Title: Unfortunate
Part 3: Devour
Summary: One never knows just how far a mech is willing to go.
Characters: Starscream, Decepticons, Autobots
Warnings: bad mojo, character death, cannibalism
Continuity: G1
AN: And yet another section. I'm thinking at this rate I'll be updating every 2-3 days, to be finished sometime next week. Hopefully. I'm not making any promises though.
He sits patiently, still as the dead and twice as grave, waiting. His gaze never once leaves the ocean waves beneath which rest the Nemesis and his soon-to-be victims. He has been sitting here for several Earth-hours, waiting, watching. He holds in his left hand a small data-pad, through which he absently cycles through sound-feeds from certain areas of the Nemesis.
Megatron and several others have already discovered that they are trapped. This doesn't bother him. He finds a dim sort of ironic amusement in their fury and helplessness; he suspects that this is one of the first times any of those still trapped below have ever felt this weak and ineffectual. He wonders what is going through their processors. Have any of them even thought that he could be capable of this? Have any of them thought of their own actions this past Earth-month and realized that while they are not to blame for what he is now doing, they certainly didn't try and prevent it either. He knows Megatron is currently blaming him, but Megatron has blamed him for everything and anything that has ever gone wrong, and Starscream honestly doubts that the other Decepticons even listen to that tired litany any longer.
And does it matter? They all threw him away, cast him out and aside and mocked him during his most vulnerable period of grief, during a stage where mechs usually died. Three bonds torn asunder in mere moments of each other; mechs usually perished with only one bond ripped apart. They had dared mock Skyfire to his face, and while he may have tolerated such slurs when the shuttle had been alive, at least Skyfire had been alive and deserving. But Skyfire was dead, and unlike the last time he'd lost the shuttle beneath the ice so long ago, this time there was no hope of revival. And no one got to mock his brothers. No one. Not even Megatron had dared to mock them while they were alive. Beat them, punish them, rage and rail, of course. It was only to be expected. But mock them? His brothers? He'd killed more mechs than he could care to count for less.
So he waits and watches the surface of the ocean. Occasionally, an exceptionally creative curse stands out amongst the vast litany of them and makes him smile, but mostly he simply sits and watches, gaze impassive, wishing with his entire spark that one of his bonded were here to sit with him.
He is waiting. For what, he's not quite sure, but he knows the show will be spectacular to witness when it happens.
An entire Earth-days passes before anything even remotely interesting happens. He's listened carefully to the sound-feeds for the past several Earth-hours, growing more and more amused as first Soundwave and then the Constructicons make the connection between him and the strange language the doors are locked in. Megatron has by this time straight-up blasted his way out of the Command Center and has barricaded himself in the Security room with Soundwave, both attempting to override the Nemesis.
He smiles and smiles, because he knows that with each code they attempt to override, they are that much closer to initiating the count-down that will rid him of their troublesome presences. Soundwave is an intelligent mech, a handy hacker, and a brilliant Communications Specialist, but he is not nearly in the same league as Starscream himself is when it comes to thinking outside the box. Soundwave searches for the virtual 'finger-prints' that Starscream usually leaves around whenever he attempts something this underhanded, but he will find nothing this time. Starscream has been most thorough in his clean-up. Once upon a time, he might have left those markers, but that was when he truly didn't care whether or not he got caught. Back then, either way he cut it he had something to come home to, had someone worthwhile near him keeping him from pushing too far, too fast.
He has no one now.
This is alright, though. He stands and stretches, working out the kinks in his joints from sitting so still for so long. Things will be getting interesting right about….
...now. He watches as the ocean erupts up and out, water violently ricocheting for miles with the force of the explosion below the surface. The shockwave that follows threatens to toss him to the ground, but still, he waits, gaze narrowed, waiting. Cybertronians are a particularly hardy race, after all. If one or two managed to get out of the Nemesis before she erupted, there was a chance, no matter how slim, that there would be survivors. He could not allow that. Not now.
And sure enough, eventually several thrashing bodies rise to the surface, one or two screaming in anger, but most in pain. Most were missing limbs and had great fissures in their chassis; he imagines the pain of the salt water against exposed wires and circuitry must be beyond agony. One, however, is making his painful way to the shore, to him.
Megatron.
He smiles and leaps into the air, igniting his thrusters and gliding down the cliff he sat on to meet his once Lord and Master. As he lands, he withdraws a small energon-blade. Megatron looks up at him, furious as usual, but this time also with fear in his optics, because Megatron is weak from his injuries, but Starscream is not. Starscream is perfectly healthy, perfectly whole, and while he may not have Megatron's brute strength, that has certainly never stopped him before. There were some days when Starscream had fought Megatron and would have won had it not been for the timely interruption of one of Megatron's loyal – right now, there was no one to stop Starscream.
No one.
He smiles, even as he kneels before his once-Lord's fallen body. He smiles, even as he draws the energon blade slowly, carefully, against the main energon-lines in Megatron's neck. He smiles, content and almost-happy, even as he slowly, carefully, cuts Megatron into too many tiny pieces to ever be reassembled. He smiles, even as he holds Megatron's flickering spark in his hands and devours it whole. He smiles, even as he chokes on the burning ball of light.
He is still smiling when he turns his attentions to those floating on the now-calm surface of the water, groaning and crying and dying inch by painful inch as they leak their life-fluids out into the greedy ocean.
*cackles* Suitably creepy? You know, this fic is absurdly fun to write. I wonder what that says about me as a person?