Flashback - “Fall” - Closed
Jan 15, 2012 2:45:55 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2012 2:45:55 GMT -5
At some point earlier that night Sideswipe had tackled his brother through a wall. It wasn’t a very thick wall or anything, but he’d tackled Sunny through it kind of without warning and it was the principle of the wall-tackling tactic that was creating the tension. The Twins beat the slag out of eachother all the time, but usually in a manner that did not, you know, cause property damage or scratch Sunny’s finish. So they weren’t talking right now. Sideswipe was drunk as slag because, just to be a spiteful son of a glitch, he’d ditched the scene of their throw down via jet pack and the pain of having done so was still crippling.
The red and black mechanism was sitting, sullen and alone, on an urban overhang, a residential plate drop of the city where you could look down into the sprawl. From where he was sitting, his pedes hanging over the massive, vertigo inducing drop of the world, lights and the faint rush of transports were moving in and out of the dirty smog of the drop-caste levels of city. Passing mechs might have wondered if he was thinking of just sitting forward and tipping into the deadly vastness of gravity.
For Sideswipe such a fall would mean nothing now.
The though just made him down another searing drag of high grade, setting off bursts of hazy pleasure data through his neural net and fogging everything to a less unpleasant fog. Little victories.
Oblivious to the world, he didn't notice the other mech come up behind him.
Megatronus was certain that the young gladiator would have detected his approach long before now if he weren’t already cratered. The rooftop of dark tower that housed thousands was a favoured haunt of his when brooding and, subsequently, drinking heavily. It was the primary reason he had moved into it - overlooking the arena to the West, and far North, the towers of Kaon.
He had been drawn to a different vista tonight, however - the mining sector, obscured by architecture and pollution, but resonating in his spark like a magnetic pole. It was not often that he considered that view, looking back at times and events that had died with D-16. Only annually. Always around this time.
Company was neither anticipated or desired, and he was resolved to tell the young mech where to go and how fast to get there from the moment he locked optics on him. However, the sourly dark field and Sideswipe’s unusually downcast visage - strangely more depressed than angry - stopped him. He came to the ledge slowly, watching that Sideswipe wasn’t contemplating a swandive into the transports below before silently coming to sit next to him. Producing his own cube after glancing to see that the other still had some of the potent liquid left, Megatronus took a long swallow to further numb out his lines. Sideswipe was more than a few cubes ahead of him.
“Where’s your brother?” he asked simply, deciding that it was as good a question as anything to break the silence.
“Pickin’ rubble out his fraggin’ paint job,” said Sideswipe.
He finished off his own cube and lifted it out over the edge of the shelf-face, released it, and watched the glass plunge into the smog. Flickering blue optics swung slowly round to register that the mech seated next to him was, in fact, Megatronus. Part of him, far, far, far away under an ocean of resentment and inebriation, just ex-vented tiredly at being caught frag-faced drunk off his pedes by Kaon’s rebel leader.
“We had a disagreement,” slurred Sides, “regarding my readiness for the ring again. ‘M not ready, he thinks, to fight co-op with him again... so I put him through a bit of a wall ta make a point.” He hummed happily, fondess in his EMF at the memory. Warm fuzzies. “Then I flew away very fast.”
“‘Flew’,” Megatronus echoed, optic ridges rising. He looked over the plating on the mech’s back, noting the new configuration. It appeared to be an add-on rather than an alt-mode overhaul. Expensive, and still a slag-sore recovery, but the change was minimal until the youngster was within touching distance or taking off into flight. “So that’s where you’ve been. What necessitated this modification?”
Sideswipe laughed, low and bitter. “It wasn’t necessary, but it’s installation was,” he muttered, EMF gone dark as a mech’s could go short of having murder on their spark. His servos curled into fists, clenched so tightly the alloy in his palms groaned and gritted. The heat of his hate burned down the haze of his high grade until the world was swimming into clarity again - he blinked hard, as if clearing something from his HUD. “Nevermind,” he said, sitting forward to lean his elbow against his knees, the edge of the shelf rising up the meet him it seemed. “I’ll be ready to fight again soon.”
Megatronus considered the mech a moment longer before shuttering his optics and draining the entirity of the cube, ‘spacing it back away rather than dropping it as Sideswipe had. He produced two more and put one into the mech’s hand, deciding without giving the matter a great deal of thought that he’d much rather be listening to whatever was putting Sideswipe on the ledge than thinking about Nos and the twisted, spark-raw mess surrounding him until he was tanked enough that recharge was inevitable.
Red optics met blue peripherally, and his field flashed with an underscored grunt from his engine. Talk.
“You ever heard of Iacon Scionics?” asked Sideswipe, optics over bright. He didn’t need Megatronus to answer. Everyone had heard of Iacon Scionics. They were the biggest in frame mods, software splicing and hardware reconfiguration - had a virtual monopoly on the business and while their reputation gleamed Tower-side every drop-caste, pre-program, gutter-mech and assembly-bot knew where to go to sell the sanctity of their software for cold hard cash.
“I used ta not get it,” said Sideswipe, rolling the cube between the sliver black tips of his fingers. The glow of his eyes reflected in the highgrade sliding within. “Why Scionics is the best... why they never have viral outbreaks like all the other mod companies.” He huffed, a static and hydraulics whirr hiss. “I get it now though. Considerin’ what they can fraggin’ take outta us to get the results they need for the Tower markets. By the time it hits the econ nets... all the outbreaks have already happened.”
He didn’t really think he had to much elaborate... wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“It’s a... drastic, way to make quick credits,” Megatronus replied carefully, optics narrowing with interest. As an aside he flickered a scan over the mech’s hunched form, confirming the other’s condition for himself. Too soon to be back in the arena if he wanted to walk back out under his own power, he concluded, but the worst of the recovery was over. “What did you need those kinds of funds for?”
“You didn’t hear about what happened to Sunstreaker then.” Sideswipe kept his optics cast down, into the surface of his highgrade, his EMF reflecting nothing. “Good. He’d hate you to hear anything about it, but let’s just say for a while there I was in a position to regret not having some good hard Tower tech funding. I owed some associates in Simfur but I had to dump all our winnings into repairs and maintenance work. Gutted us for everything we had and it wasn’t enough. It was either Scionics or...”
A heat of hatred, disgust, some Molotov of vitriol passed through Sideswipe’s EMF, setting his spark with fine burning lines of electricity. “...well it was Scionics or nothing,” he said, wishing that statement were as true as he’d liked. Wishing there hadn’t been some shivering scared shard of his spark that hadn’t been willing. He shook his head, took a long drink of highgrade. “I got the money. Everything’s fixed. Honestly, it’s worked out really well. Turns out I’m stabilizing just fine. I’ll have full usage.” He mock toasted. “Happy ever after, right?”
“Your pride is going to be the death of you.” The utterance was quiet and far more a sad fact than a criticism. You should have come to me was implicit, but Megatronus knew perfectly well that that had never been an option in Sideswipe’s mind.
“However,” the gladiator went on slowly, breaking the seal on the fresh cube, “with your having managed to avoid that ‘or’ up until now, I’m gratified that you’ve at least found an alternative that will ultimately benefit you.” It was purely the staggering amount of High Grade he’d already consumed that had him add, slip, murmur, “Merge-work strips in ways Scionics doesn’t.”
Sides looked away. A beat of sobering silence passed between them for what seemed like an eternity, the whole and total the misery in Kaon, on every ground-level plate, expressed in that one wordless thump of resentment between two gladiators. Sideswipe’s optics shuttered and he found himself thinking of his cohort, of Sunstreaker, of the worst kind of hardware strip you could endure and the irreparable scarring left in places that no medic could get at. Never. Not really.
“It was fraggin’ rigged,” Sides breathed suddenly, revving, hydraulics groaning with sudden tension. His EMF shivered hot on his plates. “A mech rigged Sunny’s fraggin’ match. He was fighting fragging Coldstrike. He’s been on the Tier One circuit for orns and suddenly they drop him to the Tier Two matches with my brother? It was a money job. Someone wanted Sunny slagged and they paid for that fight.” He gritted his dentals. “And the worst part is I know the mech. I know him and I can’t fraggin’ touch him for any of this...”
Megatronus shifted a little, straightening his right leg and flexing the thick plating running up the outer length of the limb. New welds smoothing out, needing to be flexed from where they always started too tight over the mesh. Soundwave had agreed with him that permitting the inclusion of acid in his last match had been acceptable for the additional fee, securing almost all the munitions he sought for an upcoming ‘demonstration’. The pain hadn’t bothered him - it had been the slagging mess.
“Who set it up?”
“Crashmaster,” snapped Sideswipe, the name tumbling out of him before he could think better of unloading his grudges on someone else. The word jumped out of him, where in the free air laced with his core-deep hate before he could mask precisely how personal it was, how utterly and intimately he hated this mech. “He’s hated us since the get go. He did us a favor under impression we would never be able to pay it off... cept we did. Pissed him off to see us benefitin’ without his having a hand in it, ya know? He’s been tryin’ ta buy us ever since, but my pride just wont let me... ya know, pass up a chance to tell him to cram it.”
Sideswipe shivered. “He almost got us this time. Said he’d front me the money to get Sunny repaired. Said he didn’t even want... Slag, what’s it matter? He was gonna lie and hold that over us forever. I couldn't do it. Couldn’t make that decision for Sunstreaker.” He optics closed, his hand fisting again, shaking with resolve. “You don’t sell someone’s freedom, you just don’t.”
Megatronus didn’t notice crushing the cube until the entirety of its contents had escaped out and over his hand, dripping down into the city. There was a faint buzzing sound in his audios, and a sharp tightness through his chassis that was symptomatic of a great hate. He would have stood, though to do what he wasn’t certain, were it not for the arresting realization that solved a question that had persisted since his own unforgettable encounter with that Tower mech.
“You and Sunstreaker are the ‘flashy glitches’ he’s obsessed with?”
Sideswipe’s head jerked up, pale blue optics flashing with surprise and bafflement - not just at the offensiveness of the insult but that manner in which Megatronus quoted it, as though word for word what he’d heard from the source. “What?” he said, startled by the familiarity in the other mech’s tone, by the flare of darkness that terminated coldly through Megatronus’ larger field. He turned to face the other gladiator, EMF rippling with inquiry, a cold note of suspicion. “He doesn’t broadcast that slag. You know that fragger?” Side’s optics narrowed. “He talkin’ about us ta other gladiators?”
Optics narrowed and near-black, though inescapably burning with life, Megatronus twitched his head once in the negative. He fixed his gaze on Sideswipe’s: no avoidance, no shame, just the plain and awful truth, bolstered with High Grade. “No - I saw him vorns ago. The Syndicate sent me.”
Nothing for a moment, and then a rumbled chuckle escaped the older mech, underscored with a kind of madness that came about when remembering a night when your very soul was fragged with, defiled and twisted so that it just hurt and the repairs to be able to be close to anyone again, as was the right of even the lowest caste Cybertronian, were almost as bad. “The entire slagging time, all he talked about was you two. You cannot conceive of what you’ve avoided, Sideswipe, truly.”
“W-wait. What?”
Sideswipe’s highgrade-muzzy processor was having trouble conceiving what the other mech had just said, the fact they were connected by degrees that he hadn’t ever wanted to think or know about really. Crashmaster was a sick son of a glitch. Everyone said so. A spoiled, dangerous, murderous bastard who had a thing for owning the unwilling; non-consent made his charge and that wasn’t a secret but Sideswipe couldn’t... conceptualize Megatronus... And it occurred to him what might have happened if he - desperate, needing Sunny, back to a wall - had said ‘yes’. His tank turned over. His EMF flared with sick dread - because if Crashmaster had been ‘talking’ about them the whole time, then ‘the whole time’ could not have been anything but horrific.
“Primus on a piston...” he breathed and because Sideswipe’s mouth only got bigger when overcharged, “how bad?”
Now Megatronus’s gaze did flicker down, hazing with memory before he finally, roughly, answered. “It’s not like any other kind of pain. Nothing in the arena ever scarred my sensor-memory. That did.”
Sides felt a cold settle in his tank and curdle there. He looked away again, a numb sense of having dodged a bullet suddenly vivid in his mind - Crashmaster at his door, backing him to the wall, EMF sliding over him like a miasma, the spark-clenching two minutes where everything - absolutely anything - was viable for sacrifice. He could kill Crashmaster, shred him, rip him to bronze and black alloy strips, leave the dead gray pieces of him all over Kaon’s streets. It would be easy. It would be nothing. It wouldn’t even be a work out... but how much truer was that for Megatronus and yet the fragger was permitted everything?
“I broke his arm in four places.” Sideswipe blinked. He’d intended to say ‘I’m sorry’ or something decent bots say. He shrugged. “I guess that’s not any consolation.” Sides looked out over the dirty cloud of the lower city, optics a constant burning blue, focused on some undefined point in the future. “I’d kill that mech,” he said softly. “I’d break him down for the things he thinks he deserves, for thinking he ever fraggin’ deserved any mech, me, my brother, any fraggin’ pre-program, drop-caster, or back-to-the-wall desperate that he ever thought he fraggin’ deserved...”
“You can.” Megatronus uttered the statement quietly, absently, as if a piece had just slid into place in his processor and thrown up an answer. He sat forward, thumb brushing against the underside of his jaw and optics narrowed thoughtfully.
The only reason he hadn’t returned to Crashmaster and made the sadistic mech beg for the termination of his life was because of his campaign. Though the rallies and demonstrations were still gathering attention in the streets, the real fight was in the Council chambers, and in the vorns since that unforgettable night Megatronus had made significant legal progress. Changes in the mining conditions, access to equal repair centres - small things that had gathered more and more momentum. He’d been making a tangible difference, and being connected to the murder of a mech so powerfully connected as Crashmaster was would obliterate an untold amount of that. The cause before his pride - it was the only thing that had stopped him, and until Sideswipe had dredged it all vividly to the surface again, he hadn’t realised how deeply he resented that responsibility in this case.
Critically, carefully, his thoughts came together, and he looked back to Sideswipe. “I still can’t, not without jeprodising everything - and he isn’t worth that. But you can.”
Sideswipe was entranced, optics fixed on Megatronus, his EMF feverish off his frame. His expression was unreadable, wary with the intensity of his want for this, but apprehensive because if killing Crashmaster were as simple as walking into the Towers and murdering him, Sunstreaker would have done it. Not even Sideswipe, but Sunstreaker was just the right kind of crazy that if he could do it and get away with it... he’d do it whether Sideswipe told him to or not. But even Sunny’s creative intelligence - dedicated specifically to the dismantling of others - could not solve that.
“What do you mean?” he murmured, electromagnetics spiking intrigue.
A slick, murderous smile slid across Megatronus’s features. “My servos are tied, but I haven’t forgotten. A hired kill wouldn’t have been... enough, but the two of you, the objects of his single-minded obsession, the mechs that were always out of his reach, being the ones to tear him apart one line, one port, one plate at a time... Even vicariously, that would be enough. There would still be substantial risk to both of you, but I can have you in and out. And armed.”
Sides didn’t move for a moment, seemingly paralyzed and it took him a moment to conceive that it might be of happiness. Part of him flinched a bit, recoiling from that part of himself that flared up with glee at murder. Sure, he was nasty in the ring, a killer, a sneering, laughing joker rocketing around, putting lightening through other bot’s brains but that was the ring or the streets when backed to a wall. Assassinating Crashmaster...
Well, the fragger shouldn’t have backed me to that wall, he thought, then replied, aloud. “All you need to do is get us in and, trust me, we can more than handle the rest.” He sat there, vents cycling unsteadily, optics still hazy. “You’re serious. You want us to?”
By way of an answer, the gladiator rose away from the ledge and paced a few steps away, forcing aside the fog of High Grade to think. His tone, distracted and keen, wasn’t entirely directed at the other mech. “I can give you two X18 Scrapmakers, an energon axe and some plasma grenades - Soundwave can program the bolts to give you passage up to the Tower level, and if he provides the check-point scanner frequencies, I’ve an old disrupter I can modify to mask the weapons. Go in discretely, make Crashmaster wish I had gone back, then use the grenades on your way out. I’ll make myself public elsewhere.” A rumbled chuckle. “But close enough to see the explosion.”
Sideswipe was on his pedes instantly, moving with a blur of fluidity that defied, rather, his level of inebriation. “Just tell us when and we’ll make it happen,” said the mech fervently. He grinned, a crooked, vicious grin. “And thanks. Sunny might not put my head through a wall now.”
Megatronus turned his attention back to the young gladiator, optics bright and fierce like they hadn’t been in the recent vorns coming up to tonight. A few vorns to make the arrangements, find the opportune moment, and then all pit would break lose in Crashmaster’s lap.
To Sideswipe, he held up one blunt finger, his field throttling down. “Just one thing, however.”
The smaller mech blinked rapidly, looking curiously up at him. “What?”
“There’s a sculpture on a plinth close to the entrance,” Megatronus replied, optics fading back down to a more normalised output. “Bring it for me.”
Sides tilted his head, faceplates pinching slightly with bemusement. “Oh, okay. Yeah sure.” The young assassin-to-be turned his back to the other mech and grinned over his shoulder at him. “You won’t regret it. Swear to Primus.”
And then he turned and ran at the plate edge and leapt off, whooping, plunging through the smog before, in the belly of the cloud, his thruster ignited blue gold flame and he shot away. The last sight of him was rapidly lost as he jetted out of sight in a blur of red metal and fire.
fin.
The red and black mechanism was sitting, sullen and alone, on an urban overhang, a residential plate drop of the city where you could look down into the sprawl. From where he was sitting, his pedes hanging over the massive, vertigo inducing drop of the world, lights and the faint rush of transports were moving in and out of the dirty smog of the drop-caste levels of city. Passing mechs might have wondered if he was thinking of just sitting forward and tipping into the deadly vastness of gravity.
For Sideswipe such a fall would mean nothing now.
The though just made him down another searing drag of high grade, setting off bursts of hazy pleasure data through his neural net and fogging everything to a less unpleasant fog. Little victories.
Oblivious to the world, he didn't notice the other mech come up behind him.
Megatronus was certain that the young gladiator would have detected his approach long before now if he weren’t already cratered. The rooftop of dark tower that housed thousands was a favoured haunt of his when brooding and, subsequently, drinking heavily. It was the primary reason he had moved into it - overlooking the arena to the West, and far North, the towers of Kaon.
He had been drawn to a different vista tonight, however - the mining sector, obscured by architecture and pollution, but resonating in his spark like a magnetic pole. It was not often that he considered that view, looking back at times and events that had died with D-16. Only annually. Always around this time.
Company was neither anticipated or desired, and he was resolved to tell the young mech where to go and how fast to get there from the moment he locked optics on him. However, the sourly dark field and Sideswipe’s unusually downcast visage - strangely more depressed than angry - stopped him. He came to the ledge slowly, watching that Sideswipe wasn’t contemplating a swandive into the transports below before silently coming to sit next to him. Producing his own cube after glancing to see that the other still had some of the potent liquid left, Megatronus took a long swallow to further numb out his lines. Sideswipe was more than a few cubes ahead of him.
“Where’s your brother?” he asked simply, deciding that it was as good a question as anything to break the silence.
“Pickin’ rubble out his fraggin’ paint job,” said Sideswipe.
He finished off his own cube and lifted it out over the edge of the shelf-face, released it, and watched the glass plunge into the smog. Flickering blue optics swung slowly round to register that the mech seated next to him was, in fact, Megatronus. Part of him, far, far, far away under an ocean of resentment and inebriation, just ex-vented tiredly at being caught frag-faced drunk off his pedes by Kaon’s rebel leader.
“We had a disagreement,” slurred Sides, “regarding my readiness for the ring again. ‘M not ready, he thinks, to fight co-op with him again... so I put him through a bit of a wall ta make a point.” He hummed happily, fondess in his EMF at the memory. Warm fuzzies. “Then I flew away very fast.”
“‘Flew’,” Megatronus echoed, optic ridges rising. He looked over the plating on the mech’s back, noting the new configuration. It appeared to be an add-on rather than an alt-mode overhaul. Expensive, and still a slag-sore recovery, but the change was minimal until the youngster was within touching distance or taking off into flight. “So that’s where you’ve been. What necessitated this modification?”
Sideswipe laughed, low and bitter. “It wasn’t necessary, but it’s installation was,” he muttered, EMF gone dark as a mech’s could go short of having murder on their spark. His servos curled into fists, clenched so tightly the alloy in his palms groaned and gritted. The heat of his hate burned down the haze of his high grade until the world was swimming into clarity again - he blinked hard, as if clearing something from his HUD. “Nevermind,” he said, sitting forward to lean his elbow against his knees, the edge of the shelf rising up the meet him it seemed. “I’ll be ready to fight again soon.”
Megatronus considered the mech a moment longer before shuttering his optics and draining the entirity of the cube, ‘spacing it back away rather than dropping it as Sideswipe had. He produced two more and put one into the mech’s hand, deciding without giving the matter a great deal of thought that he’d much rather be listening to whatever was putting Sideswipe on the ledge than thinking about Nos and the twisted, spark-raw mess surrounding him until he was tanked enough that recharge was inevitable.
Red optics met blue peripherally, and his field flashed with an underscored grunt from his engine. Talk.
“You ever heard of Iacon Scionics?” asked Sideswipe, optics over bright. He didn’t need Megatronus to answer. Everyone had heard of Iacon Scionics. They were the biggest in frame mods, software splicing and hardware reconfiguration - had a virtual monopoly on the business and while their reputation gleamed Tower-side every drop-caste, pre-program, gutter-mech and assembly-bot knew where to go to sell the sanctity of their software for cold hard cash.
“I used ta not get it,” said Sideswipe, rolling the cube between the sliver black tips of his fingers. The glow of his eyes reflected in the highgrade sliding within. “Why Scionics is the best... why they never have viral outbreaks like all the other mod companies.” He huffed, a static and hydraulics whirr hiss. “I get it now though. Considerin’ what they can fraggin’ take outta us to get the results they need for the Tower markets. By the time it hits the econ nets... all the outbreaks have already happened.”
He didn’t really think he had to much elaborate... wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“It’s a... drastic, way to make quick credits,” Megatronus replied carefully, optics narrowing with interest. As an aside he flickered a scan over the mech’s hunched form, confirming the other’s condition for himself. Too soon to be back in the arena if he wanted to walk back out under his own power, he concluded, but the worst of the recovery was over. “What did you need those kinds of funds for?”
“You didn’t hear about what happened to Sunstreaker then.” Sideswipe kept his optics cast down, into the surface of his highgrade, his EMF reflecting nothing. “Good. He’d hate you to hear anything about it, but let’s just say for a while there I was in a position to regret not having some good hard Tower tech funding. I owed some associates in Simfur but I had to dump all our winnings into repairs and maintenance work. Gutted us for everything we had and it wasn’t enough. It was either Scionics or...”
A heat of hatred, disgust, some Molotov of vitriol passed through Sideswipe’s EMF, setting his spark with fine burning lines of electricity. “...well it was Scionics or nothing,” he said, wishing that statement were as true as he’d liked. Wishing there hadn’t been some shivering scared shard of his spark that hadn’t been willing. He shook his head, took a long drink of highgrade. “I got the money. Everything’s fixed. Honestly, it’s worked out really well. Turns out I’m stabilizing just fine. I’ll have full usage.” He mock toasted. “Happy ever after, right?”
“Your pride is going to be the death of you.” The utterance was quiet and far more a sad fact than a criticism. You should have come to me was implicit, but Megatronus knew perfectly well that that had never been an option in Sideswipe’s mind.
“However,” the gladiator went on slowly, breaking the seal on the fresh cube, “with your having managed to avoid that ‘or’ up until now, I’m gratified that you’ve at least found an alternative that will ultimately benefit you.” It was purely the staggering amount of High Grade he’d already consumed that had him add, slip, murmur, “Merge-work strips in ways Scionics doesn’t.”
Sides looked away. A beat of sobering silence passed between them for what seemed like an eternity, the whole and total the misery in Kaon, on every ground-level plate, expressed in that one wordless thump of resentment between two gladiators. Sideswipe’s optics shuttered and he found himself thinking of his cohort, of Sunstreaker, of the worst kind of hardware strip you could endure and the irreparable scarring left in places that no medic could get at. Never. Not really.
“It was fraggin’ rigged,” Sides breathed suddenly, revving, hydraulics groaning with sudden tension. His EMF shivered hot on his plates. “A mech rigged Sunny’s fraggin’ match. He was fighting fragging Coldstrike. He’s been on the Tier One circuit for orns and suddenly they drop him to the Tier Two matches with my brother? It was a money job. Someone wanted Sunny slagged and they paid for that fight.” He gritted his dentals. “And the worst part is I know the mech. I know him and I can’t fraggin’ touch him for any of this...”
Megatronus shifted a little, straightening his right leg and flexing the thick plating running up the outer length of the limb. New welds smoothing out, needing to be flexed from where they always started too tight over the mesh. Soundwave had agreed with him that permitting the inclusion of acid in his last match had been acceptable for the additional fee, securing almost all the munitions he sought for an upcoming ‘demonstration’. The pain hadn’t bothered him - it had been the slagging mess.
“Who set it up?”
“Crashmaster,” snapped Sideswipe, the name tumbling out of him before he could think better of unloading his grudges on someone else. The word jumped out of him, where in the free air laced with his core-deep hate before he could mask precisely how personal it was, how utterly and intimately he hated this mech. “He’s hated us since the get go. He did us a favor under impression we would never be able to pay it off... cept we did. Pissed him off to see us benefitin’ without his having a hand in it, ya know? He’s been tryin’ ta buy us ever since, but my pride just wont let me... ya know, pass up a chance to tell him to cram it.”
Sideswipe shivered. “He almost got us this time. Said he’d front me the money to get Sunny repaired. Said he didn’t even want... Slag, what’s it matter? He was gonna lie and hold that over us forever. I couldn't do it. Couldn’t make that decision for Sunstreaker.” He optics closed, his hand fisting again, shaking with resolve. “You don’t sell someone’s freedom, you just don’t.”
Megatronus didn’t notice crushing the cube until the entirety of its contents had escaped out and over his hand, dripping down into the city. There was a faint buzzing sound in his audios, and a sharp tightness through his chassis that was symptomatic of a great hate. He would have stood, though to do what he wasn’t certain, were it not for the arresting realization that solved a question that had persisted since his own unforgettable encounter with that Tower mech.
“You and Sunstreaker are the ‘flashy glitches’ he’s obsessed with?”
Sideswipe’s head jerked up, pale blue optics flashing with surprise and bafflement - not just at the offensiveness of the insult but that manner in which Megatronus quoted it, as though word for word what he’d heard from the source. “What?” he said, startled by the familiarity in the other mech’s tone, by the flare of darkness that terminated coldly through Megatronus’ larger field. He turned to face the other gladiator, EMF rippling with inquiry, a cold note of suspicion. “He doesn’t broadcast that slag. You know that fragger?” Side’s optics narrowed. “He talkin’ about us ta other gladiators?”
Optics narrowed and near-black, though inescapably burning with life, Megatronus twitched his head once in the negative. He fixed his gaze on Sideswipe’s: no avoidance, no shame, just the plain and awful truth, bolstered with High Grade. “No - I saw him vorns ago. The Syndicate sent me.”
Nothing for a moment, and then a rumbled chuckle escaped the older mech, underscored with a kind of madness that came about when remembering a night when your very soul was fragged with, defiled and twisted so that it just hurt and the repairs to be able to be close to anyone again, as was the right of even the lowest caste Cybertronian, were almost as bad. “The entire slagging time, all he talked about was you two. You cannot conceive of what you’ve avoided, Sideswipe, truly.”
“W-wait. What?”
Sideswipe’s highgrade-muzzy processor was having trouble conceiving what the other mech had just said, the fact they were connected by degrees that he hadn’t ever wanted to think or know about really. Crashmaster was a sick son of a glitch. Everyone said so. A spoiled, dangerous, murderous bastard who had a thing for owning the unwilling; non-consent made his charge and that wasn’t a secret but Sideswipe couldn’t... conceptualize Megatronus... And it occurred to him what might have happened if he - desperate, needing Sunny, back to a wall - had said ‘yes’. His tank turned over. His EMF flared with sick dread - because if Crashmaster had been ‘talking’ about them the whole time, then ‘the whole time’ could not have been anything but horrific.
“Primus on a piston...” he breathed and because Sideswipe’s mouth only got bigger when overcharged, “how bad?”
Now Megatronus’s gaze did flicker down, hazing with memory before he finally, roughly, answered. “It’s not like any other kind of pain. Nothing in the arena ever scarred my sensor-memory. That did.”
Sides felt a cold settle in his tank and curdle there. He looked away again, a numb sense of having dodged a bullet suddenly vivid in his mind - Crashmaster at his door, backing him to the wall, EMF sliding over him like a miasma, the spark-clenching two minutes where everything - absolutely anything - was viable for sacrifice. He could kill Crashmaster, shred him, rip him to bronze and black alloy strips, leave the dead gray pieces of him all over Kaon’s streets. It would be easy. It would be nothing. It wouldn’t even be a work out... but how much truer was that for Megatronus and yet the fragger was permitted everything?
“I broke his arm in four places.” Sideswipe blinked. He’d intended to say ‘I’m sorry’ or something decent bots say. He shrugged. “I guess that’s not any consolation.” Sides looked out over the dirty cloud of the lower city, optics a constant burning blue, focused on some undefined point in the future. “I’d kill that mech,” he said softly. “I’d break him down for the things he thinks he deserves, for thinking he ever fraggin’ deserved any mech, me, my brother, any fraggin’ pre-program, drop-caster, or back-to-the-wall desperate that he ever thought he fraggin’ deserved...”
“You can.” Megatronus uttered the statement quietly, absently, as if a piece had just slid into place in his processor and thrown up an answer. He sat forward, thumb brushing against the underside of his jaw and optics narrowed thoughtfully.
The only reason he hadn’t returned to Crashmaster and made the sadistic mech beg for the termination of his life was because of his campaign. Though the rallies and demonstrations were still gathering attention in the streets, the real fight was in the Council chambers, and in the vorns since that unforgettable night Megatronus had made significant legal progress. Changes in the mining conditions, access to equal repair centres - small things that had gathered more and more momentum. He’d been making a tangible difference, and being connected to the murder of a mech so powerfully connected as Crashmaster was would obliterate an untold amount of that. The cause before his pride - it was the only thing that had stopped him, and until Sideswipe had dredged it all vividly to the surface again, he hadn’t realised how deeply he resented that responsibility in this case.
Critically, carefully, his thoughts came together, and he looked back to Sideswipe. “I still can’t, not without jeprodising everything - and he isn’t worth that. But you can.”
Sideswipe was entranced, optics fixed on Megatronus, his EMF feverish off his frame. His expression was unreadable, wary with the intensity of his want for this, but apprehensive because if killing Crashmaster were as simple as walking into the Towers and murdering him, Sunstreaker would have done it. Not even Sideswipe, but Sunstreaker was just the right kind of crazy that if he could do it and get away with it... he’d do it whether Sideswipe told him to or not. But even Sunny’s creative intelligence - dedicated specifically to the dismantling of others - could not solve that.
“What do you mean?” he murmured, electromagnetics spiking intrigue.
A slick, murderous smile slid across Megatronus’s features. “My servos are tied, but I haven’t forgotten. A hired kill wouldn’t have been... enough, but the two of you, the objects of his single-minded obsession, the mechs that were always out of his reach, being the ones to tear him apart one line, one port, one plate at a time... Even vicariously, that would be enough. There would still be substantial risk to both of you, but I can have you in and out. And armed.”
Sides didn’t move for a moment, seemingly paralyzed and it took him a moment to conceive that it might be of happiness. Part of him flinched a bit, recoiling from that part of himself that flared up with glee at murder. Sure, he was nasty in the ring, a killer, a sneering, laughing joker rocketing around, putting lightening through other bot’s brains but that was the ring or the streets when backed to a wall. Assassinating Crashmaster...
Well, the fragger shouldn’t have backed me to that wall, he thought, then replied, aloud. “All you need to do is get us in and, trust me, we can more than handle the rest.” He sat there, vents cycling unsteadily, optics still hazy. “You’re serious. You want us to?”
By way of an answer, the gladiator rose away from the ledge and paced a few steps away, forcing aside the fog of High Grade to think. His tone, distracted and keen, wasn’t entirely directed at the other mech. “I can give you two X18 Scrapmakers, an energon axe and some plasma grenades - Soundwave can program the bolts to give you passage up to the Tower level, and if he provides the check-point scanner frequencies, I’ve an old disrupter I can modify to mask the weapons. Go in discretely, make Crashmaster wish I had gone back, then use the grenades on your way out. I’ll make myself public elsewhere.” A rumbled chuckle. “But close enough to see the explosion.”
Sideswipe was on his pedes instantly, moving with a blur of fluidity that defied, rather, his level of inebriation. “Just tell us when and we’ll make it happen,” said the mech fervently. He grinned, a crooked, vicious grin. “And thanks. Sunny might not put my head through a wall now.”
Megatronus turned his attention back to the young gladiator, optics bright and fierce like they hadn’t been in the recent vorns coming up to tonight. A few vorns to make the arrangements, find the opportune moment, and then all pit would break lose in Crashmaster’s lap.
To Sideswipe, he held up one blunt finger, his field throttling down. “Just one thing, however.”
The smaller mech blinked rapidly, looking curiously up at him. “What?”
“There’s a sculpture on a plinth close to the entrance,” Megatronus replied, optics fading back down to a more normalised output. “Bring it for me.”
Sides tilted his head, faceplates pinching slightly with bemusement. “Oh, okay. Yeah sure.” The young assassin-to-be turned his back to the other mech and grinned over his shoulder at him. “You won’t regret it. Swear to Primus.”
And then he turned and ran at the plate edge and leapt off, whooping, plunging through the smog before, in the belly of the cloud, his thruster ignited blue gold flame and he shot away. The last sight of him was rapidly lost as he jetted out of sight in a blur of red metal and fire.
fin.