18: Karma

Everything that was happening around Swoop seemed to be happening in extreme slow motion. She didn't know if it was an effect of the altered core programming or if it was just one of those pivotal life moments that always seemed to happen in slow motion.

An enraged and impressively feral snarl had brought her marginally to her senses. She'd been sprawled face-down on the purple-grey metal floor, shivering from cold and trembling from the searing pain that was lancing through her entire body but that in particular radiated from her spark and from a certain small and very specialized port that was embedded in her abdomen. She pushed herself up first to her hands and knees, her arms shaking in protest as they struggled to bear the weight of her torso, and then pushed herself further back, onto her heels. Once upright, she stared dazedly around herself.

Slowly, fighting to see through the thick fog that seemed to cloud everything, Swoop realized that the snarl that had roused her had come from none other than Thundercracker. He was certainly not in the best physical shape, either, horribly damaged in places. One of his wings was mostly gone, only a painful-looking stump remaining. The damage wasn't fresh, though, and she realized then that he had no doubt been punished, perhaps tortured for information, during that time that she had been held captive and then…then…

Yet there he was, somehow, alive and taking Megatron by surprise, using the brief advantage that surprise gave him to pin Megatron against a console. He was saying something to Megatron, but Swoop in her dazed state couldn't quite make out the words. It didn't matter, though, because Megatron quickly overpowered Thundercracker, and he fell. Practically as he did so, however, a motley jumble of Autobots – and Starscream – burst into the room. Swoop could only stare at them in shock, and in her dazed state she couldn't begin to comprehend how they were there, how they had known where she was…

And then she numbly watched them fall, one by one, the latest being Snarl. He was sprawled, deeply unconscious at least, on the floor not far from her. Soon, all but Starscream were down. Alive, dead, she didn't know. It vaguely occurred to her that perhaps she should see about attending to those who had fallen, but she couldn't move. Nor could she take her eyes off of Megatron and Starscream, squared off against each other and circling like wary vultures. What they were saying to each other was obviously heated and hateful. Their faces were twisted into angry and determined snarls, their voices raised, but their words were as blurred and as unintelligible to Swoop's dulled senses as Thundercracker's had been. She could only watch them as they executed a dance that she might have thought absorbingly graceful if she hadn't known that it was also deadly.

Starscream was losing his battle, however. He was apparently aware of this, had already yelled at Swoop more than twice to just run. But she couldn't move, much less run. It was as if the essence of who she was had become disconnected from her physical form. She wasn't sure if it was an effect of the altered programming, too, or simply some sort of traumatized reaction to what Megatron had done to her.

As her mind wandered off to sluggishly contemplate that question, she watched as Megatron, moving so quickly that he was almost a blur, managed to lift and pin Starscream against the wall like a weak and bleeding butterfly, his hands wrapped with crushing force around Starscream's throat while Starscream kicked ineffectually at him. Starscream was already bleeding copiously from half a dozen grievous injuries that she had noticed as he'd moved, and she knew that, even though he was nigh-impossible to kill, able to shake off with relative ease damage that would destroy anyone else, he wasn't completely invulnerable. She knew that, if anyone could kill him, it would be Megatron and his fusion cannon. She knew that Megatron would drag out Starscream's destruction as long as he could, that he would make Starscream suffer pain and especially humiliation for as long as possible before he finally delivered the killing blow. And she knew they there was no one, now, who could prevent all of that.

Except her.

Swoop was very aware that Starscream's death would end the imprint between them, that death was likely the only thing that could end it. If he died, she would be free of him. If for no other reason than that, she should have welcomed the idea. But she didn't, not at all, and she was in no condition to contemplate exactly why that was so. She knew only that she was angry, an anger that was at first a distant storm on the horizon but that grew exponentially stronger and closer as she continued to watch Megatron toying with Starscream. Eventually, the anger morphed into rage, and the rage quickly became utter, blinding, all-consuming, and near-mindless fury.

The fury fed Swoop like the finest, purest energon. Focus, concentration, and predatory instincts all rose to the surface in response to the fury, overwhelming and battling back the dulling, damping effects of the altered programming. Thus freed, her mind immediately focused and drilled down onto a single, overriding purpose, and the rage that was suffusing her afforded her strength that she would not have had otherwise. She glorified in it even as she struggled to channel it productively.

She recognized her old friend, the animal half of herself. For a good portion of her life, it had been all that she was rather than merely an aspect of herself that she kept tightly swaddled in layer upon layer of practiced and hard-won civility. But it was still a very large part of her, always lurking just under the surface, awaiting the flimsiest of excuses to come out and play. Starscream had gotten a taste of this part of her a number of times now, channeled for far more pleasurable purposes than what she suddenly had in mind for Megatron. Because now, the animalistic side of her was the only part of her core programming thathadn't been corrupted by whatever Soundwave had done to her. He hadn't bothered with the scarier, more "primitive" side of her.

And that side of her wanted blood. It wanted, bizarrely, to protect Starscream at all costs. Most of all, it wanted revenge. It wanted to rip Megatron's spark out of his chest, such that its fading light would be the very last thing that he saw. Megatron, Swoop suddenly decided, was going to pay a spectacularly high price for Soundwave's oversight.

Snarling softly in anticipation, her gaze never leaving the two battling Decepticons, Swoop slithered fluidly back to her hands and knees and crawled over to Snarl's still form. She wrapped a hand around the hilt of his sword, growling softly as she wrestled it from his unconscious but still somehow firm grasp. And then silently, stealthily, she further crawled to a damaged, sparking console that she vaguely recalled being shoved against when Megatron had…

No, don't think about that, she sternly told herself as she crouched down behind the console in order to better stalk her prey; it was the last somewhat rational thought that entered her mind before the animal in her consumed everything that she was.

She took very careful note of Megatron's damage, instinctively pinpointing and cataloging each of his current weaknesses so as to use them to her best advantage. Neither combatant seemed to have noticed her moving about, wholly focused on each other as they were now. Satisfied, Swoop hefted Snarl's sword with a grunt of effort; it was very heavy, not a whole lot shorter than she was tall, and it crackled with pent-up energy along the entire length of its viciously-serrated blade. The weapon was crying out for a victim, and she fully intended to give it one.

Some increasingly distant and faint part of her mind warned her against following through with her intended course of action. It warned her that she might end up dead herself and that her death, since she lacked a successor, would be disastrous for her species…but at the moment, she didn't care in the slightest. That very small and very beleaguered voice, the voice of reason and civility, was quite easy to ignore in her current, feral state.

Growling like the animal that she was, she moved toward her prey carefully, silently, avoiding being seen, and then she launched herself at him, leaping onto his back with an enraged and wordless animal screech. She clung tightly to him with both of her legs and with one arm wrapped securely around his throat, anchoring herself quite nicely. Her free hand still grasped the sword, and before Megatron, who was caught entirely by surprise, could adjust and dislodge her, she rammed the blade mercilessly into his side on an upward trajectory. The strike took advantage of damage that Snarl had already inflicted upon him with the very same weapon that she was now wielding. Megatron's armor was weakened in that area from previous blows, and the blade bit easily through the width of his torso, the point of it emerging underneath his arm. And then, just as brutally, Swoop quickly pulled the blade back out, twisting it so that its wicked serrations would do the most possible damage as she pulled it free of Megatron's body.

It wasn't a fatal blow. She hadn't intended it to be, not yet, for she had no intention of killing him quickly. But it was a very painful and debilitating blow, particularly so on top of the injuries that had already been inflicted upon him. It was enough that Megatron was forced to abruptly abandon his assault on Starscream, who immediately slipped to the floor, coughing and wheezing weakly. Swoop vaguely noted that Starscream was staring at her in wide-eyed shock, as if he didn't recognize the crazed creature that was clinging to his tormentor's back. Dimly, she heard Starscream make a weak sound of protest at what she was doing, but she ignored him, her attention fully, lethally focused on Megatron.

Swoop clung determinedly to Megatron's back as he staggered and crashed to his knees. Once down, grunting in pain and swearing for all he was worth, he tried to reach awkwardly around himself to claw at her, attempting to dislodge her from her precarious perch. But she was small enough and his angle of approach was awkward enough that she could evade his attempts to grab her relatively easily, shimmying away and jerking out of his grasp even when he managed to land a hand on her. At the same time, she managed to raise the sword again, this time to bludgeon the side of his head with its heavy hilt, creating a sizable dent.

Megatron went fully down then, with a ponderous crash, stunned for a critical moment. He twisted as he went down, so that he landed on his back. He'd been hoping to pin Swoop under his much larger and heavier body, but she leaped nimbly away from him as he collapsed and then whirled around as soon as her feet hit the floor, still unerringly wielding the sword. Not giving Megatron any time to recover, Swoop grasped the sword's hilt in both hands, raised it over her head for extra momentum, and then brought the heavy blade slashing down between his shoulder and his right elbow joint. The result was a messily-severed right forearm, on which his fusion canon was mounted.

Showers of sparks flew every which way, and short-circuited electrical discharge crackled up what was left of Megatron's arm and over half of his chest. He roared in pain and outrage and involuntarily waved the stump of his arm around, spattering Swoop and her surroundings with warm energon and other vital fluids, adding to the smears of fluids that were already decorating her, much of it her own. Swoop hardly noticed any of it, consumed as she was with blood lust, with a deep and driving need for vengeance delivered as painfully and as humiliatingly as possible, just as Megatron had humiliated her.

Megatron, meanwhile, was scooting weakly away from Swoop, his movements becoming slowly feebler, but he was still bellowing more loudly than she'd ever heard him bellow. Whether he did so in pain or simply because of the sheer insult of what she'd done to him, she didn't know. Or much care, really. While he was distracted by pain or enraged indignation or both, she sprang toward him, planted a foot on his abdomen for leverage, and then poised the tip of the sword's blade directly and meaningfully against his chest, pushing down on it just hard enough that it bit shallowly into the thick armor plating directly over his spark chamber. Megatron stilled instantly, staring up at her in sheer, wordless disbelief as she grasped the hilt of the sword with both hands, marshaling her strength.

"You were wrong, Megatron," she spat at him in a thick and feral voice that she hardly recognized as her own. "What you said. Don't belong to you. You belong to me. I will do with you as I choose."

With a grunt of effort, Swoop thrust the sword a bit deeper into Megatron's chest. Energy licked out from the blade almost hungrily in response, as if sensing and longing for its eventual destination. Megatron twitched, an involuntary gasp that was pained and perhaps fearful escaping him, for all that he still glared at her mutinously.

"And I choose," Swoop growled viciously at him, staring into his shocked eyes, "to end this. What goes around, comes around."

And then, putting all of her rage-enhanced strength into it, and before Megatron could have a word in edgewise or offer any kind of resistance, Swoop rammed the blade home. It ripped through the remaining thickness of Megatron's armor, slammed cleanly through his spark chamber, tore through the rest of his body, and then bit deeply into the floor beneath him. He was ignominiously pinned like an insect, and for a long moment, he was utterly silent, surprise perhaps shunting aside pain and forestalling death for a few seconds.

During those few seconds of thick, foreboding silence, Swoop snarled menacingly down at him, "Scream for me, Megatron."

And he did. He screamed. And screamed. And screamed some more. He continued to scream even as his body convulsed violently and helplessly on its macabre skewer, as the sword's energy devoured his spark. It was a horrible death. An excruciating and agonizingly slow death.

It was, in Swoop's estimation, no less than he deserved.

She staggered away from the twitching, bleeding, and still brilliantly sparking body, strength and rage rapidly bleeding from her as surely as Megatron's life was bleeding from him. Thoroughly dazed, she found herself unexpectedly enveloped in Thundercracker's arms; he'd obviously regained his senses. Glancing dully around herself, Swoop realized then that some of her other rescuers had done the same and that a few others had arrived on the scene, as well. Other than Ratchet – who was already crouched down in the midst of the steadily-widening pool of vital fluids that surrounded Starscream, his entire attention focused on his patient – they were all standing around, staring at what Swoop had done and staring at her, too, as she shook helplessly, like a terrified child, in Thundercracker's arms.

She clung to Thundercracker gratefully and buried her face in his chest as every inch of her continued to shake. Thundercracker held her, crooned soft, soothing words at her, but she didn't understand what he was saying. Now that the focusing rage had been spent, she was floating again, her mind connected to her body by the thinnest of threads, and she decided that it didn't matter what Thundercracker was saying. She just continued to cling to him, listening to the soothing rhythm and the rich, deep rumble of his voice, absorbing it, concentrating on it, using it to anchor herself in reality, although that was a losing battle.

But before she fully disengaged from reality, Swoop heard Starscream's voice from off in the corner, where Ratchet was tending to him. His voice was hitching in pain as he said to Ratchet, "Remind me…never…to make her…too angry at me."

Ratchet's voice fervently murmuring, "You and me both," was the last thing Swoop heard before everything around her dimmed to fuzzy shades of grey.

Yeah, yeah. Nightwind's really not into writing non-con, I'm afraid. I did attempt it…but it just felt gratuitous and completely unnecessary and made this chapter far, far too long. Because really, what happens afterward is the much more important thing…for now, anyway. So, we just…skip right to the aftermath. Yeah, that's it.

But…God, I love killing Megatron. Heh heh heh… Then again, he and Optimus Prime do have one (annoying) thing in common, don't they? That would be that they don't often stay dead for long. As to whether or not Megatron'll stay dead here…Well, time will tell, won't it? ;)

Next time: You know what they say, right? For every action, there is a reaction.