[The Cyberverse continuity is the primary inspiration, with references made to the 2019 comic reboot and other sources of events, lore and characterisation.]
Bumblebee can taste Energon. His own Energon. Who struck him, just now? He did not even see the blow coming. When bigger warframes, clashing together with terrible noise, upset his perch upon a tall speaker and he fell into the tide, he evidently added further upset to already heightened tempers. He struggles to pick himself up, jostled betwixt crushing movement.
A servo reaches through, seizing his arm and pulling him upward.
He dribbles from his split intake, his brain module throbbing.
"Bumblebee!"
"Ugh… Shadow Striker?"
She is forcing herself through the crowd, pulling him after.
He stumbles to occupy the path her bigger warframe clears for them.
A heated mech takes offence to being shoved aside and throws a fist her way.
She catches it, lens alight.
Bumblebee is very glad to have the femme on his side, gawking up at the warframe sent careening overhelm with an almost comedic bellow.
"C'mon!"
He is thus haplessly rescued, yanked free from the rowdy rabble. Looking back at the stage, he sees the appalled expression upon Orion's facial rigging, whose booming voice calls for order from beside the grim resignation of Megatron's silence.
This is not how Bumblebee hoped to get Shadow Striker to come back with him to his habitation suite.
"It's nothing serious."
"Ow."
She cleans his face plate with a strip of textile. She is not exactly gentle. It is brusque, deliberate. But she is not unkind. She is not inconsiderate.
He looks so miserable. A femme just cannot resist.
Not even Shadow Striker. She sighs as she eases back, standing whilst he sits. "Bumblebee."
"I'm okay. Thanks for rescuing me."
"You want me to call someone for you?"
"Nah, I'll call Windblade." His vocal processor is unstable. He clears his intake with a cough. "In a minute. Soon as I've stopped buzzing. Heh."
"Should I stay?"
Bumblebee wants to give Shadow Striker a hug, just then. Manages a weak smile up at her softened scowl.
After a moment of optic-contact, she actually smiles weakly back.
"My hero."
Her face plate flushes. She turns her helm aside, directing her optic elsewhere, scope whirring as she zooms in on a holoposter mounted to his wall, its glowing interface flickering between images, bearing the chiselled warframes of various famous teams in their uniform colourschemes. "…You like Cube."
"Yeah! I love Cube!"
And as it turns out, she does, too.
"Megatron… I cannot condone many of the things you have said at today's rally."
"I spoke only the truth, Orion."
"You incited a riot."
"Does that not prove the urgency of our movement?" The retired gladiator paces the barren room, rumbling with passion. "Cybertron grows tired of waiting for our livelihoods to improve, in feeble increments!"
"Change takes time."
"It has taken too much of our time! Many of my brethren still rot in the mines to fuel our factories, while the pampered elite take pleasure in the bittersweet spoils of the arena. Do you think I chose this life? It was the only escape I had."
The former archivist lowers his gaze with a wince.
"I cannot allow more Sparks to suffer as mine."
"Megatron… I love you."
A seething hiss through bared dentas. "Then do not reject me, Orion!"
"I could never reject you. I know your frustration. I do not intend to overshadow your pain with my ideals."
"Bah!" A dismissive toss of a servo. "You keep doing this to me. You frustrate me endlessly with your refusal to see things as they must be."
"I will not give up on you. And so I will remind you, that inciting chaos is a misuse of your platform." Optics rise again, gleaming. "I will not allow you to do this to yourself. It is an encroaching darkness that has befallen other great mechs throughout history."
"Chaos! Darkness! How dare you? It is righteous anger! You must know that no victory has been won with just talk!"
"Innocents will be harmed, if you continue down this path."
"Oh, do not be so naive, Orion! Sacrifices must be made, for the betterment of the greater whole!"
"No. Mark my words, Megatron – I will obtain that audience with the powers that be, and I will persuade them of our cause, without further violence."
"They want nothing to do with us! They ignored us for months!"
"You will not incite another riot. Not so long as I stand with you."
Megatron looms before Orion Pax, their face plates hovering closely. One is impassioned, the other compassionate. There is a limitless connection between their lingering optics.
"I have reassured you before. But now, I swear it."
"And if these powers that be actually cared for your rational arguments, they would have done something significant enough to show it, by now."
"I will do this."
"We shall see. As for this… 'riot,' that's what you call it?" The retired gladiator, once a slave to the mines, captures the other mech's cheek in the palm of a heavy, massive servo, gently cradling. "You have such a noble spark, my Orion. But the events of today only prove our resolve. All the more reason for those powers that be to finally heed our stern warning and act! We will be ignored no more. I will make something great of this day! Do not despair."
"At the risk of further harm?" The former archivist and, before then, a mere dock worker, sadly shakes his helm. "Our ideals were so peaceful. How can you not find this unconscionable?"
"I will only allow as much harm as is necessary to save you. To save us."
Orion allows Megatron to kiss his other cheek.
"Because I love you."
Their warframes radiate far too much heat.
"Do not deny me this."
"…Megatron, wait."
The hulking mech had intended to depart, yet he draws to a heavy stop some paces away, turning his battle-scared helm to gaze over a reinforced pauldron. Scuffed dermas are softly drawn in a lopsided line, optic shutters are partially lowered – a little too intense to be stoic, it is an unknowingly sultry expression overall. "Yes, my Orion."
It makes him ache within his Spark. "I am not angry, old friend."
Grunting softly, Megatron shifts almost anxiously within the dull layers of his dented armoured shell, optical ridges seemingly bending under the weight of his own thoughts.
"I do not wish to part ways in anger."
"Neither do I."
Orion's movements are measured and gentle as he approaches the other mech from behind, drawing close enough that the air dispersed from his vents can be felt, faintly ticklish and warm, upon a spinal seam. "Then you know what you must do."
"For you, I would do almost anything, my Orion. But here, I cannot relent."
"Please, Megatron. Hold off on the rousing speeches. I have failed you before, but I will find a way to reach them. Somehow. Soon."
"I cannot help it," the retired gladiator rumbles softly, with a handsome wince. "My Spark throbs with it. My mind is consumed with it. So much… anger. Justice must be done. I have waited a lifetime for this change."
"Great injustice was done to you, old friend." The former archivist embraces the other mech from behind. "I fear your way will only perpetuate further harm, to yourself and to us all."
"I only mean to set things right."
"I know, old friend." A nuzzle to the tender cables of a guarded neck, before a masculine chin rests atop a pauldron, helms tilted together.
"It is… painful."
"And I deeply regret that pain."
"I miss you," comes out ever so quietly. "Come back to me. I cannot reach you, now."
"Just give me one final chance, to make this right."
"Orion… I cannot wait for you, for much longer."
He reluctantly allows Megatron to step out of the arms that would hold him.
"Things got real ugly, real fast. I'm kinda shaken up about it, I guess."
"I'm sorry, Bee. I should've been there."
"Nah, it's cool. Those rallies were never your thing. I just… I never really thought Megatron would preach that sorta stuff, y'know? He always seemed so…" Bumblebee dwindles off.
Windblade strokes his back plate, sitting beside him.
"I feel betrayed. I thought I knew him."
"Oh, Bee."
"He was my hero. Does he really think these things? Like, yeah, I see where he's coming from, he's not… wrong. But…"
Slipstream is rather large, as far as most femmes go. She is thus capable of enveloping the rather small Bumblebee in a way that is very reassuring, drawing him into a big hug and kissing him atop his helm.
He sags against her chassis.
Shadow Striker remains silently propped against the wall, arms crossed across her chassis, expression stern. She is, evidently, thinking deeply. But not too deeply to notice Windblade directing a soft, pretty smile of gratitude her way. Answers it with a handsome nod.
Megatron returns to find the lights dimmed throughout his habitation suite.
Starscream is peacefully splayed out in recharge, a datapad upon his chassis. Evidently, he enjoys to read whilst gradually powering down. His beauty is somehow greater, now that he does nothing to flaunt it.
The retired gladiator expects that the coming weeks will be especially difficult. But throughout whatever he must endure for the betterment of Cybertron, he shall have this to look forward to.
The Seeker is left to his rest, through which his sensors can properly recalibrate, adjusting to his unique warframe without strain that would prolong his pain.