Following their fight, Springer seemed to avoid Megatrons. He wasn't openly hostile, but he made it very clear that their casual friendship was over. Megatronus didn't care much—he had other things to worry about.

He fought two more matches without his voice box. It didn't take long before mecha figured out what had happened. He heard that there was outcry, that mecha were complaining, lobbying, sending him replacements—which never reached him—and praying for him.

And then, just a few joors before his next fight, a smallish medic came in without any guards.

"Megatronus?" he said, looking nervous. "I… uh, I can give you your voice back, if you'll just lie down on the berth."

Megatronus nodded and lay down so the medic could magnetize him to the berth. Megatronus recognized this medic—he was one of the slightly more attentive ones, a mech who took care to be quick and efficient, and who would offline your pain grid before he did any serious repairs. He cut open Megatronus's throat. Megatronus shuttered his optics and waited for it to be over. It hurt, but it would be more than worth it if he got his voice back.

"All right," the medic said. "You try to talk, and I'll work on this, until I can understand you. I'm sorry this is just a patch job, it might not last very long, but I'll try to come back and work on it again later."

Megatronus tried to thank him but only sparks and static came out.

"That's right, keep trying," the medic said.

Since no one could hear, Megatronus started talking about the mines, about Photodraft and Rivet. He had left their designations out of everything he had said, in case Clench had their creators hunted down, but he used them now in static and sputtering, reminding himself never to forget them.

Eventually, what he was trying to say started forming into words. By the time he could speak, it was nearly time for the match to start.

"Thank you," he said to the medic.

The medic nodded. "Megatronus, you, of all mecha, deserve to have a voice." Then he left, and Megatronus waited impatiently for the guards to come.

It seemed to take forever, but finally they did come for him, and a few breems after that, he stepped out into the arena.

Only, there was no opponent. A little confused, he walked out into the middle of the circle, and looked around at the audience. They cheered, but it was somewhat half-sparked, as if they were confused too.

The door he'd walked through closed, and then, after a few astroseconds, the door on the opposite side of the arena opened. A buzzing, clanking sound like a thousand pieces of shrapnel hitting the ground filled the atmosphere.

Megatronus had heard that sound before, once in a while, in the mines, when he and the rest of the team were supposed to be recharging. When they heard that noise, everyone would wake up and stare nervously into the corners of the cavern.

He was about to find out why they were so afraid.

A swarm of tiny creatures flooded out through the doors, headed for him. The audience gasped. He heard screams as well as he faced the oncoming flood of scraplets. Core programming activated, flooding him with panic.

But he stood, watching them, mastering the fear until he was completely calm. The first scraplets had nearly reached him when he leaped and transformed midair.

They followed him.

He knew the dimensions of his cage, and turned around without crashing into the energy shield to fire into the cloud of scraplets. It was difficult to hit them, because they spread out instead of clustering. He managed to blast a few of them, but there were hundreds.

He bumped a few of them as he started spiraling around the edge of the shield. One attached itself to him and started gnawing a groove in his armor. Another bounced off and hit the energy shield. It sparked and dropped to the ground.

Hmm…

Megatronus couldn't land on the ground—it was still teeming with the things. They were starting to spread out through the cage too. He saw a few more hit the invisible walls and fall down.

A fall from too high would kill them. Scraplets were relatively weak and easy to crush.

Several more attached themselves to him.

Fine.

With a roar of defiance, Megatronus dove into the middle of the cloud. He heard screaming and shouting from the stands. He came out on the other side of the main cloud, and drove himself into the invisible barrier. Plasmatic energon screamed through him, and he bounced off, but all the scraplets fell free of him, stunned.

He hovered near the edge and waited for the rest of the cloud to come to him. They were stupid, really. Just tiny little mouths full of teeth. No processor, just hunger.

At the last minute, Megatronus dropped. Some of the scraplets didn't stop in time, and hit the barrier. They bounced off of him as he transformed again and landed on the ground. He shot the floor around him, hitting the scraplets crawling there. Then, when they overwhelmed him, he transformed again and flew through the cloud. He was going to need a whole lot of detail work done after this.

He flew through the thickest parts until he was covered in scraplets, and then crashed himself into the energon field to knock them out several more times. He lured them into hitting it, and shot them until all of his guns ran out of power. He stepped on them, crushed them against his stinging armor and mesh, and physically pushed them into the shield. Dead scraplets piled up along the outer edge of the arena, and still they filled the space. Megatronus wouldn't stop, though.

Slowly, the atmosphere cleared.

They had tried to kill him again, and they had failed. They could try again, and again, and Megatronus would never die.

Casurus was right. Destiny was a glitch. He crushed the last few scraplets with his torn and stinging hands. He felt as if his entire frame was on fire, but the atmosphere was empty and the tiny creatures on the ground were still.

The crowd screamed and cheered, and Megatronus raised both arms, venting hard still. The pain was all worth it for the triumph at the end.

Then he prepared himself.

"My mecha!" he shouted.

They heard him. His voice was scratchy and relatively weak, but they heard him, and then their shouting drowned out anything he could ever have said.

He stood, hands raised while they cheered, until it quieted enough that he thought they would be able to hear him again.

"You don't ever have to give up!" Megatronus shouted. He had no time or thought for something profound. "There is no wall they can build that someone can't climb over. There is no fight they can rig that someone can't win. And there's no reason that someone can't be one of us!"

They shouted. He'd done two impossible things this orn. A scraplet, not quite offline, wobbled over and started chewing on his pede. Megatronus ignored it. "They must have decided I was starting to sound repetitive," he shouted, and was rewarded with scattered laughter among the cheering. "Because they took away my voice box. But they don't understand—I am not fighting them alone. Thank you for your support! I could never have won this fight without you all here! Care for each other and be patient! Our time will still come, no matter how hard they try to silence us!"

The doors opened and guards rushed into the arena. Megatronus didn't fight, but he didn't help either as they dragged him away. He didn't really have anything more to say, but that was all right, because the crowd cheered the whole time, and he could still hear them through the door after it closed.

They dropped him on the floor of the anteroom just outside of the ring. He didn't know if he was leaking anywhere, but he felt as if he'd been dipped in a smelting pit. A supervisor joined him. "Cut his neck open."

They shoved him to the ground, and he didn't have the strength to struggle as they cut the plating away from his neck. He'd thought the medics were harsh, but he hadn't realized the difference between harsh and just efficient.

The supervisor cursed, and one of the guards reached in and pulled on the voice box the medic had installed. Megatronus screamed, but the sound was cut off when the guards sliced through the cables connecting the voice box to his processor.

After that, they dragged him to his room and left him there, curled up on the ground.

After a while, they sent in a medic to patch up the damage the scraplets had done to him. It was the same medic who had fixed his voice box. He helped Megatronus up onto the berth, and put him into stasis.

When Megatronus woke again, the pain was gone for the most part. When he hesitantly tried to speak, he could. He sat up in darkness, surprised that he felt so well. Also that that medic had risked so much to do this. Did mecha really think so highly of his voice that they would risk their lives so he could keep it?

He would have to be careful not to talk until the next match, so that no one would take it away from him until he could use it again.

They brought a different medic in the next time they opened his door, and that medic checked him over, and then opened his neck. Megatronus was worried, but the medic didn't say or do anything, just put all the plating back in place, and left again.

They brought him energon several times, but didn't let him out, and the door was always locked. Unfortunately for them, Megatronus had some of the guards on his side. The mech who'd talked him into the rebellion in the first place, whose designation was Tollroad, was occasionally the one to bring him energon, so he could still get messages out.

The second time Tollroad came, he stepped in and closed the door.

"How are you?" he asked. "Can you talk?"

Megatronus was worried the room was bugged or that there was a camera, so he smiled and nodded slightly instead of saying anything.

"Ok," Tollroad said. "Here." He set the energon down with a folded piece of cloth under it. Megatronus nodded in thanks, and Tollroad left. The piece of cloth had information on it, about the number of mecha who had been reached by the words from his latest speech, and a few words of encouragement, and designations of guards who could help him if he needed it.

It was a long time before they let him fight again. Once he managed to steal a whispered conversation with Tollroad who told him that the mecha in the city were starting a boycott of the gladiator rings so they would send him to fights again. Even so, it was a long time, perhaps quartexes. Sometimes, on his own, Megatronus would talk quietly, just to be sure his voice box still worked. Either all the medics were on his side, or the medic who had helped him had put his voice box somewhere other than where it was supposed to be, because numerous medics had opened up his throat to make sure it wasn't there, and none of them had said anything.

Finally, finally, they let him back in the ring. He was out of practice because he hadn't been allowed to go to the training cavern. He'd done what he'd been able to in his room, but even so he was out of practice. If they'd pitted him against Springer again, he would have been offlined for certain. But it was a relatively easy fight, and afterward, he looked up at the audience and spoke to them, reassuring them that he was all right, and thanking them for their strength. He wasn't really speaking to the mechs around him, but to the whole city, the whole world. He knew there were mecha all over Cybertron who listened to him, in places that he had never even heard of.

He spoke as long as he could, before the guards came and dragged him away. The crowd didn't seem particularly happy about that.

They cut open his neck again in the anteroom, but couldn't seem to find anything to pull out. Megatronus grinned, even though it hurt, and they dragged him back to his room, and had a medic come in. Then there was almost a whole joor of rooting around in the top half of his chassis before they found the modified voice box, and removed it.

But he had at least two medics on his side, because a different one came in later, and gave him another replacement.

It went on like that for a while. Megatronus would sometimes be able to speak during a match, and other times he wouldn't. His voice had suffered in these past quartexes, and now it was barely more than a static-filled rasp. But whenever he could speak, he said as much as he could before the guards dragged him away.

Despite his determination, the growth of his following slowed as time went on and he had nothing to show for it. They let him go to the training room once in a while, but nowhere else. He still had some friends among the other gladiators, but few were willing to openly support him or help him, and it was difficult to make plans in the occasional moments Megatronus caught with Tollroad. It was frustrating, but there wasn't much they could do about it. Meanwhile, Megatronus knew that Clench was making a lot of money off of him.

Then one orn, the guards came in, along with a supervisor. Three guards dragged Tollroad between them, and dropped him to the ground in the middle of the room. He was covered in energon, and barely conscious.

Megatronus stared.

"Megatronus," the supervisor said. "This is going to stop. Do you understand?"

"Let him go," Megatronus said.

"No," the supervisor replied. "This is going to stop."

"It won't stop," Tollroad said. "It won't stop until the system ends, until Clench is overthrown and…" he cut off with a gasp as one of the other guards rammed an energon prod into an open wound.

"Let him go," Megatronus repeated. "Or I will kill you. Maybe not now, but some orn. You can count on it."

The supervisor snorted. "I doubt you'll have a chance. Kill him."

They shot Tollroad and he fell to the ground. They let Megatronus watch him bleed out before dragging him away, leaving Megatronus alone with the blue stain of energon on the ground.

He sat in silence for more than a joor. There was only so much he could take. Only so much pain, only so much loss. If they continued to kill the mecha he relied on, he would eventually fall as well.

But not yet. Tollroad would have wanted him to keep fighting. Megatronus would kill that supervisor, and he would kill Clench. He would not let this stop him. A calmness came over him, washing the sorrow away. There was nothing, now, but determination. No matter how long it took, or how much went wrong, he would see that these mecha faced justice.

During his next fight, he talked about Tollroad, mentioned him by designation, described how he had died, and asked everyone to remember him.

After Tollroad's death, things got more difficult. It was harder to communicate with mecha outside the pits, and he felt as if things were slipping from his control again. He stopped speaking as much, not because he couldn't, but because he wasn't always sure what to say. He had a lot of mecha out in the city who would be willing to rise to fight at his command, but they weren't armed, and there weren't enough of them yet. Maybe there would never be enough of them.

He was given back some privileges, such as permission to go to the energon hall, and the training room. That helped a little, but even with Tollroad, things had been starting to stagnate.

The most frustrating thing was that he had no way to personally communicate with the mecha who were following him. There was no way for him to know what resources he had, or how many mecha would rise up if he called them to action. He was in a cage, and until he was out of the cage, he wasn't going to be able to do anything for them.

They caught one of the medics who had been helping him, and killed that mech in front of him too. This time, to his surprise, Megatronus felt almost nothing. What did one more death matter? No one cared.

But he ought to, and it bothered him. Even though he felt apathetic about killing other gladiators, he shouldn't feel nothing about those mecha who were trying to help him.

One orn, after a long, painful fight, in which Megatronus had offlined his opponent, he stood and faced his audience.

"I will give you one last chance!" he shouted. "The more of us they kill, the more deaths are on your helms, and the more you have to answer for. I have appealed to Iacon. I do not know if my appeals have been heard. I do not know if my claims have been believed. This is the last! This is the last time I will ask for help and then patiently wait. If my words reach the Council's audio receptors, I will no longer beg for their aid. From now on, barring their immediate assistance, we are on our own."

He trudged out of the arena and to his room, where he lay on the berth and waited for darkness to claim him, or a medic to come and heal him.

Then he heard something. A scuttling sound, and a soft clang. He sat up. "Who's there?"

Silence. Megatronus turned the lights on and got painfully to his pedes.

There was a datapad on the desk. Hesitantly, he approached and touched the screen. It lit up, displaying a message. Megatronus picked up the datapad and took it with him to the berth to read.

[Megatronus,

My name is Orion. You don't know who I am, and I've never met you, but I've listened to the speeches you've given. I live in Iacon, and I've heard that you've tried to appeal to mecha here to look into the mines, and the problems there.

One of my friends was on the Council, and working toward sending someone to Kaon to look into it, like you asked. However, he's gone now. We don't know where he went, but we don't think we're going to be seeing him ever again.

Corruption is not just in Kaon, where you are. It's here too. Everyone knows good mecha who have disappeared because they said the wrong thing to the wrong government mech. It may not be as horrible as what happens down in Kaon, but it's just as wrong.

My friends and I would like to start a resistance movement in Iacon, but we don't really know what we're doing. None of us has ever done anything like this before. We're just a few students, a library clerk, and a professor, and we don't know what direction to go in, or how to proceed, but we're tired of standing by while every good mech around us disappears.

I know it might seem presumptuous of me to ask for your advice. But I've heard your message and I also believe in a better Cybertron than we have now. I admire and appreciate all of the sacrifices you've made, and how hard you fight for the liberty of the mecha in Kaon, and I can't think of anyone else who I could ask for this.

If you would respond, and maybe offer us a little counsel on how to begin, and how to proceed, we would be very grateful. My friends and I are willing to do whatever it takes to fight the corruption in society, and we would appreciate any sort of response you send.

Thank you for the time you've taken to read this letter, thank you for your hard work, and thank you for your uplifting words and the messages you share with the world. There are mecha everywhere who listen to you and find the strength to fight in the things you say. I know I'm not the only one.

Your humble listener,

Orion Pax]

The End

Notes/Acknowledgements:

1. Thank you all for reading and reviewing! I hope you enjoyed it. :)

2. As always, this story would be a mess without my ever faithful beta readers, who alerted me to its many flaws so that I could attempt to eliminate them.

3. Springer will show up again in later stories. Casurus (the crazy gladiator trainer) will also make an occasional appearance. Just so you know, there may be more to him than meets the eye. ;)