Chapter 19: Queen of Chaos
A/N: Mozart: Requiem in D Minor: Lacrimosa
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Torn strips of violet cloth billowed in the heat of the flames, as the stray ends whipped the drifting flakes of ash. Armed with Teratron's blaster in her hand, the Decepticon queen stood amidst the raging fire. Although her supply of bombs had been exhausted, her daughter's extinction made Starscream a dangerous adversary. Megatron had to pay the penalty and she was ready to deal his well-deserved punishment.
There was nothing on her mind; except to raise her gun at the silver mech, who mimicked her with his own arm cannon. Unfortunately, Megatron's weapon was spent and had exploded upon use, rendering his damaged arm a dead weight. It was foolish to tackle the ex-gladiator and exchange blows, even in his damaged state, but Starscream snatched the rare opportunity and lunged first into his abdomen; she needed to feel her husband beneath her palms, to have and to hold and destroy him into pieces of scrap.
The Decepticon leader swiftly seized her wrist in a vice-like grip and forcibly yanked her to full standing height. He deftly snaked his leg behind her thigh and tried to fold her into a kneeling position, but the seeker's violent writhing caused them both to collapse gracelessly to the ground. Darting optics searched keenly for the handgun, while his mate thrashed furiously under his weight like a bagged wolverine, wailing between kicks and claws to his battered frame. Spying the firearm out of their reach, Megatron snarled when Starscream bought her silence by biting into the wirings of his neck. Razor-sharp fingers raked themselves across his chiselled face and the aspen mech stumbled back from the persistent abuse, lest he loses his sight.
He shouted for reason and demanded his queen to settle herself, but he only found the white-hot glow of wrath seared through her lenses. Starscream had already forgotten the blaster, but continued her reckless clawing at her leader's midriff, all the while crying a frenetic dirge, curdled with sorrow and grief. Megatron also spared no quarter with his mate and chanced upon an opening in her rampant swings; suddenly, Starscream found herself tumbling across dirt and fire, lashed and scalded by the serrated refuse. With the blaster kept in mind, Megatron extended his remaining arm only to reach for thin air, before a great pain rippled from his exposed arm joint to his entire mainframe.
The white tyrant keeled from a calculated shot, from the blaster he was supposed to retrieve. In her blind savagery, Starscream still managed to summon her impertinence and delivered a round-house kick to Megatron's face, continuing her fist-and-clawed onslaught until they both reached the end of the tunnel. A few more shots from the blaster brought Megatron staggering to a dead end, with scattered waste at his feet and his own energon sprayed across the wall.
A steady chime shivered across the tunnels, created by a dirty pair of delicate, blue feet that lumbered through the black detritus cemented along the passageways. Singed fibres rippled from the shoulders of a broken silhouette, as the sinewy figure tore through each curtain of smog. The surrounding heat reflected against her lithe stature, flushed with a rose-coloured hue, as the stray ash fluttered whimsically in the air. Copious tears traced her weathered face and contoured her expression of incurable sadness; with his twisted brand of sadism, Megatron forced a smile on his tired face.
"Are you going to finish it, then?"
Starscream cut her tears with a blink, but the aim of the blaster was persistent. She stared blankly at her lord, who sat against the curved wall.
"(Khk-)...'Finish what Teratron started and take credit for her treachery?"
A dry, sober comment interrupted the seeker's mindset and she couldn't help but pull a lopsided smile. A forced chuckle escaped the red femme, before she lurched forward and cackled with manic glee at her ankles, until her whole body shook from laughter and fatigue. Both Transformers laughed in awkward unison, until the femme con interrupted their chortles with an ear-piercing screech and shot another bullet into her partner's arm. The tyrant wheezed through clenched teeth and spat blue energon onto his chest plate; despite its innocent hue, Megatron was alarmed at his own energon, which dribbled onto his broad chest.
He was growing weak.
Starscream swallowed a throaty hiccup and her armed hand rattled nervously. Sorrow and confusion mixed with sour tears, as her mind ran through fleeting thoughts in search for a logical solution. Noting her solemn distress, Megatron hoped that he could soothe the raging behemoth inside her, in spite of his senses swimming in turbulence.
"My aerial commander, my comet in battle, (my eternal companion...)" His voice grew to a murmur and Starscream watched her leader mumble to himself. "(My manna in the Inferno, my queen of chaos...)"
"(I don't like losing things...)" she whispered in reply, "(And flattery won't get you anywhere). Neither could hear each other's hushed sentiments in the sea of flames and its voice of protest. "(You didn't have to kill her, you-!) ...You didn't have to kill our DAUGHTER!!!"
"We-hkh-we have just been wed, and-hrkh-!" the aspen mech spoke between hacked mouthfuls of energon and paused to allow his system to recover slightly. "And Teratron...betrayed us. We-...I had to. It was too calculated, she must have planned this in advance-"
"Don't buy yourself excuses, Megatron..." Starscream started treading dangerously towards her lord. "You didn't-...we-...(it shouldn't be like this!)"
"And you would die for her-?" the offending handgun struck Megatron's jaw, but he would rather have been slapped by the blaster than a sky-blue foot. "She didn't have to die! No one does! NO ONE---!!!"
"(No one...)" The seeker sighed and crumpled to the floor in spasms. Sobbing from her primal howl, the femme con shakily recovered her posture and her aim, much to her target's disappointment. "(No one...except...)"
"You've just lost a daughter," the aerial commander halted her gait and studied Megatron's broad carriage, as it gently rose and fell with his words; even in his exhausted state, the gunformer still carried his proud bearing. "How much more are you willing to lose, Starscream? ...How much more are you going to sacrifice, just for this moment!"
"You are my queen, not my widow-" the Decepticon lord paused in mid-speech and followed her pewter knees straddling his waist, as her hips slid seductively over his mien and her thighs brushed perversely against his scarred legs. Megatron clicked his jaws shut at the barrel of the gun, forced below his chin. Their systems churned in dysfunctional harmony, inhaling each others' scent of charred metal and burnt energon. Both crowns belonging to the Decepticon sovereigns, met once more amidst the chaotic apocalypse.
"(Why don't you fight back...?)" she whispered, her gaze affixed to his in deadly contemplation. "Have you gotten weak? Are you not afraid of death?"
Megatron felt the barrel of the gun dig deeper into his wiring and his internal systems stuttered in protest. The mech simply shrugged weakly in reply. "Death, is my slave, as I am it's master."
"...Do you not want to see your beloved Cybertron, moulded to your totalitarian desires? Your troops rise above the corpses of our enemies?" After her violent fits, Starscream seemed to have recovered her manner, but only at face value. She curled her lips to a distorted grin, in spite of her shuddering frame, wracked with consternation. "What are you waiting for, Lord Megatron?"
What are you waiting for?
Between her acidic words drizzled in bitter sarcasm, he saw it in her. Past her trembling optics darting for an unspoken answer, the ashen mech found a small, sombre, desperate plea for his disapproval. Maybe she wanted to hear him censure her actions, so her internal tumult of emotions will cease to exist, but she was anything but vulnerable. To even hint at that sentiment would be too easy for the seeker to solve her problems, or rouse her anger to greater passion. Her treachery was an old habit both machines were used to and yet, she needed him to follow its course.
She tested him again.
As her mate, her husband and her lord, Starscream wanted Megatron's full support. After all, the gun is already stretching the circuits underneath his chin. It was the femme con's way of sharing her thoughts with him, whether he approves of their conflicts or otherwise. Teratron did not need to die to bring Starscream to this conclusion. Her death would not have deviated her creators from this quandary and Megatron was uncomfortably familiar with this situation.
Would the weakened tyrant be so generous to his consort and let her have her way?
"There will be others who would follow your lead in treachery, but you know that already," he reminded her, his words mixed with hacked energon. "A natural death is rare, for one such as myself and it wouldn't be surprising if I died by your hands. Even when my spark is extinguished, I will still live on in memory. If I am to leave this universe today, you will be by my side and the future shielded beneath capable wings. That is why I married you."
"Buying time, my lord?" her voice curled to a strange pitch, partly due to confusion in hearing such pleasantries from Megatron.
"What are you waiting for?" he grunted in reply. "Squeeze the trigger...if you dare to..."
An audible hum seconded his opinion and a soft violet glow lit their faces.
"Resign yourself to the fate I've given you," she brought their lips to a breath's width, letting the heat of the flames lick their faces. "Die, for my love for my children, my kingdom...and most importantly, for myself. (All hail, Lord Megatron...)"
The last thing he cared to remember about this day or this breem, was her lingering whispers, as the chill of her lips warmed his own and he heard a modest click from the blaster's trigger.
And another click. And another. And another and another. Not only death, but chance and fortune, was Megatron's slave.
The tired mech focused his cracked, hazy vision on his queen, who shook the blaster in her hands, desperate for a conclusion. When it still refused to work, she howled a foul string of Cybertronian and hurled the weapon aside; the gun abruptly misfired and launched its last shot into the flames.
The couple exchanged stupefied glances, until the femme con choked and her leader sighed, from relief and exhaustion of this ordeal. Faint calls from the troops could be heard, echoing down the tunnel they rested in. Their rescue started out as a small drizzle, followed by a delicate shower of water, which doused the fire surrounding their overheated bodies.
Starscream shivered, when a black, chiselled hand reached for her neck. Rough fingers withdrew from the safety of his palm and Megatron, with unfound gentleness, stroked her face, tracing the tears that ran down her smooth countenance. Shaking hands rested on his scoured chest, before Starscream balled them into fists and started banging them. She hung her head, mumbling and whimpering incoherently as she rapped her helmet against his shoulder to match the rhythm of her fists.
The same hand that caressed Starscream's face rested on her weary back, following the uneven curves and broken contours as far as it could reach. The femme con suppressed her pitiable wails to quiet sobs, when she felt a small weight at the back of her head and heard her creation's murderer, crooning softly into her audio sensors. Instinctively, Starscream spoke words that both Decepticons were accustomed to.
"...(F-)...(Forgive me)...L-Lord...Megatron-"
Her marriage and coronation, Teratron's betrayal, death and a failed attempt at justifiable vengeance, was enough to tear Starscream's spark into atoms. However, with the advantage turned against her, could she afford Megatron's leniency, or would he damn her to the fate she deserved? Two words were enough to soothe their unsettled emotions.
"(....Why not?)"
Those half-mumbled, half-sighed words were her latest boon, that calmed her senses, although her leader was hoping that the strength of his words would prevent him from falling into stasis lock; his paltry attempt failed.
Both lord and lady held their silence for the rest of the day.
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A/N: To everyone (and I mean, EVERYONE) who's waited for this chapter and is exhausted of all patience...please, don't, lynch me! (I forgot I've finished and proofread this chapter-) *Ducks* As for my very casual pace in finishing this story, I have RL work and prefer to take my time, instead of rushing my thoughts and running in circles. Thanks to everyone who's kind and patient enough to spot the reoccurring mistakes I've made! :P
It's quite strange describing Transformer tears according to our senses, but I presume they would either be salty, sour, acidic(!) or smell like alcohol. I think their water's imported, and the only rain I know they have is acid rain, ouch! o_0