Might as well start with what he knew, "there really isn't anything to talk about in the desert; lots of nothing, hills and grooves. Like the one which got me into this mess." He muttered, shaking his head.
"What of the city you came from?" Megatron didn't seem to care he could only give the barest description. He drank the details in hungrily, the almost predatory gleam in his optics startlingly familiar.
It caused Jack to look back down, focusing on how to say this-he couldn't tell him 'I was from a small town on Earth called Jasper'. For all he knew, at the moment Earth didn't exist yet. And wasn't a that a cheery thought. Jack leaned back. "The place I came from…wasn't very populated, or sprawling, just a fringe really against one of the bigger cities." Jack tried not to give names, letting Megatron believe the details were too painful to bring up.
"It was home though," Jack continued, "I never really had friends, just two, but they mean- meant," his optics dimmed, "a lot to me." He paused, pursing his lips for a moment. "There were-uh, vendors, on almost every street, with the smell of fuel and oil in the air. It was hot too, with the sun beating down on everything and heating it up." He touched his arm. "I always took it for granted, but being down here just puts into perspective how much I'd give to have it all back."
Jack shrugged uncomfortably. "I can't tell you much else, unfortunately. I never got to travel-kinda how I ended up in this mess in the first place."
"I've seen the sun. Once." Megatron muttered, intrigued by the thing mech's words. "Only for a fleeting moment, but I would do anything to see it again."
Jack have him an incredulous look. The great, mighty Megatron, trapped in some godforsaken mine since his creation it seemed- and all he wanted was to see sunlight. Jack almost didn't believe it.
'It's...not what I was expecting.' Jack thought. In some strange way, it made sense. 'I've seen the sun my whole life, never once taking for granted that it'll be there. Now though,' he glanced at the ceiling, 'I wonder if I'll ever see it again.' "It must suck then, for me to be talking about it. I...shouldn't have-"
"I asked," Megatron cut him off swiftly, "and you told me what I wanted to know."
Jack could only nod, dazed as he was still stunned that the bot before him would become such a terrible mech. He could almost be fooled into thinking they were different people-er, bots. 'What am I supposed to do?' he thought. 'I was sent back here to change things, but...was I supposed to end up here?' It seemed like too much a coincidence to end up in the same mine as Megatron, unless Primus had a twisted sense of humor. 'I thought I would have ended up near Op-er, Orion, but I guess from the universe's standpoint, Megatron would be the greater threat to...stop.'
Jack didn't want to think about it, but would things change if Megatron...died? Was that the reason he was here? Being sent back just to be a hitman seemed ridiculous, like some science-fiction movie-yet here he was, back in the past, the so-called 'Golden Age'. The thought didn't leave him, but he tried to move on. "Since I've told you what I know; do we get things like-" he stalled, searching for the word, "um, berths? To recharge on? In a different room or just recharge in here too?"
"We're allowed berths, if you can call them that." Megatron shrugged, standing up once the guard had returned, all too soon. Megatron seemed to know exactly when the mech would show, given that he stood before anyone else- not that this surprised Jack. He grimaced, dreading the day that he would be so accustomed to this place.
They were sent back to work with a scathing bark, the miners picking up their drills dutifully and followed the mech into the same tunnel as before. Drilling was the only noise that could be heard once they started, the sound reverberating off the walls and into their audio receptors constantly. More than once Jack felt as though they would short circuit, but thankfully it never came to that.
It was not a pleasant feeling all the same, the constant drilling and digging, just for whatever scraps he could get his hands on. The edges of his fingers were chipped from the strain, and from only being maybe a few days in this rotten place, he could only imagine how bad things were going to wear on him the more the days passed. If he wasn't killed by the psychotic guards or a mining accident, boredom would be the most merciful end. 'And now I'm getting morbid.' he thought.
An indefinable amount of time passed down here, how long Jack couldn't tell. All he knew was that by the end of it he was ready to drop by the time the guards came to allow them their rest for that evening. Day. Whatever it was on Cybertron. Even Megatron looked worse for wear by then.
Jack forced himself to move, despite how much his joints ached. He followed Megatron and the other miners down another tunnel, this one leading to an even dimmer room than the others. Which was saying something. Then again, if this was where the slaves slept, it was likely a way of cutting back on 'wasting' lighting in here.
Jack scowled, but blinked as his optics suddenly adjusted, giving way to night vision. He looked around the room covered now with a strange greenish film. They were like the kind used back on earth, and he wondered if that design choice was on purpose. 'Chalk another thing up to something I didn't know before.' he thought, noting how even in the near darkness bots were able to find the small, thin slabs that Jack assumed were the berths. And they looked barely big or sturdy enough to hold him, which made watching someone as large as Megatron lie down on one look almost comical if Jack weren't so angry about the continued sub-par conditions.
Megatron raised a brow when Jack sat carefully down on a 'berth' beside him. "Since when did I pick up a stray?"
Jack tilted his head, and he wondered that himself. He shook his head. "Since you were the only one who did anything." The other mech scoffed, but had no other objections as Jack lied down.
Jack though laid awake as the others shuttered their optics, slipping easily into recharge. Megatron did as well, allowing Jack a moment to watch him without scrutiny from him or others. He...he could end it all, here and now. Without Megatron there would be no war, no mass loss of life, or a dead Cybertron
Jack found himself sitting up once he was sure there was the steady humming of recharging systems. His optics glanced around, and he quietly slipped over to the piles of drills some of the miners had laid against the wall. He picked the top one off, but didn't touch the drill button. Jack felt sick to his tank even as he tried to convince himself this was the only option.
Jack crept up to Megatron's berth, standing by his head. One strike, one strike and it was over. Jack's fingers tightened on the handle. He froze as he began to raise it, his optics locked onto the sleeping mech. His spark pulsed almost painfully in his chest, his mind unwillingly going back to another mine in another time. Megatron's red optics boring into him, his taunting words ringing in his ears.
Jack gritted his teeth, his frame shaking as he lowered the drill away, stepping back to his own berth. 'I-I can't...' he thought, his optics wide. He couldn't do it even when Megatron was nothing more than a monster, how could he have thought he'd be able to do when Megatron hadn't done anything- in fact, he'd been helping him!
Jack rubbed his forehead as he sat down on his berth. He sat the drill beside him, and looked at Megatron when the mech's optics shuttered open. "Hey." he said quietly.
Megatron glanced at the drill. "What are you doing with that?" he kept his voice equally low. It was hard to tell what he was thinking, and Jack made sure to try and keep his voice as light as possible to not be suspicious to what he'd tried to do.
"I didn't want to be scrambling for one when the break is over." he explained.
Megatron snorted. "You'd best get your rest then, for there will be no guarantee it will be there should you wake up late."
Jack nodded, and set the drill under his berth, just able to scrap it by. He lied back down as Megatron's optics shuttered shut, and Jack finally let himself sigh. He rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. 'Did I just make a mistake?' he thought. 'Did staying my hand just doom everyone again?' Despair and doubt crept in, but then his optics hardened as his fists clenched. 'No, if I'm here to change the past, then I'll change it. If I can't bring myself to kill Megatron, then I'll just do what I can to keep him from becoming that monster from my time.'
He shuttered his optics, falling into blissful sleep. It was uneasy, as he dreamed of his time, of home. Where his friends and mother were, where the Autobots wouldn't be waiting for him if he were to succeed. Even in the dream it sent waves of depression through him, wondering if this was all worth it.
