Megatron
The black was everywhere. Megatron could taste it in his mouth, smell it, and feel it closing around him. His bonds held him tight by the ankles, his left arm held by the wrist, while his right stump of an upper arm was bandaged crudely and fastened to a taught strap that wound its way up to where the right bond would normally grab wrist. It was an uncomfortable, stiffening position, and Megatron's struggles only resulted in him wasting energy that might have been better spent on disciplining his mind for the inevitable conversation that would take place between him and his longtime rival.
That conversation had not happened yet, and since his imprisonment left him bereft of any way to tell time, he had lost track of how many days had gone by since the initial incarceration in the Detention Banks. Megatron had tried to pass the time by going over the battle in his head. After his duel with Optimus, Megatron had attempted to transform several times, forcing his body to contort into its vehicle form so as to reach the city battle more quickly, but with the loss of his arm, his body had refused, and due to his forceful efforts, Megatron had managed to snap several joints and rotors within himself and damage the left side of his abdomen. He had been hardly able to move after that affair, and several Autobots had attempted to kill him then. Only Optimus Prime is allowed to deliver that blow, he had thought to himself, and did away with his attackers. This effort had left him immobile, and he drank in the ripe and corrosive taste of death. It is a long way from here to hell, he had thought, staring up at the blue sky, and I am far from dying. That was the last of his energy.
Apparently, the Autobots had gotten reinforcements from the city led by Optimus himself. How this was possible, Megatron could not say. The city walls defended the city from enemy and ally alike, and so Optimus could not have sent his wings over the walls. Perhaps he was flung over, Megatron jested to himself. He had not seen the battle play out; he had seen dead men, rotting corpses whose armor bore dents and marks of fatal wounds. His head lay back in a pool of slippery oil-blood, the gold liquid running around his helmet. He had not cared. He was tired, beaten and shamed, even before his arrest by some Autobot in white and red.
Once he had been captured, the Autobots first tried to knock him out cold so as to make him unaware of where he would be going within the city, but his armor was too thick for them to do that, so they had settled on blindfolding him instead. Still, he had known where they were going. He had memorized the city layout and had found himself exactly where he had expected to be. Not that it mattered much, for when he was thrust into the cell and cuffed, the door had shut, and he was blind again.
Megatron had ground his teeth trying to wrestle with his complete lack of preparedness, until that had grown tiresome and he instead had tried to focus on other things to pass the time. He had tried to recharge, to conserve his energy, but even that did no good. His sleep had felt no different to him than his waking hours, and closing his eyes had made no difference to his vision, as the black seemed to drink all of it away, to the point where he could not tell if his eyes were blinking or not. His bandages had not been changed since he was first put in here, nor his wounds properly looked at, and he had begun to suspect that he would not be receiving proper medical treatment so long as he was down in this dank, ridiculously black cellar.
How long he remained down in that dungeon uninterrupted, he could not say, though he had guessed that a good week had gone by. The hours, and then days, had carried on by with no activity save for his breathing and the thoughts that rattled around in his head. They were becoming ever so disjointed, and he found that concentrating on past events made him even more tired. His eyes grew heavy, the black seeming to blur with itself, filling with color and images. Sleep came unwillingly.
When the door had opened for the first time, he had been dazed and tired, and so low on energy that he had previously taken to vomiting up his own bodily fluids if only to consume something with the mere semblance of energy. They wish to starve then question me? I shall give them my shit as response to their queries. But it was not his rival who had entered when the door had opened, but a medic. The light had caused Megatron's eyes to burn, even when he squeezed them shut. The medic's armor was a blinding white, slashed with crimson, though between the glare of the light and the pain behind his eyes, that was all Megatron could see of his companion. Megatron could not speak very well, though the doctor had not seemed interested in talking to him. He had felt the cool, rejuvenating liquid run through his system as the medic forced drink upon him, rekindling his energy for the first time in what felt like eons. When the door shut, Megatron had heard the steel click and whirr, locking him within the black box that was his home. They had not even bothered to change the bandage, or check his wounds.
His body had hurt a lot, but that encounter had reminded him that there were still people in this world, and that the world itself extended beyond his cell. Marshaling his strength, he had begun to script various commands to be sent to his soldiers should his incarceration last an indefinite period. Surely the Autobots wouldn't be opposed to letter-writing, he had thought, smiling to himself.
The second time the door had opened, Megatron was ready with a retort, but he found himself caught off guard once again by the shearing light that filled his vision. The Autobot that had arrived this time had been a thin, smoothed-helmed man with a bright yellow scope over his left eye. His armor was red and turquoise, and he had a long probing machine strapped to his right shoulder. This man was more thorough with Megatron's wounds, peeling off the bandage on his stump of an arm to have a quick peek. The scab and crusted blood that met his wound were cool as the bandage lifted to let air greet them. Then, the man had made sure that his internal injuries had not erupted or split, or had otherwise hindered his ability to live. The Autobot had left as wordlessly as the medic had, and Megatron's surroundings had returned to blackness. I am being put on for show, he thought bitterly. I am Megatron, Lord of the Decepticon dominion! They will all die! That medic, the Autobots who dared to hold me down and strap me to these bonds. And only after all are dead will Optimus Prime finally know what it is like to burn. Megatron whispered Optimus' name several times; his voice was still raw from disuse.
Megatron's limbs had since gone numb, the bindings around his ankles and wrist digging into his armor and pressing into his body. Megatron breathed deeply. The air was stale, mixed with his blood and grime and hellish condition. He coughed on his exhale feeling dust and spittle spray across his mouth. He winced. It tasted like failure. The dribble couldn't be wiped off, and he began to grow irritated of the itchiness. Curse my inability to wipe my sins away, he thought bitterly. He let out a slow exhale this time, conjuring up a prayer to Primus. I pray for my men, he thought. And I pray for those Autobots who will die by my hand for spreading their lies and false hopes of freedom under their un-free rule. And I swear to you, Primus, I will indulge my new rule in sovereignty and quell the dictatorship my enemies have wrapped about this planet's surface. That did not seem to settle his mood.
He wondered how long he would stay here. He wondered how long it would take his men to find him, to mount a rescue mission, or if they would even bother: Iacon was so well-defended and his cell certainly so heavily guarded, that he doubted that he would ever be seeing the light of day any time soon. And when you have your closest advisors and militants clamoring for your position to the point where they were willing to seize command through duplicitous action and assassination, well, the prospect of rescue remained rather low on your list of things to expect.
His estimates suggested that two more days went by after this prayer. If his counting was right, and the Autobots delivered him energy every week or so, then in three days he would have to receive sustenance. If his counting was right, that is. And if Primus is merciful, he thought gloomily.
He began thinking of his men now. What would they say of him? How would they react to his imprisonment?
"Certainly expected," rattled a voice in Megatron's ear. He twisted his head around, trying to catch a glimpse of the person. "Oh, you poor, poor thing," the voice said in a mocking tone. "How does it feel to be at the mercy of your enemies? Might it have a familiar odor to it perhaps to that of being backstabbed by your allies? I would think it does." The cackle was crisp and cutting.
"Starscream?" Megatron's voice was hoarse and his throat raw. "Help me."
"I can't," said the voice, thick in smug and lazy. "I remain a hundred thousand leagues away, my Lord. You are trapped. Left for dead."
"I still function," Megatron croaked.
"For now. But would you wager on your longevity at the hands of the Autobots who swarm this city like flies, all of whom want your head? I wouldn't bet on you lasting a month."
"Far longer than you," Megatron muttered.
"Oh-ho!" The cackle rang in Megatron's head, making him dizzy. "You're wit might grant your return to the living, though." Starscream's voice shifted over to Megatron's left ear, his right now drinking in the lilting tones of a second.
"It will not be long now, my liege," the new voice said. This one was metallic, a calculating computer program of a whisper. "We are already mounting a rescue operation." Soundwave's tone was monotonous as always.
"Oh, yes!" Megatron sensed Starscream's smile break his handsome features. "That's right. A rescue! And how might that play out? Wasting valuable resources to recover only a handful of survivors from a failed siege attempt? No, Megatron. We're not going to save you. There's nothing that you could do that I wouldn't be able to. Not now that you've cemented our empire."
"Illogical," rang out a third voice, this one low and chilling to the bone. Megatron thought he saw the red orb of Shockwave's eye within the sea of black. "Our Lord Megatron is of far greater value at the head of our cause than he is rotting away in Autobot captivity. And you, Starscream, are of lesser judgment than a scraplet. I have only to assemble the required number of troops and we could rescue Megatron come nightfall if fortune is favorable."
"A sound plan," Soundwave said.
"Pure folly!" Starscream's shrill cries echoed about the chamber. "The city's defenses are too numerous and frequent. Throw all our strength against the outer wall and we would deplete our force before even making a dent in it, as we proved with this attack that wound up getting our Lord captured!"
"A far more surgical approach," Shockwave commented,"would be to extract Megatron with the use of scalpels over clubs. I recommend taking out city defenses by air and cutting our way directly to the Detention Banks with aerial aid. Our Lord would be back amongst our number within an hour at most."
"Oh, and how we would rejoice!" Megatron felt Starscream's claws brush against his helm. He flinched. "Yes, having our master back with us would be celebratory, truly. Though I don't know how my real self would take to knowing that you had an avatar of me running around in your brain. Tell me, Megatron, how many of us do you think your head can accommodate while maintaining sanity? You already have me in here, and that's only your sane and rational side. Shockwave and Soundwave both deliver a nice, unhealthy dose of planning and ego stroking."
The voices would not go away. Why could he not shut them up?
"Because we're all just so loveable!" Starscream squealed with delight. Megatron made a sour face at that. "I must say," Starscream continued, now circling Megatron's position. "You conjure up meticulous imaginings of your troops. I'd love to see what your enemies looked like to you; Optimus Prime in a tiara, no doubt!" Megatron squeezed his eyes shut.
"Lord Megatron," Soundwave cut in. "You require sleep."
"Sleep?" Megatron could see Starscream in front of him now, his movements exaggerated, despite the lack of light. "Our master doesn't need sleep, you tuneless oaf! Megatron needs his mind put through its paces; that's why we're here."
"We are here to assess his surroundings and plot escape." Shockwave's voice was like a knife through steel, cutting through Starscream's silken words and Soundwave's monotone with waking clarity. "With his loss of limb and inability to access weapons, he is at a severe disadvantage."
"Oh yes. Lovely battle performance out there, by the way." Starscream's drawl was drowned in sarcasm. "How could you let that elitist chop your arm off just so? You always say to prep for the defense five moves ahead of your opponent; well, what happened there?"
Your ridicule is hardly aiding the situation, thought Megatron, irritation playing across his face.
"Yes, but it's such fun to kick you while you're down!"
"Starscream, Megatron has the right of it," Shockwave said, his single red eye pulsing a few feet to Megatron's right.
"Of course he has 'the right of it'! We're in his head! What we say fits into his little box of perfect loyal soldier dialogue that he's cooked up." Starscream floated up to Megatron's face. "You're one egocentric 'bot, aren't you? Wake up now, my Lord. It's show time!"
The sudden blindness made Megatron's eyes sting again. He jerked back, his neck snapping as he attempted to twist away from the light. As his eyes adjusted to the glare, his mouth turned upward. Optimus Prime stood before him.
"Ah, finally," Starscream said. "Excited at the prospect of finally getting to challenge yourself in the art deception? We'll see how well you live up to your faction's namesake."
"Megatron," Optimus Prime said. His voice was low, a bass rich in emotional baggage. Megatron liked that about Optimus: amidst all his high class and wrought armor, he was still alive with characteristics similar to Megatron's. It made him feel more connected with his foe.
"Optimus." The retort came out by instinct now. His voice was hoarse, though his face stretched into a hideous smile all the same. "You seem… rattled." It was true. Optimus' form was even more battered and bruised than when he had last seen him. His right arm was bandaged and cast.
Megatron eyed the arm. "How long did you have to argue with yourself and your men before finally working up the courage to come down here to see me with so many wounds dealt to your form?"
"Not as long as my men would have liked. And even now, a part of me regrets coming down here at all, and that part is not all that insignificant."
So, how shall we begin this game, Prime? "Have you come to torture me?"
"No," Optimus said. Megatron hated the way those blue eyes always seemed to be so warm, though today they were etched out in the lines of hatred. "I am certain that your starvation and solitary confines have succeeded in that technique already." Optimus walked up to the podium on which Megatron was stationed, looking up at him with those blue orbs of good.
"Do you expect me to sigh with relief?" He glowered down at Optimus, his eyes searching his opponent for anything that resembled weakness. His voice was coming back. "Are you to be my friend while the rest of the Autobots stand outside these walls and cry out for my head on a pike?"
"No."
Megatron rolled his eyes, annoyed. "Then why are you here, Optimus? What could be weighing so heavily on your mind that you would wait this long to face me?" He was getting restless, Megatron saw, and only after introductory banter. Good.
"I have come to…" Optimus paused.
"The gravitas is gone," noted Shockwave.
"What are you so afraid of, Optimus Prime?" wondered Starscream.
"He is quizzical," said Soundwave.
All of you, quiet! Megatron flinched as the voices hushed, though he still felt the three Decepticons hovering uncomfortably close to him.
Optimus started again. "Who… are you, Megatron? Really? What makes you the way you are? Why are you so dead set against me?"
Megatron's eyes widened, if only for a moment.
"He's serious." Starscream's tone was grave. "Careful, master."
Megatron thought for a moment, then said, "Who am I, Optimus? I see a society of corruption, of death, of helplessness, and I enact change. I see a system that stacks the wealthy on top of the poor to the point of suffocation and I attempt an overhaul of the system. There's a word for someone like me: revolutionary."
"You are a murderer and an extremist," Optimus muttered.
"Ooh!" Starscream flinched at that. "He has a point, though."
"I'm a leader," Megatron said. "Far more of a leader than you'll ever be, Optimus." Optimus had no reply to that. He has not his wits about him, Megatron thought pleasantly. He continued. "I fight for the weak. I was so close, Optimus. So close to raising my empire over this lifeless husk of a world that your people had made of Cybertron. It was to be the beginning of a new Golden Age."
"It would not have worked." Optimus' tone was flat.
"You never gave me an opportunity to try." Megatron sneered
"You proposed a system hinged on the dispersal of military power throughout the various branches of government whilst surrendering power of city states over to crazed citizens whose mental states were beyond saving. If there was ever a corrupt system here, Megatron, it was yours."
"Not in the eyes of the oppressed! Not in the eyes of those you deemed inferior simply because they were built a certain way. Yours was a practice of social engineering at its most literal. To base our species on our figures and function, to build a government atop that ideology, that is what I'm fighting against. That is why I'm 'so dead set against you'." Megatron took a breath. The square cell seemed to open up more now, allowing him better space to breathe.
Optimus' gaze broke from Megatron's ruby red eyes. What say you, Optimus Prime? Megatron thought, his thoughts his own again. How will you spin this evidence into one of your oh-so-proud-and-noble speeches?
"The government," Optimus paused. "What I have done to protect this planet, to protect our species from devouring themselves… you have no idea. You have no idea how hard it has been for me… to try to correct what my predecessors have done." Optimus' head fell. A confession! Oh, goodness, Prime, how obtuse.
Optimus took a breath, then started. "We were once a peaceful race of intelligent mechanical beings. Then we fell. Divided, our ranks split down center, and conquest overtook our desire to learn and develop as a society. We wanted more. More of anything we could get our hands on. Developing and initiating our system of caste was the only way to allow for our survival. By structuring our society just so, we could stall our greed; push desire and lust to the back of our minds as we worked to better ourselves.
"My predecessors, those who held the Matrix within their forms before me, created this system of serving first as a way of life, and then realized that they could manipulate it. When it came time to take up the mantle of Prime, I endeavored to right that wrong. But unlike you, Megatron, I went about it in a civil manner."
"You attempted to salvage an unsalvageable system, Optimus. You tried to have it both ways, tried to keep the caste system alive while working to better conditions for the weak. Admirable, yes, but ultimately flawed, perforce, resulting in nothing that your predecessors had not already accomplished."
"Except that it did accomplish something! The new system was better. It was far less of an incline plane and more of an even ground."
"With you at the top," Megatron shouted.
"With my title of Prime as the tacit symbol of salvation. My predecessors wanted a prison-like, planet-wide machine at their beck and call, a well-oiled rigged contraption built on cruelty and mismanagement. They were to be planetary brigands such that to torture someone would be a fixture of sport and amusement by all. I tried to end that, to expunge their vision from our system of order and keep us where we were meant to be."
"Not enough," Megatron said. "Not nearly enough of what you did helped in any form of long run."
"There are limits to what I can do."
"You have limits? You're Prime, yet you have no idea how to wield your power in the name of progress," Megatron spat. "Because in the end, you don't want progress. You want order. And order as it stood when your fellow Primes were running things was an order that you understood and appreciated. But that's not enough, Optimus. Don't you see? By making the Cybertronian race serve, you have unwittingly made us become less than what we are. Our place in this universe is at the forefront of change.
"Transformation isn't just about our ability to change our form, but also about our race alone being able to advance beyond what other species might find as their ending point. Yet we have waged our battles in the time it has taken entire planets to thrive and die. Well, where's the transformation in that? We have become stagnant, and it's all thanks to your side not wanting to move on from their comfortable seats of power and dominion over all others like them.
"You say you hold manipulation in reproach, yet you practice stagnation of a species! A species, Optimus! When I rose to political power, do you know how many people died under my all-too-brief rule before your guard threw me out? Five. Five poor, helpless people, and that's only because my system had not had time to reach far enough to take effect over their area. I know each of their names. While you've held political power, countless billions have been exterminated. I know none of their names."
Megatron glowered down. His stump of an arm had started to ache, but he did not care. Optimus Prime, the great helm of the Autobot cause, leader of an entire nation, was crumbling before him.
Optimus' head lowered. His eyes seemed to glow a little less now. "Alert your guard if there is anything of which you may be in need," Optimus said, abruptly. He turned on his heel.
"No retort, Optimus?" Megatron said.
"No retort, Megatron." Optimus stalked to the door, the glow of his eyes retreating with him. As he reached the entrance, he turned, his voice heavy with tiredness and sorrow. "You win." The door closed, the blackness enveloping the room once more.
He heard the familiar lilt come back.
"Bravo, my liege," Starscream said, his voice dripping with smug. "Optimus has a long way to go before he could ever hope to match your… finesse with words. My, how far you've come."
How far indeed, Megatron thought, smiling.