The Brat Prince of Vos
Chapter 22
Continuity: Pre- and Post-TF:A, a little bit of AU here and there
Warnings: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ENDGAME!
Pairings: Megatron x Starscream, Cyclonus x Galvatron, Strika x Lugnut. Sort of, anyway.
Post-Endgame now! :D This should be more fun to write...
"Ve're too late," Strika sighed, surveying the strange planet. Spittor chirped sadly by her side.
"I told you we shouldn't have stopped when Swindle's ship passed us by," Oil Slick said accusingly, glaring up at Blackout. The larger mech cringed, avoiding the chemist's optics. "Stupid mech just talks and talks, and you didn't even buy anything worthwhile!"
"Sorry…" rumbled the big mech.
"It dos not matter now," Strika snapped at them. "Cyclonus, have you picked up any residual energy signatures?"
"Yes," the jet replied calmly, looking down at the energy reader in his hands. "Something big was over there…something like the All-Spark. Or a piece of it anyway."
Strika nodded, and marched towards the direction Cyclonus had pointed, Spittor bounding along after her like some sort of pet. He flicked his tongues out as they walked - these tiny organic things sure tasted funny.
"Don't eat those," Oil Slick scolded him, smacking him lightly on the side. "You don't know what's in them." The Predacon shot him a dark look, and sulkily galloped over to Strika.
"Vhat in ze name of the All-Spark!" she screeched suddenly, stopping so abruptly that both Spittor and Oil Slick crashed into her. They peered around her bulky frame, wondering what had caused her to stop - and both froze, staring in disbelief at the sight before them. Blackout hurriedly pottered up to see too, slowing down when his optic caught sight of it.
"Uh-oh…" he rumbled. "Cyclonus…you'd better come and see this."
The jet frowned - he'd been walking behind them at a leisurely pace, but he sped up to see what had stopped them all.
He cried out in horror when he saw what had given off the residual energy signature. Starscream lay dead in the middle of the road, badly battered. Around him, the organics had set up brightly coloured tapes with "Keep Out!" and "Warning!" signs written on them. Pushing the other Decepticons aside, the purple jet rushed towards the offline Seeker, flipping him over onto his back.
Cyclonus kneeled down, cradling Starscream in his arms. The flier looked oddly peaceful, as if he was only asleep - but his grey, faded paint job told the jet otherwise. The ex-Minister of Vos ground his dental plates together.
"There," Oil Slick said, dusting off his claws.
The body of Starscream had been put inside a cryostasis chamber. Cyclonus had insisted that they keep him, adamant that Megatron would want him upon his return. Strika had pointed out, several times, that Megatron, Lugnut, and Shockwave were all being detained in a high-security prison in New Iacon built specifically to hold the Decepticon leader, but the jet remained uncharacteristically positive that Megatron would one day break out.
"And if he dos not?" she asked.
"Then we'll have to break him out," Cyclonus replied, admiring the job Oil Slick had done. The chemist, being the closest thing Team Chaar had to a medic, had been drafted in by Strika to try and fix Starscream up as best he could. The once battered and cracked Seeker now looked fairly respectable, all dents pounded out, all chips filled in and smoothed over.
The purple jet decided to give Starscream one last polish before they closed the cryostasis pod, ready for Megatron's return.
He didn't feel the crack of the whip against his armour - he was a mech of war, and as such had had modifications installed specifically for situations such as this one. Megatron just looked at the new wound, oozing energon, as if he wasn't really sure what he was seeing. He'd turned most of his sensor nets off - a trick he'd bought from Swindle at some cost. Vaguely, he felt his system protesting to him at the loss of energon.
No matter.
He almost sighed, but didn't feel like dignifying the Autobot who was currently 'torturing' him with the noise. Tch. Autobots, torturing their prisoners. They acted so damn high and mighty, but when it came down to it, they were just as brutal as the Decepticons.
Well…they tried to be, anyway. Off the top of his processor, Megatron could think of at least one hundred and twenty-two different ways to torture the Autobot whipping him more effectively than simply making him bleed.
And yet, the Decepticon leader couldn't really bring himself to care. He seemed to alternate between three emotions: rage, that he had been captured by these morons, and that they dared to lay their grubby servos on him like this. Apathy, because really, he had grown bored of looking for ways to escape, and would rather have died than be captured. And finally, regret.
Regret…that empty feeling in his spark. He had never even felt the change occur, but at some point, Starscream had become a big part of him, whether they were bonded or not. It felt as if a chunk of him was missing - a chunk that had tried to kill him every other day, but still. He wondered what it would have been like to bond. Lugnut had once commented that he always knew exactly where Strika was, no matter how many galaxies were between him. He didn't mind being stationed in a separate unit to her - because for them, it felt as if they were in the same room anyway.
Would he be able to feel Starscream now, if he had just bonded with the damn flier? It was a lonely thought, to be sure, that the brat could have been comforting and soothing him right now, could have inspired him to keep looking for a chance to escape the prison.
But now, Starscream was dead. What was there to escape for?
Megatron hissed as the whip broke through the armour on his right shoulder, hitting a circuit that had been buried between his plating. He cursed his body silently, and quickly turned off that sensor net too, his half-broken arm falling limp as he did so.
…Body…
He narrowed his optics suddenly, making the Autobot currently in charge of beating him flinch in fear. Body…what had happened to Starscream's body, anyway? He snarled quietly to himself as a thought came to him - perhaps that awful Sumdac human had taken Starscream's remains, to reverse engineer them just as he had Megatron's. And Sumdac wasn't even the worst of the humans, he knew that much.
Lugnut, he rumbled over his private communication link, one he'd had buried deep inside his processor just for occasions such as this. You can communicate with Strika over your bond, yes? Tell Team Chaar to recover Starscream's body. Tell them to keep it safe until we get out of this pit.
"Hey! He's using a communication channel!" one of the Autobot guards yelled, a signal reading flashing on their screens, and the other guards stationed around the cell looked to each other in horror.
"How?! We removed all of them!" another one, a small blue femme said back.
"It doesn't matter! Quickly! Just get a signal jammer down here, now!!!"
My Lord, Lugnut replied quickly, hearing the commotion outside Megatron's cell, Strika says they have already done it, you need not worry. All hail the great and glorious Megat-
Then the signal jammer blocked Lugnut's fanatical ravings out, and Megatron sighed in relief, slumping in his chains.
Perhaps there was hope yet.