Chapter Text
Space.
This empty vacuum seemed quieter than usual. Lonely even. An endless sea of dark void. Devoid of life, sound, and light, save for the impossibly distant twinkle of faraway stars spanning in every direction.
A single ship slipped across the endlessly dark cosmos, the hum of its exhausts silent in the vast emptiness. It’s scarred, silver frame lay marred with copper-colored, twisted growths that gave this imposing craft an even greater air of menace.
Megatron.
Far from Cybertron. Far from the war. Far from all he knew.
Any Decepticon insignia previously engraved on his armor was rusted over by gnarled, copper growths that seemed to burst out of every inch of his battle-worn chassis. A constant reminder of hard lessons learned much too late to be without consequence, of sins of the past that could never truly be erased. Once a warlord, as indomitable as he was cruel, now little more than a wandering exile. The passage of time lost meaning to this ancient titan as he drifted across the vast depths of space.
It felt oddly deserving to the old mech, after the atrocities he committed to so many in the name of revolution. To Earth. To his own kin. To worlds beyond.
Despised.
Hated.
Feared.
Once, it hadn’t bothered him, so fueled by hate and anger from the injustice of the old caste system that it felt right to use so barbaric a method. Justified. Now though… it felt suffocating. Some part of his hardened spark felt disgusted, even ashamed of himself. He’d started this war, this… pointless, ridiculous war… and for what? Because of jealousy? Pride? Both..?
He hardly knew anymore.
Anywhere he went where he’d been known, he was driven off, chased away like some unwanted pest rather than the terrifying butcher he’d been. He’d long since lost the spark to be offended. How could he condemn those many worlds and peoples for such feelings? They were right after all. After all the grief and pain he’d caused in pursuit of his own selfish ends, they held every right to scorn him.
Preferable to wander aimlessly than to go offline.
It was… better this way.
As Megatron flew into the nearby star system on the furthest fringes of Decepticon-charted space, his thoughts were broken by the sound of his sensors pinging onto a familiar energy source coming from the third planet. Energon—weak, diffuse, but present. Enough to survive on.
Might as well stop to refuel.
Megatron shifted his course for the third planet. The closer he got to the planet, though, the more it seemed to be oddly lacking of any space traffic. The most excitement remained limited to the shattered moon and the skeleton of a derelict old space station orbiting the quiet world. Slightly ominous, but he’d seen worse before.
This world wouldn’t be any new trouble.
The roar of Megatron’s decent tore through the sky, enough to send native fauna scattering at his thunderous entrance. The massive streak of silver sliced through the stratosphere, embers that caught on the gnarled growths of his chassis finally cooling. He angled his decent, stabilizers compensating for the pull of this world’s gravity.
With a final, controlled burst of thrust to pull back, his gargantuan alt-mode settled down in a more secluded clearing of the planet’s surface, the ground groaning under his weight. Transforming was a methodical puzzle of shifting plates and mechanics, some of which ground together due to his ever-growing age. At last, the towering form of Megatron stood on the surface of this world, his scoured silver armor glinting under the moonlight.
Red optics scanned the landscape. Pristine waterfalls glittered like liquid crystal, pooling into a long, winding river that seemed to stretch on forever. Emerald grass formed strange checkered patterns of green as far as the optic could see, matching the umber and caramel soil that seemed almost too perfect to be natural. Large palm trees, ringed with geometric flowers, swayed in the gentle winds.
His usual rigid posture loosened.
Out here there were no cities. No roads. No chatter of intelligent life. Only the rustling of leaves and the whisper of grass bowing to the breeze.
The soft earth underneath his clawed pedes gave a bit as he shifted. Vents hidden under his thick armor hissed, taking a small moment to just… appreciate a silence he’d never before experienced. Once acclimated to his surroundings, loam parted beneath his tread as he willed himself forward, ground trembling as massive footprints lay in his wake. The trees shuddered with each footfall, tiny organic creatures scattering every which way.
The further he followed the trail of Energon on his long range scans, the more the trees rose to more impressive heights, soft light filtering through in broken rays that splashed against his battle-worn armor plating. The sounds of night-life fell silent at his passing, the local fauna fearful of drawing any attention from the steel titan.
He was so entranced by the quiet that he had almost forgotten what he’d come here for. And it didn’t take him long to find what he originally came for.
Near a towering rock formation in the shape of a massive loop, the signal the warlord tracked pulsed from far beneath the grass—Energon.
Megatron slowed, getting down on one knee as metal creaked, steel talons grazing the greenery of the earth. A buried vein. Old, crystallized— one of many worlds to have been seeded with Energon deposits in an age long past. He began to dig a deep trench, uprooting the compact soil little by little.
Halfway through, though, ancient instincts flared. Servos tensed, shoulders stiffening, denta clenching. A feeling of being watched. He shifted, optics searching for any signs of movement or life for several moments, only to be met with nothing.
With a grunt, he turned back to his work. It took longer than the mech anticipated, but at last— success; rewarded with a pocket of crystallized Cybertronian lifeblood gleaming that striking vivid blue. It wasn’t the size of the veins he once would have his underlings mine, still barely enough to even satisfy a bot his size. Better than nothing.
Before he could harvest his findings, his hydraulics went rigid. The feeling of something— someone— studying him had returned. As he stood to his pedes, there was a near imperceptible, high-frequency whine as something small and sharp shot at him from behind, imbedding itself into his back strut.
Then everything exploded.
It happened so fast that his processor couldn’t fully register the sting of what hit him before the world erupted into a chaotic kaleidoscope of blinding static from an electromagnetic pulse. His chassis spasmed as limbs locked, barely able to catch himself before falling onto his faceplate. It took a lot to even keep upright, much less to fight back stasis lock. It was only once he actually started to force himself to his pedes through the shock that two more EMP emitters found their mark on exposed circuitry, putting a halt on any form of retaliation.
He tried to move, to fight back, but the whole of his body went unresponsive. His massive frame slowly collapsed, the ground shaking violently as he hit the earth.
He moaned, stiff and struggling to regain some sense of cohesion as his systems began pulling towards stasis lock, without success. Optics flickered erratically as the searing jolt ripped through his neural net and overrode his motor functions.
From out of the foliage, small mechanical figures approached, their glowing faces locked in a perpetual grin. The smaller robots began swarming around him like scraplets, attaching cables and chains across his chassis.
The last thing Megatron’s fading consciousness registered was the stars in the sky, so alien and cold from the ones above his ravaged home— and the malevolent grin plastered onto a rotund man’s silhouette, inches from the mech’s helm, as though mocking Megatron’s inability to fight.
Finally, awareness slipped from Megatron’s grasp.