The end of this chapters links to and contains spoilers for Dance With The Devil; if you're planning on reading that fic then I'd strongly recommend finishing that before reading on. But if you don't care just ignore this.
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Airachnid couldn't move. Welded where she stood by awe and reverence, still dwarfed by Metroplex's shadow even though he was at least a mile away by now, she wasn't sure if she even wanted to move. By her side, Breakdown hardly made a sound from his gaping jaw, whereas Scorpia could barely contain the current of chirps that thrummed past her vocaliser. Even when Airachnid webbed her safely behind her back, she still squirmed in excitement she couldn't quite understand. Maybe it was just an infectious feeling caught from her mother's spark, one Airachnid was more than happy to indulge in just this once, just when she needed it the most.
"Hey, Airachnid?" Breakdown had been silent for a long moment, still only whispering as if scared of catching Metroplex's attention. "I meant to ask… what's her name? The sparkling's, I mean."
Of all the things to ask at a time like this…
"Scorpia." Between Airachnid's back legs, she trilled again as Breakdown smiled down at her, nodding in approval.
"That's nice. She seems to agree, too." Scorpia let out a chorus of chirrups, as if the wave of agony from just a breem ago never even happened. Maybe it was just all the commotion from Metroplex, seeing such a giant and not having to be scared of it.
And who could blame her for it? Before Metroplex, everything else became nothing more than a smudge in his shade, as insignificant as a loose bolt among the millions that kept him together. Nothing short of a nuclear warhead could have slowed him down as he marched to meet Trypticon, let alone the distant pinprick shooting towards him, foolish enough to get in his way. Metroplex hefted up a servo as long as a building, and swatted the disturbance aside like it was no more than a bothersome fly. It didn't even try to avoid the limb coming down to shove it aside, instead spiralling on its new sharp trajectory straight downwards.
"What is that thing?" Airachnid asked, peering at the mystery flyer as it fell despite its stubbornly smoking engines. At first she feared it was Dreadwing, accidentally caught in Metroplex's way, or perhaps a drone scouting ahead for whatever purpose, but then its descent took its frame towards where she and Breakdown stood.
The lower it sank in the air, the closer it came; she only recognised the plasma cannon mounted on its front just before it spat out a volley of burning bolts towards them.
"Get down!" She called out the warning, yet her limbs still refused to move. She couldn't even push herself over, frozen like a useless statue before Breakdown had the sense to dive at the ground and drag her down with him. Plasma slammed around them, melting the rust flakes covering the topmost layer of metal, and Megatron didn't so much soar over them as fling himself the distance needed to crash nearby.
And crash he did, his half-completed transformation barely breaking his fall as he skidded in a tangle of bruised plates and dented, battered metal. His peds tried to grip the hard surface tearing his armour apart even more than it already was, scrambling for purchase until he finally managed to stop himself with claws gouged deep into Cybertron's shell. By that time, Breakdown managed to push himself back up. Airachnid was still left sprawled on the floor, every limb weighing more than she could hope to lift. It was an effort to even sit up, pushing off the ground with her back legs with optics forced wide open- the only parts of her body that weren't cast in stone. Perhaps she was so terrified, her body simply refused to even try escaping.
Megatron stumbled out of his own wreckage, looking for all the galaxy like he wanted to tear it asunder with his bare claws. He flexed them as if he was preparing for it, spitting out globs of curdled purple energon as he forced his limp to hide itself. He only seemed to notice Breakdown as an afterthought, narrowing his glowing bruised optics at the former Wrecker.
"Well, well, Breakdown." His lips split like a jagged scar as energon dribbled from the edges, releasing a voice that echoed from somewhere much, much worse than the pit of his spark. "You may not have found the Omega Lock, but you havefound a traitor. I trust you were just in the middle of terminating her?" He didn't even look at Airachnid, yet she still shuddered, fighting the urge to check on Scorpia when her biggest threat was right before them.
Breakdown did look at her, a sorrowful gaze that she wanted to slap right off his face. But trying to raise her servos was futile, she couldn't even aim her palms for a ranged defense. The only thing that stood between her and Megatron was someone who was about to get himself killed for his trouble.
"No, sir," Breakdown answered, turning back to face Megatron head on. If he was at all unnerved by the light bleeding from the warlord's optics, he hid it remarkably well.
"No?" Megatron repeated, taking a single step forward to brand his clawed peds in the rust. Breakdown fought a flinch, only stumbling onwards when he was sure Megatron wouldn't come any closer.
"You may see her as a traitor, but… she was never a part of the Decepticons in the first place. And she's too valuable to be killed." He almost sounded like he was being serious. Airachnid couldn't tell if he was just stalling for time or if he genuinely was stupider than she'd ever expected.
Megatron cocked his helm, giving the impression that he was considering the proposal. "Is that so?"
Breakdown nodded eagerly, and Airachnid was struck with the horrifying realisation that he actually thought he could persuade Megatron. "Especially at times like this, where everyone is trying to desert you," he added, oblivious to his own doom. "Shouldn't we be trying to gather our strength instead of scaring it away?"
"Breakdown…" Airachnid could hardly whisper, still fighting against the phantom weight keeping her limbs pinned to the ground. But even if she wanted to help him, if she was able to, she knew she couldn't. Not if it meant putting Scorpia at risk.
Still ignoring her, Megatron gave Breakdown a crocodile's grin, so much more deceiving than tears. "Everyone is deserting me, you say? Including you?"
Breakdown tensed, as if he only just realised what a horrible mistake he made in not running when he could. "No, no, my liege! I would never… I'm the only one you have left! Surely that says how loyal I am!"
Megatron shook his helm, a heavy pendulum that could have knocked someone else's right off their neck with enough force. "If you are really so intent on proving your worthiness to me, Breakdown, do as I command." He lifted a servo, the stolen Prime's limb, and crooked its claw towards Airachnid. He regarded her like a piece of tasteless scenery, not even noting how she scrabbled to pick her tonne-heavy frame off the ground. "Kill her."
Breakdown blinked his single optic, between his lord and the love he was fated to never have. He leaned towards her, as if hoping to help in his last moments, but even he knew better than to try it.
Airachnid didn't know what choice he would make, didn't know which one she wanted him to. Whatever happened next… one of them would die.
He weighed his hammer in one hand, as if calculating how quickly he could kill her with it, but when he faced her it was only long enough to shake his helm, angling his optics towards her palms and the blasters he knew were embedded in them. As if warning her not to fight, not to do anything. He turned to Megatron, placed himself firmly between the warlord and the spider, and gave his final answer.
"…I said no."
Airachnid couldn't see his face, couldn't see Megatron past the bulk of his frame, but she could perfectly imagine what happened next. In a single instant Megatron lowered his accusing servo, only to sweep up his other one and, not even needing time to aim, planted a readied round of plasma fire right into Breakdown's chest. She could smell the metal burning, see the searing wound starting to spread through his back plating.
'I'm so sorry, Breakdown…' The only thing that stopped her crying out was fear of Scorpia's reaction, Scorpia who hopefully had no idea was what was vents hitched painfully as he collapsed on his wavering legs, falling to his knees among the barren dust as his energon stained it a sickeningly bright blue. Now that he'd fallen, she could see Megatron approaching over the view of his sagging head.
"I give you one job, Breakdown, and once again you disappoint me." Megatron had the grace to sound disappointed, as if he didn't ache to see the light leave another's spark by his hand. "But thank you for that enlightening lecture on what a bot's spark is worth. It's clear now that yours isn't worth the energon it pumps." He methodically loaded another bolt of deadly energy, and aimed it at Breakdown's helm.
Despite the many gory hunts she'd lead in a past life, the executions she'd perfected, the countless corpses she'd skinned and piled high on empty planets, Airachnid couldn't watch. Her neck hung limp, forcing her optics away as she blocked her optics from the sound of the plasma ripping through his face and the gurgling of Breakdown's dying vents, the smell of frying circuitry and half-processed energon spilling out of his chest, of fresh fuel dripping from the hole in his head.
Instead she watched the clash of Titans far ahead, through the gap of her servo where she was forced to look to avoid seeing Breakdown's corpse and collapsing to the floor all over again. Despite the distance, the size of the two giants had hardly diminished. They'd finally reached each other, throwing punches so heavy they took an age to hit their target, like a slow-motion stand-off between wind-up toys.
But Metroplex's movements were too slow, too clumsy and unwieldy. She'd seen him fighting Trypticon before, on the other side of the battle. He'd calculated every strike, every attempt to unbalance his opponent so that it at least weakened his defences. Here… it was like he was swatting blindly at him, hoping something would eventually land.
Because he was blind. She'd seen it herself, the empty sockets and cracked glass scattered around their edges. His battle protocols told him where his enemy was, but with his sensors surely just as broken as his optics he'd have only the roughest idea of what to do against Trypticon, who was only bolstered by his long stasis and the Dark Energon that awoke him.
…But how did she know that? That burn deep in her spark had returned, only adding fire to her confusion and the frustration of her stone-leaden limbs, of being completely helpless. The longer she watched Metroplex failing, floundering as he was pummelled by Trypticon's attacks, the more that aching, hopeless feeling grew.
Why did he get resurrected, just to be killed all over again?
Why wouldn't he just punch him already!?
A fist flew through the air, being dragged on the end of a string by the force of a hurricane… and she only realised it was her own when she heard it clang against the ground, as if her arm really did weigh as much as Metroplex himself.
In the distance she heard a similar impact, and a retaliatory roar that tried to blow the atmosphere away as the ground quaked anew with the sound of the sky falling. She didn't need to check, not when the subtle pull of her spark confirmed it for her. Her servo did weigh as much as Metroplex, every single limb… because she was the one guiding his own. Optimus had tried to explain it to her, to Elita, when they first arrived at Autobot City, but she'd never quite understood it.
Now that Megatron finally noticed her, eyeing the fist she planted in a newly-created dent and the energon starting to pool into it, she was very grateful that she was quick learner.
"And you, Airachnid…" He spat out another lump of congealed energon, as if her name left as vile a taste as the Dark Energon in his mouth, stepping over Breakdown's corpse like it was nothing more than a pile of scrap. "You must be proud of yourself. Entrancing not one mech, but two of us. Though I suppose Breakdown wasn't very difficult to manipulate."
Airachnid levelled her optics at him, sharpening her glare to a knife-edge as she pulled her fist back. The weight was slowly dissolving, settling into her cables as she adapted to Metroplex's link. Not that she wanted Megatron to know that. "No wonder you haven't managed to kill Optimus yet," she muttered. "All you do is talk."
"Then allow me to get right to the point." Megatron's sword was out in an instant, and she only just got her legs up in time to stop it slicing towards her. All eight of them pushed hard against the blade, thick metal straining to withstand its edge as her spark tried to keep Scorpia calm at the same time. Megatron tried to force his way through her shield, until he gave up and pulled back to strike from a different angle.
"First you, then Soundwave, then Dreadwing… you've left nothing but a trail of treachery behind you!" He swiped furiously at her with his sword, glancing blows off her legs as they snapped to defend every new opening he found.
"It's not my fault you can't keep your pets on a tighter leash!" Airachnid spat, kicking out with her primary legs and only managing to hit empty air. Her focus was torn in half, leaving her relying on instincts more than anything to survive his onslaught while she tried to blanket Scorpia from her own terror.
"Is it not?!" Megatron accused, taking to wide arcing sweeps of his sword to try and knock her off-balance. "Is it not obvious enough that everything fell to pieces the moment you arrived?!"
A bolt of blind fury shot through Airachnid's spark, breaking through her bond with Scorpia and honing her mounting weariness to a sudden razor point. She landed a leg on his bladed servo, pushing it down with her claws and scraping the sharp metal as she forced her face into his, delivering her reminder to him on flecks of acid and snarled rage.
"Everything fell the moment you forced your spark into mines!"
Megatron tried to fight against her weight, bared every row of knife-edged denta as his optics glistened with a toxic coating of thick purple poison, spreading wider and wider in their deep hollow sockets...
Not from surprise at Airachnid's strength. He wasn't even pushing against her anymore, not when his audios locked onto a sound that sapped everything from his metal bones.
"What is that…?" His pupils drifted, searching for the source of the wails and whimpers that Airachnid was all too familiar with. It was too late to try soothing them now, not when Megatron had already heard the keening cries.
"I…" She gulped, already knowing her lie wouldn't work. "I don't know what you're-"
"That sound…" Megatron lifted his other servo, the one that killed Breakdown. "That cry… coming from your back!" He swept the servo down, clamping it onto her legs and pulling them forwards before she could brace herself. She was forced around, facing the battlefield horizon as Metroplex and Trypticon still pummelled at each other. She didn't even care that Metroplex was still losing, not when her secret was finally out to the one mech she'd tried to hide it from.
Other than the groan of heavy, ragged vents, Megatron was silent for so long that Airachnid almost fooled herself that she was just having a nightmare; that she'd wake up next to Optimus in their Iacon berth, pink plating set aside and her dusky protoform warm against his… but then Megatron released her from that fantasy, just as he did long ago, letting go of her legs as she fell towards the dirt. She managed to turn herself back just before she toppled, wrenching the sight of Scorpia away from him as she wailed even louder.
Before her, Megatron had the look of a mech who'd just watched himself dissolve in a mirror. "A… a sparkling?" His claws twitched, optics blinking rapidly as their purple light dimmed. He placed a fan of talons over his chest to feel his spark, as if surprised to find that he still had one. "Not just any… my sparkling."
"You have nothing to do with her," Airachnid insisted, forced to rip her away from her back from her unbearable cries.
Once again, Megatron ignored her, only focusing on the whimpering child cradled in her servos. "I thought I'd… I thought there was only one." He shook his helm, still blinking away the purple that stained his vision as he tried to believe what he was seeing.
"That was her brother," Airachnid explained through gritted fangs. "The one you killed." Another flare of fury consumed her spark, only making Scorpia even more distraught. Airachnid held her closer, trying to calm her with as many whispers as she could muster past the acid on her glossa.
But Megatron was not as dazed by shock as she'd thought, from how he picked up on one her frantic mutters. "Scorpia?" Somehow, the way he said it made Airachnid's head pulse with pain. "An interesting name… I may keep it. Would save time teaching her something else."
He placed a single ped forwards, and Airachnid took three backwards. "You're not going anywhere near her."
Megatron cocked an eyeridge, wisps of purple still infecting his optics as he dragged his glossa over his denta. "And who are you to keep me from our daughter?"
"Her mother. The only one who's kept her alive this long."
Megatron still paced forwards, watching Scorpia swaddled near her chest as she scrambled backwards. "A resilient one, then. She would make a fine Decepticon-"
Airachnid threw a blast of energy at him, along with a rope of webbing. Both missed him by a mile, but she couldn't just watch him advancing without some kind of strike at him. "She's a child, not a soldier!"
Megatron's strange, almost proud expression, soured like the energon in his veins as his mouth formed a thick knotted frown. "Says the one who brought her onto a battlefield! Now hand her over-!"
He stretched out his servo, the one that threatened her with the same fate Breakdown met, and in that same instant Scorpia let loose an attack of her own. It was a concentrated wave of agony, twin to the one that had left her writhing on the ground, and it mirrored itself in Megatron's possessed spark, twisting the shards of Dark Energon in deeper to intensify the searing pain, the sensation of fuel sizzling away under his protoform.
"What…" He swallowed a groan, trying not to double over from the paralysing ache deep in his chest, deeper than his claws were willing to reach no matter how they scratched at his plating.
"What have you done to her?" He dragged his optics up, flashing purple at her as he fixed Scorpia with a glare to match the one Airachnid saved just for him. The sparkling made no sign that she recognised him as her sire, all she did was whimper in fear.
"You did this to her, Megatron," Airachnid told him, taking the opportunity to place as much distance between her and him as possible, despite the temptation to strike now while he was down. "Every moment of pain she's ever suffered is all because of you. Because of that fragging poison you filled her spark with!"
He watched her retreating, clawed at the soft ground as he tried to right himself. "I… I don't…" The hand over his spark fell as Scorpia's reflected pain faded, only because of how far away she was from her sire. His murky optics swirled with a thousand thoughts, many that Airachnid didn't want to guess at, as he slowly stood up right.
"I've felt this before… but not like this. It was… because of her? Because she was alive, and I never even knew it?" It was more like thinking out loud than seeking an answer from anyone, yet he looked to the land behind him as if searching for one anyway. The Titans were at rest, each frozen in their battle stances as if someone had cast them in iron and bolted them there forever more. For once, the ground was absolutely still. No shake of stamping peds or echo of fists colliding miles above. For the first time since they both arrived on this Primus-forsaken world, it was completely and utterly dead.
Megatron watched those statues, the wounds and dents scattered over the battered monuments, for so long that Airachnid might have thought he had become one of them. But he turned back to her eventually, with optics a pure red that didn't dare to shine as they faced her.
"You still wish to fight me, Airachnid?" he asked, so weary and exhausted that it was like listening to a ghost. He took her silence as his answer. "Very well. I think you've earned a fair chance." He took hold of his cannon-armed servo, worked his claws into the weapon until it came free of its mount. Then he tossed it aside, far out of his easy reach. In fact it went so far, it landed next to Breakdown's body.
Airachnid looked from the detached weapon to Megatron, back and forth in suspicion. "Since when have you ever cared about fighting fair?"
Megatron rubbed at the bare metal now revealed on his servo, only meeting her glare with hooded optics, still stubbornly red. "Believe me, Airachnid... I did not want it to come to this. Having a god in your spark does... very strange things. Gives you impulses... needs that you can't disobey. I'm sure you can sympathise with that."
Airachnid might have, if she was hearing it from any other mech in the galaxy. "You're trying to blame Unicron for all of this?" She didn't know why she was so shocked, when this was the same mech who blamed Optimus for making their planet uninhabitable, for daring to fight back when he was slaughtering innocents by the dozens.
And yet, Megatron still argued without an ounce of self-awareness. "A poor excuse, but the only one I have. If I'd known that first sparkling was ours..." He recoiled, as if he'd managed to feel a fraction of the pain she did when she felt the newborn spark disintegrate. "If I'd known you were carrying, this would have ended very differently."
Airachnid held back from firing something at him, if only to see the deep lines in his face, the regret sunken into them; to hear how pathetic his pleas were. "Do you ever listen to yourself speak?" It came out quieter than she wanted, but any louder and she was sure her voice would crack. "Do you understand what you're trying to justify to me? It wasn't Unicron's voice in your head that told you to start the war. It wasn't Dark Energon that left our home in ruins. That was all you."
She knew it was Elita talking, both brands of anger fighting to be heard. Megatron's expression fluctuated, as if he was reprogramming it to show a scornful confusion instead. "Since when did you care about the war?" he accused. "Cybertron was never your home, Airachnid. Autobot, Decepticon, bots like you didn't care what badge they wore. Your kind acts for yourself and no one else. Before… I admired that about you."
Airachnid bit her bottom lip, driving her fangs in deep to stop from screaming at him and his empty apologies, sucking up the leaking energon to quench her throat as it was baked dry by the heat of the rage from her spark. "I do have someone to fight for, Megatron," she told him. "And I don't care if you believe it or not."
Megatron hardly looked impressed by her confidence, or her ever-slipping self-control. "Are you going to keep trying to pass yourself off as something noble, or are you going to fight?"
Airachnid had been waiting for this moment ever since she left the Nemesis. Elita had been waiting ever since she died on Archa Seven. But not here, not with the stakes so high. Not with her daughter having to watch.
"You gave up your weapon… so I'll give up my shield." She gently pulled Scorpia away from her chest, moving sideways so Megatron never left her sight. Only when she found somewhere else to secure Scorpia to did she move her optics, webbing her tight to the jutting spire of scrap so she couldn't get lost, or turn around and have to see her parents fighting to the death.
Airachnid checked over her shoulder, making sure Megatron wasn't sneaking up on her, and wrenched herself back to Scorpia. She peered up over her thick blanket of web, face soaked with coolant and optics still leaking more as they searched her mother's face for answers. Airachnid thought she felt her spark breaking, but it was a dull shatter in the numb expanse of her chamber.
"I'm so sorry for this, Scorpia… it will be quick. I promise, just… please forgive me." She pulled Scorpia's head close, just feeling her daughter close to her, before placing a firm kiss on her forehelm, underneath the brittle armour to her shaking protoform.
"Motherhood has made you so affectionate." Megatron watched her rise without Scorpia in her servos, his observation so easily sounding like mockery. Suddenly Airachnid missed the weight that had kept her limbs pinned down. Her arms felt so light without her daughter, her spark so lost as it had to leave her behind…
She faced Megatron at her chosen distance, wiped her lips on the back of her palm. "I've just delivered a dose of delayed response venom through her protoform," she informed him. "If I win, it will pass harmlessly through her tanks. If I lose…" She sucked in air for comfort, but only found her own poison fumes wafting back at her.
"If I lose, I'll activate it and we'll both die."
Megatron's expression changed only minutely at the news. "You're bluffing."
Airachnid forced a smile, knowing he would think that. "Is it really so hard to believe that I'd rather have her dead than in your grasp?"
Megatron studied her, then came to the conclusion that she was telling the truth, however much it hurt her. He almost looked like she felt. "After all that anger about our son… you'd kill our daughter just to spite me?"
"You've already killed her, Megatron," Airachnid told him, spreading her back legs wide to take on his assault. "Do you really think I have anything left to lose?"
Megatron contemplated that, only wasting a nanoklick on it before he launched himself into a head-long charge towards her. Despite her pounding helm she was ready to counter it, bring her legs forwards to vault over Megatron's frame while it lay low- but he expected it, grabbing hold of her ankle and yanking her back down to slam her into the ground. The impact dazed her, but she had a mouth full of acid ready for when Megatron flipped her over. He brought up an arm to shield his face from the splatter of venom she spat past her lips, giving her long enough to roll aside and escape his shadow.
"What's the real plan, Airachnid?" He sent his blade skimming over her helm, only missing because she ducked in time. "Stalling until the Autobots get here and finish me off for you?"
He made three more strikes as he spoke, each of them glancing off the shield of her legs. "No Autobots," she said, hoping she was wrong. "This is between me and you and no one else!" She jabbed her razors at him at every opening, risking her defence for any chance at hitting him. One leg managed to dig itself into one of his armour seams, drawing energon but costing her a long wound across her shoulder. Megatron allowed her a moment to notice the gash, knowing that he would do much worse to her soon.
"And that is precisely why you will lose!" He drew his arm back for a heavy chop towards her helm, instead embedding his blade in the ground as she fought through the bane to scramble out of the way. While he pulled his servo free, stumbling backwards from his own strength, Airachnid got in close to slash at his face. Three thin scars lanced across his cheek and wept energon over his mouth; he gargled it away as he roared and shoved her a league away with a swat of his other servo. Her legs came up too late, and she tumbled across the rusted graveyard like a ragdoll thrown aside by a bratty sparkling.
That only made her think of Scorpia, leaving her weightless and hollow with anguish as Megatron came ever closer. He walked, not expecting her to get back up by the time he reached her.
With one servo trapped under her body, she fought against the crippling fear with the same helplessness that Metroplex gave her. Her claws kept scraping against something hard, something she was trying to release until she realised what it was.
Clutching it tight in her hand, all five talons hiding it, she summoned enough strength to flip herself up on her back legs, sliding aside as Megatron lunged at her.
"I know why you really killed Breakdown," she told him, loud enough to command his attention as he kept trying to make a solid hit. "Not because he refused to kill me. You would have wanted to do that yourself anyway."
"Shut up and give me a challenge already!" The energon over his face had dried quickly, a thin layer of purple-stained cyan that cracked away as he snarled at her. Airachnid kept dodging his lunges, knocking away his blade when it came too close.
"You killed him," she went on, almost enjoying his frustration," Because you just couldn't see from his perspective!" The swipe of his sword had escalated to a flurry of frantic stabs, each one desperate to make a match to the wound on her shoulder. She waited for the perfect angle, the perfect chance to counter him… it came when he tried to go right for her spark, making her twist her whole body aside and giving her perfect access to his weapon.
"Allow me to help you with that!" Forcing his blade downwards again, this time she used it for support as she launched herself up, two legs pushing down his shoulders and a fist of talons uncurling to reveal a sharp, jagged shard of rock, glittering the same colour as the energon dripping from both of them, as she slammed it deep into Megatron's optic.
She didn't have time to retrieve it before he bellowed, a shriek of pure agony as he bucked his head and pressed a hand to his gouged socket. She made a hasty dismount, leaving him to spasm and bleed as he tried to pull the meteorite out.
Behind him, silhouetted like the planet was a stage, Metroplex carried out a similar attack on Trypticon, who still hadn't resumed his onslaught. Dark Energon had been what kept him walking, had been his link to Megatron and vice versa. Now that Megatron was no longer possessed, bleeding out the poisoned energon by the quart, Trypticon was as useful to him as a visor, one built for bots with both optics intact.
Even if she died here, at least the Autobots would be victorious. At least she'd be buried somewhere that wasn't just an endless warzone.
Now gasping out his pain, Megatron faced Airachnid with one optic and a bleeding, hideous hole, heedless to the quaking ground as Metroplex beat his Titan into the ground. Energon still drenched him in a patchwork purple and blue flood, but the loss from his tanks didn't slow him at all as he arced his sword towards her. Again she rolled to dodge it, but it clipped one of her loose legs and left it dangling uselessly from her back. She still had seven left, but now she was off balance. He threw all his weight behind his strikes, making less attempts at hitting her but much more powerful impacts when he managed to.
She focused on his blind side, leaving it patterned with a tapestry of gaping wounds by the time her shoulder started slowing her down. Yet he still moved with as much fury as a gladiator at his prime. No matter how hard she hit and clawed, he refused to go down… in some places his armour was too thick to even pierce through.
Yet she still persisted, drawing back on her remaining legs as she dived aside from his sword and claws. She was running out of options, and out of energon. In a fit of desperation, she dredged up a strategy from somewhere far back in her cluttered memories. She flung herself over to his other side, landing heavily and, pivoting on her heel, swung it with all her carried speed to crack against Megatron's helm-
Only to have it swiftly caught in his palm before it could hit, the ped easily crushed between his talons. With all the energon on his face and the shards of optic glass sticking around the bleeding socket, his grin looked more ghoulish than even he would have possibly ever managed.
"I haven't seen that move in a very long time," he told her, slowly, as if savouring the fact that she was completely immobilised. "I almost killed the last bot who used it against me." Trapping her ped even tighter, he effortlessly pulled her over his helm and smashed her into the ground. The impact was an earthquake through her frame, needles sent firing through her nerve nodes as her helm pulsed like an endless warning siren. The constant tremors underneath didn't help, as Megatron stood over her and immobilised her pinned legs with the weight of his peds pushing down on them.
"Do you know how he managed to survive?" he asked her, kneeling to loom over her fully with a mighty set of claws encompassing her chest, eager to rip her spark out. "Because he gave up. He knew I was better, and he simply gave up. That's what smart bots do when they're out-matched. Are you as smart as you think you are, Airachnid? Or do you still think you can win?"
Airachnid tried to pull her glossa over her cracked lips, couldn't even summon any more venom to throw at him. The only acid she had left was tucked in her vocaliser, and she croaked it out on shaking vents.
"What are you waiting for? Do it, you… fragging coward…!" She had the command ready to deploy, an instant of pain before there'd be no more at all, anything to protect Scorpia. Anything to keep her away from this monster…
Megatron hesitated, scowling at her goading but making no move to finish her off. If he left her here and went to retrieve Scorpia herself, she'd just kill the sparkling anyway. There was no way for him to win both ways… just as Airachnid had intended.
Perhaps that was why he decided to kill her, just for the nerve of outwitting him. Airachnid watched him pull the blade back, knowing it was aiming for her neck and calculating the exact moment to save her daughter. She refused to close her optics, wouldn't die without burning her last glare into his optics like a lifelong brand.
That was how she saw Megatron toppling forwards, blown off of her by some invisible hurricane, before she felt his weight evaporating off her frame. She craned her neck vertically to see where he landed, but only saw a dark blue jet soaring over her. From her angle, it looked like he was flying in an upside-down world, skimming the ground as the solid sky tried to drag him back down. When she rolled herself over, stumbling onto her peds, all that was left of Soundwave was the contrails that followed behind his wings as they tore through the air.
With nowhere else to look, she turned her optics downwards; only now realising she was on the very edge of a colossal chasm, like a scar gouged out of Cybertron to match the one stinging on her shoulder. This was Metroplex's resting place… and it would soon be Megatron's, when he eventually lost the strength keep himself from falling into its depths, claws only just holding onto the edge she stood upon. As well as only one optic, he also only had one servo, his original one, to keep himself secured with. His other must have come free, unable to take the strain of holding him up, or perhaps unwilling to keep the rest of his body alive.
He knew she wasn't going to pull him back, and he didn't embarrass them both by begging. Airachnid knelt, watching the many stages of denial flashing past his damp, crusted face, and kept his claws right where they were with a clump of webbing. She didn't want him to fall just yet.
"I want you to know, Megatron, that I'm not killing you for the Autobots. I'm not killing you for Optimus. I'm not even killing you just to hear you scream." She spoke slowly, rehearsing each line in her head before giving it a voice. But there were so many of them spilling from her spark, so many things she wouldn't get another chance to say that they all eventually came out on a tide of venom.
"I'm killing you because youtook our home and our families; but that was never enough for you, was it? You had to take me as well! You had to take my son, and the life that I should have had, the life that I DESERVED with the mech I loved!" Her fury had her digging her claws into the chasm's edge, something for her to cut with Megatron too far below her. She didn't care if he didn't understand the truth of her anger just yet, left literally hanging on her words as she breathed deeply.
"There's two names I want you to remember," she told him calmly. "Two names that will haunt you when Unicron takes you back to the Pit. The first is Antares. Our son, the name I gave before you murdered him."
Airachnid let her claws drift over to Megatron's, over the webs that kept him anchored and captive. She leaned into the darkness of the abyss, where only Megatron's blood, his single, fading optic and a hazy mist of yellow at the very bottom gave any light, and whispered close to his audio.
"The second… is Elita. One."
Her claws sliced through the webs, releasing his grip so quickly that he couldn't even lunge for purchase again. She watched him fall, watched his optic grow wider but smaller as his final realisation hit him almost as quickly as the floor did. He wasn't alone when he died. As the chasm swallowed him, so too did the swarm of Insecticons lying in wait in its pit. One soared up to grab him, then another, each tearing and ripping at his battered armour to feast on the still-warm protoform underneath. They didn't mind the stench of Dark Energon from his wounds, or how he still tried to fight them off.
Airachnid watched until the darkness took him for good, and until she sensed the Insecticons at peace. She had to swing her helm up, so heavy it was with steel-lined thoughts and, she thought, a swarm of regrets. Though that might only have come from who was watching her at the other side of the chasm, so far away that his dark plating blended together into its own independent shadow. Behind him, Metroplex stood alone with a collapsed mountain at his peds. Soundwave held a weapon of some kind in his servo, whatever he'd used to knock Megatron into the abyss, and with a twitch of his servo he sent it falling after his body. With that done, he still didn't leave. Airachnid thought, behind that visor, she could feel his optics locked onto her. She wondered how long he'd known about who she was, if he even did. Soundwave had never been so simple to figure out.
"Kasimus..." She muttered the long-lost memory on the subtle wind, not knowing if he could hear her, if he was even listening so far away.
"Airachnid?" She jumped to her peds, stepping backwards in confusion. She turned slowly, only having to wonder for a nanoklick if she'd just imagined the voice.
But it was just as she'd heard and hoped. Optimus stood behind her, Grimlock by his side and Scorpia curled in his servos. He looked at her shoulder, at the similar leaking scars and the dents driven deep around her chest, but they only told her that she'd been in a fight. The aching pulse of her spark, the pride in her optics, those are what told him that she won.
Even so, she collapsed into his servos more a weeping wreck than a victor. Scorpia found her place next to her spark, completely oblivious to what she came to close to doing.
"Shh... shh, Airachnid." Optimus held her so tight that she was sure he would never let go. "It's over. It's all over."
Airachnid nodded against his chest, staining it with coolant as her vents shuddered against the tide of more static-filled sobs. It was over. They'd survived, they'd won. Yet as she cast a look over her shoulder, finding only empty space where Soundwave had stood, she couldn't make herself smile.
"...Take me home, Orion."
xx
I lied, it's actually two who died this time.
Get mad if you want but you've read this far, you might as well stick around for the epilogue.