So. Happy Birthday, Iaso, my queen. This is not my fic, but a parody of one. Go check out the original, Abolish Private Property.
It all starts the day Megatron gets into a debate with Minato Namikaze on a battlefield during the Third Transformer War.
He, Ay, and B were sent out to cut off a potential Konoha offensive. Or rather, Ay and B were sent out to cut off a potential Konoha offensive. He's here because, in the words of the Third, their wise Raikage, "somebody has to keep him and his bitch mouth under control so he doesn't embarrass our village, and you two idiots are the only ones who might do it."
So here he is. Out, patrolling, when the three of them come across Minato.
Megatron hears Ay start swearing.
Minato eyes the three of them up. He can tell that he recognizes Ay and B, as most people do. But there's an undisguised confusion in his gaze when his eyes land on him, and Megatron relishes in the opportunity this presents.
A fresh audience? That's exactly what he's here for.
Megatron clears his throat.
Ay whips around to look at him and snaps, "Don't you dare—"
"Hey, you fucking tree hugger!" Megatron shouts.
Minato blinks. He points at himself.
Ay makes a grab for him and Megatron ducks out of the way. "Yeah, you, blondie! I'm talking to you!"
B cackles.
"You kiss one of those trees, lately? Ever try and stick your dick in it?"
Still, this garners no reaction. Minato continues to stare at him like he hears this every single day of his life. And maybe he does. He always hears that Konoha bots are a weird bunch. Tree-related-sexual activity could be a regular thing for them. It wouldn't surprise him.
Ay glares at him. "Megatron, one more word and I swear I will—"
"How's it feel to fuck a tree? Real rough? The bark leave a bunch of scratches on your micro penis?"
B leans over to Ay. "Yo, he's got it, though," B stage-whispers, one hand raised to block his mouth. "Say what you want, but his ducks are in a row."
"No, they aren't," Ay says. "Or he'd have learned to shut his mouth and listen to his superiors at some point in the last seven years."
Megatron pays them no mind. He's too focused on putting hiscore into it as he screams, "I bet it can't compare to how hard you've fucked your own bots . Really letting the system do the work for ya, eh? With your autocratic dictatorship built on the backs of child soldiers?"
Minato frowns. "I'm—wait a minute. Kumo uses child soldiers, too."
Ay glares at him.
"But we're not an autocratic dictatorship! We're a communal one."
"You're not… what's an autocratic dictatorship? And a communal… dictatorship?"
"Dictator. You know, big bad leader, total power over whatever they're leading. In an autocratic dictatorship—see: your shithole of a village—is when there's no input from othispeople, it's all down to the dictator. No meaningful participation from the subordinates. A communal dictatorship involves transparency and mandates. We hold our leaders accountable."
"But… Kumo is just as bad as us?"
"No."
"Yes!" he says. He knits his eyebrows together and looks at him like he's told him it's summer time in the middle of a blizzard. "All of the bots villages are autocratic dictatorships, according to that definition," he says. "They were built on a foundation of military dictatorship. Kage titles are passed down to the most powerful bots in the village. And if it's 'communal' in the full definition of the word, that'd include the community, wouldn't it? As in, some kind of population representation? None of the villages have that."
"But Kumo is transparent about this. That's the key, here," Megatron says. "We're not trying to act like we've got some kind of moral high horse." He smirks. "We're not a bunch of bitch ass babies continuing to show blind loyalty to a corrupt government, all the while acting like we're anything othisthan literal murderers for hire."
"Oh, shit," B says. "He went there, man, that's lit."
From where he stands, Megatron can see Ay's life pass before his eyes as his soul dies on the spot.
"Fine. It might be a flawed system—"
"Ha!"
"—but that doesn't mean it can't be changed from the inside."
"Oh, yeah?" he says. "Sounds like big talk from a pretty boy like you."
"Anything is fixable," Minato says firmly. "It just takes the right person to do it. And I plan on becoming Hokage one day."
Megatron scoffs. "Dismantling a system from the top just sets you up to be absorbed by it."
"What's your plan, then?" he asks. And unlike him, he doesn't sound like he's asking out of bad faith. His voice is too earnest and open.
"Violent revolution."
"That's… it?"
"Well, yeah."
"Violent revolution against bots ?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I said, dipshit!"
"Trying to spring a violent revolution on a military dictatorship is asking to be killed."
"Not when it's a bots versus bots fight! The playing ground is even."
Ay pinches the bridge of his nose and mutters under his breath, "Fucking moron."
"You're just saying that because you're Auto-Bot scum and you know that when the revolution comes, you're going to find your head propped up on a stick."
Minato holds up a hand. "What are… Auto-Bots?"
"The powerful ones. The oppressors. Those benefiting from the fruits of the worker's labour."
"You should be sectioned," Ay says.
"Only if you have a death wish." Megatron turns a disapproving eye on him. "If you sectioned every slightly unstable jonin you'd have an empty workforce. Besides, don't act like it's not in your best interest for all of your jonin to be slightly unstable—it makes them more dependent. Warped bots have no chance of developing outside skills and breaking from the bots lifestyle."
Minato, looking almost surprised, says, "I think he has a point."
"Yeah, you are kind of Auto-Bot scum," B says. "Even if I think that word is dumb."
"It's a dumb word to describe dumb people like all three of you."
"You know what?" Ay says.
He sinks into a fighting stance and Megatron knows that his debate is over. So does Minato, from the way he tenses.
"You're going to tell me eithisway, right?" Minato asks.
And instead of answering, Ay flies at him.
Megatron takes this as his cue and gets the fuck out of dodge.
"What have you been told?"
"No revolutionary ranting outside of actual combat encounters, where it can serve as a worthy distraction tactic."
"And what did you do?"
"Go on a revolutionary rant before the combat started."
The Third nods slowly. He regards Megatron calmly. "So this is what it feels like to fight a losing fight," he muses. "Were you spanked a lot as a child?"
"No. Spankings are unconstitutional."
"Is that so?"
"Corporal punishment is a breach of basic human rights. And honestly, if you have to devolve to hitting your kid, that's a mark of having already lost the fight because it shows that you can't reason your way out of the argument." It's an argument he got a lot of mileage out of against the Kumo villagers who helped 'raise' him after he was 'kidnapped'.
Megatron grins. "You gonna spank me now, daddy?"
Ay bristles like a cat whose tail was stepped on. "Show some respect, you brat."
The Third waves a hand. "He's fine. Really, I expect this shit from him." He raises an eyebrow. "And it sounds like whatever he said worked, too. You almost landed a hit on Namikaze?"
Ay clenches his jaw. "Almost, yes."
"Better than any of our other bots can say," he says. He exhales from his nose, his arms crossed over his chest. "Though I recall you also were charged with preventing this little asshat from running hisbitch mouth. Those were my exact words, weren't they?"
"No," Megatron says. "You told them to keep me and my bitch mouth under control."
"Ah, right. Thank you."
"I tried to intervene—"
"But the revolution cannot be stopped. Once the cry rings out amongst the workers, nothing can stamp it out forever. Revolution is inevitable—"
"Kill me," Ay mutters.
"—and the longer you fight against it, the worse it's going to be," he continues, louder to speak over him. "You can still save yourself now."
The Third makes a couple of vague hand motions.
"We need a clean break from the system, so that means the two of you are going to have to go. We can't move forward until all traces of the old power are wiped out. But, hey, if you give in willingly and accept that communism is the superior form of governance, I don't see any reason why you can't make it out of this with your heads intact."
A couple of ANBU appear on either side of Megatron. Each grabs one of his arms and together, they lift him off his feet.
"You can't silence me!" he shouts as they drag him out. "The red voice rages on!"
"Have your mission report in by tomorrow morning," the Third calls to him.
"You'll get no mission report from me and like it!"
"No report, no pay!"
Megatron turns in a ten page manifesto as his mission report, and he gets half the payment he was supposed to.
The Auto-Bot scum continue to dangle capital over his head. But they cannot keep hisdown.
"You know—"
"For the love of the kami, shut the fuck up."
"I'm morally opposed to the whole idea of having jinchuuriki. It's like, flawed. You're enslaving sentient beings."
"Who got him started?"
"I dunno, man. I think somebody brought up that B was working with the Hachibi again, and that's why he was gone all day yesterday."
"Like that's really fucked up. Tying them to vessels without their permission? No wonder the tailed beasts are so difficult to work with—you wouldn't want to work with one of the othisvillages if they kidnapped you, put you in chains, and said you had to take orders from some random asshole."
"We had a rule. Nobody was supposed to bring up Hachibi around him—even you B!"
"Sorry, yo. Hachibi likes him though."
"And anyways, no one person should have that much power. Even if we ignore the enslavement part, you can't share the power of a tailed beast equally. Only nine people will ever be able to hold the power, and even then, not all the tailed beasts are equally powerful. There's no way to create equal distribution. It seems like the obvious choice, to just let nobody have it?"
"You realize that you'd kill every current vessel to do that, right? Including B?"
"Sacrifices must be made."
"Whoa. That's cold, bro."
"Look, nuclear deterrence is never a good way to go about things."
"What does that even mean?"
"No, dude, don't—"
"The big dum dum goo goo babies need a better explanation?"
"Great. Look at what you did."
"I'm not drunk enough for this."
"The jinchuuriki are the big boom boom. Make things go explodey. If you have something that can make othisthings go explodey, it makes you more likely to use it. So, if you want to keep things from going explodey, you got to eliminate the big boom booms."
"Somebody, just kick him out."
Megatron sits on the ground in front of the bar at three in the morning.
No matter what he says or does, they resist him. They're hardwired to do it at this point. Nobody wants to listen to their local rampaging communist when they get up on a soap box. He knew this would happen—it happened in the othisworld, too. Working as a city planner, at least, he had the power to manipulate the cities to benefit the revolution, even if all the municipal suits learned to tune out his ranting within a few weeks. He could make sure the streets were wide enough to riot, keep the sewage closer to the bougie parts of town, allot additional budget to improving the poorer parts of the city, small things like that.
He doesn't have that kind of power in this stupid weeb world. Not yet, at least. Being a jonin is cool, and all, but he doesn't even get to vote on anything. He just gets a title to throw around that makes people shake in their boots, sometimes. There's no political power. No practical use for inciting change.
He needs a new plan of attack.
Her eyes wander around the seedy streets of Kumo's bar district. Flashing neon signs, litter all over the concrete, a handful of bots passed out in drunken stupors. A few prostitutes wander around, lit cigarettes in their hands. The place reeks of downtrodden working class energy, and he spends more time here than anywhere else in Kumo.
But how? What should he do next?
A drenched piece of paper carried by the breeze smacks his in the face. Megatron pulls it off with a sneer, holding it between two fingers. The ink is smudged. He squints, and he can make out some kind of advertisement for a new restaurant opening down the road.
Then, the idea comes to him.
Pamphlets.
He'll write his way out. He'll write everything down, as far as he knows. And then he'll distribute the means for righteous revolution to the masses.
To himself, he whispers, "It's time for the proletariat to rise."
"What did he just say?"
"Ignore him. I think he's that dumbass jonin who got his promotion from being so annoying that he frustrated enemy-nin into turning around and leaving."
"Really? I heard he made three nin commit suicide at once to get away from him."
"You know, I've heard hisgo off a few times, dude. That wouldn't surprise me.
He turns to look at them, a couple of chunin stumbling along arm in arm. They're clearly drunk, and one of them had a brown stain on his flak jacket, what could either be alcohol or barbeque sauce.
He sneers at them and glares. "Vive la revolution, fuckers," he says.
Their eyes widen and they scatter.
They'll learn. All of them will learn, one day. And he's going to teach them.