[ti]Ep 3.5[/ti]Course Change [Sparkplug/Megatron]

[Sparkplug]

Episode Three point five | Week Two | Day One
Abandoned Energon Mine, Urals, Russia

Thudding music rang through the empty mine, bass-heavy beats echoing through deserted galleries and down dead-end passages to thrum against blunt, worked-out rock faces. Further up, the branching passages converging towards the central access tunnel, and more treble elements crept in, triangulating the source: a wide chamber, off the side of the main hub cavern, filled with light and sound.

Scavenged monitors were everywhere, quite a lot of them of distinctly inferior human manufacture and those that were decently Cybertronian had marks of water-damage on their casings, repaired salvage from the sunken dreadnaught. Work benches, tools, racks and machines, a forest of engineering detritus that was both messy in its layout, yet neatly precise in its detail, with rows of components in neatly labelled drawers and tools racked in hanging multitudes. The word 'SparkLabs' glowed high up on one wall, picked out in white string lights that had once decorated a small town square's celebration tree. At the furthest end, a double row of Maersk shipping containers full of rocks shielded the jury-rigged weapon testing range.

Two complicated, semi-reclining chairs denoted the workshop's usual occupants; one fit for Sparkplug's smaller frame, with additional support for her elongated left arm, and another, larger chair shaped to support her partner, Vega. All in all, it was a controlled, productive chaos, bursting with personality; about as far from Shockwave's cold, clinical laboratories as could possibly be. The architect of it all stood at one end, working busily as she welded together a new batch of floatation and mobility gear. Here, at the centre of her nest, the words were clear now; not English, but some other native language that contrived to sound constantly angry.

"Feuer Frei!" Sparkplug sang as the brilliant blue spark of her welding torch cast stark shadows across the room. The tool was one of many built into her left arm, her hand blurring back and forth between cutting saw, angle grinder and welder. Stacked around her were several completed mobility frames, made to fit onto standard-design vehicon bodies to allow them to operate underwater effectively. Floatation tanks, variable density ballast, pumping systems... the frame she was working on in that moment had an oversized grappling hand to fit over the top of the mech's own, to enhance their ability to move heavy debris.

All in all, it wasn't the kind of work that resulted in beautiful, blossoming explosions or excitingly dynamic beams of laser-focused death, but she was still finding enjoyment in the sheer use of her hands. Each frame she built was a little different from the last as improvements and optional mounting tools occurred to her on the fly. Upon the screens above the bench, several designs glowed a steady green, and even as she worked, her thoughts were on the next to be constructed.

If she fit clamp frames over their wheels, up on the shoulders, the trooper could use their own engines to power twin centrifugal pumps that could shift a lot of water with no additional power source. Maybe even a full pumping frame, adding mounts for the calf wheels as well...

Busy, productive, her welding torch crackling away as she sang, Sparkplug was quite possibly the happiest Decepticon on the planet.

[Megatron]

Their remote laboratory half the world over—once, the site of what could be considered the greatest feat of Decepticon engineering in modern history—now, refocused in a different direction. It was a decision not made lightly, but one that was ultimately necessary for the Decepticon cause in the long term. They could worry about weapons of mass destruction once they were safely in the air again.

For now, however, Megatron arrived to make plain the new order of things, should any doubts linger, and to saddle his resident scientist with newfound responsibilities—personally. Though today's matters were not as urgent as the work to follow, they did nonetheless come with a certain amount of haste.

At the moment of his arrival, a scintillating GroundBridge tore into existence at the back of a large foyer, feeding into a myriad of twisting tunnels and amenities that have long since lost their original purpose. As the Decepticon Warlord himself stepped out of the spatial rift, his feet landed on a painted floor, surrounded by rough stones, yellow and black colors serving as the only means by which to distinguish the GroundBridge exit from its surroundings.

With a few heavy steps forward, Megatron entered the terminus proper. It was a hollow space, once the hub of a Decepticon mining operation, now only an exit shared by many rooms surrounding an empty cluster of guide-rails for absent carts. This was the fate of all their mines on this planet—abandoned or repurposed—and a dangerous reminder of the scarcity they would have to face when the last of them would run dry.

A concern for another time, perhaps.

As Megatron continued inwards, he occupied his mind with the thoughts of Sparkplug. Her file was an interesting one. Many of their current endeavors as well as their future ones would hinge on her continued service, though certain elements of her past concerned him to an extent. She'd earned her keep, of course, but having been gone for so long, he knew that certain Decepticons could foster rebellious streaks, get the wrong idea of where they stood in the grand scheme of things.

If she needed a reminder, she would get one. But then...

"Feuer Frei!"

A melody loud enough to hear, coming from the destination of his visit. Megatron paused briefly at the alien words. He knew that his soldiers liked to take on local languages as another method of distinguishing themselves from the rest. Some Decepticons were nothing if not the ultimate individuals and they could not satisfy themselves with simply adopting the planet's most dominant languages as the lingua franca. It was not a practice he particularly favored, viewing it as informal and ill-befitting of their superior origin.

Still... He could tolerate it.

And tolerate the music, he would. As he approached the sliding door of Sparkplug's research space, wide open and certainly prepared for his visit, he would first take note of the equipment strung about. He remained quiet, letting the scientist do her work for the time being, and instead inspected her progress.

Flotation tanks, ballasts, frames, and tools.

Suddenly, his doubts were dispelled. He could see that good progress was being made on Sparkplug's new primary directive. Still... He would much rather see the scientist present her new equipment directly. To that end, Megatron looped his arms behind his back and cleared his throat: "Am I interrupting your work?" He asked in a rough voice, though with a tone that suggested humor and irony rather than the aggressive, sarcastic jab it could have easily been mistaken for.

[Sparkplug]

Under most circumstances, Sparkplug would have heard the roar of space-time twisting apart out in the main cavern, even with the deadening weight of rock in the way. Under most circumstances, however, Sparkplug wouldn't have been noisily singing along to a loud, loud song, underscored by the screech of her built-in circular saw biting through sheet metal. And so, as the sparks flew and her hand reconfigured into a welding torch once more, she was blissfully unaware that she was no longer alone. Her tendency to focus on a single thing and lose all situational awareness had always made her a bad candidate for a soldier.

And then, behind her, a rumbling growl that was beyond mistake, beyond any possible misidentification. Sparkplug squeaked, a sound mercifully covered by the sharp whine as her saw slid to the side with a fresh spray of sparks.

The Warlord. The threshing machine that had chewed up dozens of planets and spat out their ruined husks. The atrocity vending-machine. Unicron Lite. Battle scarred, indestructible, malevolence and metal united in one living weapon.

Glitch-ridden slag-eating scraplets up Primus's vast afthole!

Barely keeping her expansive library of cursing from actually hitting her vocoder, Sparkplug spun around, then spun back, her lengthy left arm extending to smack a control. The thundering drumbeat snapped to dead silence, textured by the low hum of compact computing machinery, and she turned around again, properly this time.

Straightening to a formal pose, she said quickly, "Research Officer Sparkplug." Wait, craplets. He'd asked a question. "What can I do for you, sir?"

The mysterious magnetism his personality exuded for so many was lost on Sparkplug. She didn't like the Warlord, and accorded him the wary respect due to a dangerous machine that might explode if handled wrongly. She didn't believe in the Decepticon cause. But oh, what she did believe in was the destruction of the genocidal Prime, and she'd do anything to ensure his destruction before the inevitable day when the last Cybertronian spark guttered out.

That meant giving her talents, her ideas, her self to the Decepticons. And she had. Whatever it took. The monstrous mech before her was her best hope of watching those cyan optics fade out, and for that reason alone, she'd serve however he saw fit.

[Megatron]

Megatron stood still in the doorway a good while longer, waiting for the very moment Sparkplug would finally address him. Then, and only then, he'd usher himself into the room proper and approach up-close the handiwork he had so far only admired from a distance. A few heavy, deliberate footsteps carried him to one of the assemblies carrying a flotation device. Well-crafted. Sturdy. Limited by necessity but through no fault of its maker. Nearly prepared for the monumental effort ahead of them.

He admired the art but his attention towards the artist herself, however, somewhat wavered in the process. He was not exactly distracted, no, but it was as if though his mind was elsewhere, in a future or a past far too distant to fathom in the moment, until he spoke again...

"By the look of your workplace, nothing that has not already begun," he answered her question in deep, rumbling tones, seemingly undisturbed and unbothered by her inability to properly connect with his own. Emotionally, he was a monolith. Hard to read, difficult to decipher. She would only get out of him what she read into him. At least, unlike solid stone, he was more conversational...

"I see you have taken well to your new duties."

A compliment? Hardly. More of an accurate evaluation of the site's current condition. Flattering though it may have sounded, it was almost certainly just Megatron taking stock of the dedication his scientists were putting into their work—perhaps out of concern that the massive rescheduling due to a shift in priorities would negatively impact morale. He wouldn't let on which was which, though, and let Sparkplug see in his words whatever she'd like—as she already did in him.

Turning around at once, his optics finally locked with her own.

[Sparkplug]

Oh, slag on a scraplet sandwich, that stare was intimidating. A hellish crimson glow, like a smelting furnace staring out through a faceplate that was a mere mask over its all-consuming nature. With that said, this was no time to wax poetical about things when the Warlord was right there, his attention fully on her.

At least talking about her work was a panacea for her nerves, as it always was. "I'd done as much as I could with the parts recovered," she replied, with a tilt of her helm in the general direction of the former dormitory below where the chunks of the incomplete superweapon now lay. "It's good to have work to do. Besides, I've been thinking about how to raise the Nemesis for a while. Way too important to leave where it is."

She had her private reservations about the idea to dump the entire thing through a huge space bridge onto dry land; in her experience, it was better to work on something incrementally than try to do some grand, flashy move that'd never been tried before with hilariously catastrophic consequences should any of a dozen things go wrong. Still, she wasn't in charge, and didn't want to be. She'd made her available options known, and then it was time to buckle down and work.

"We can repurpose the cargo airlocks," she added after a moment. "Lots of heavy pumping gear. Just have to get air into them – holding a foot-wide bridge open would do, conserve energy – and set them to evacuate the lock. Pumps dump the air into the Nemesis interior, air keeps coming, Nemesis is flushed by pressurised air. Just need to patch the hull holes as the air hits them and they bubble. So-" She gestured mutely at the underwater navigation frames she was building.

It was definitely her preferred option; repressurising the hull slowly, repairing the cracks as the airflow betrayed them, and bit by bit, restoring buoyancy until the entire vessel floated to the surface where system repairs and engine tests could be performed. However, she wasn't foolish enough to assume her way was the only way. "-regardless of the approach, we'll need underwater workers. Vehicons are best for it. Standardised chassis size."

The more mecha the same gear could fit, the more efficient it was, and the easier it'd be to maintain. There were distinct chunks of human technology in some of the frames – when underwater propulsion systems could be bought wholesale with hacked funds, why make them from scratch? Sparkplug cocked her helm, subsiding a bit, still warily unsure what level of trouble the Warlord's personal attention denoted.

[Megatron]

The Warlord let his scientist express herself fully, not once interrupting her explanations. It wasn't until she finished her piece that he would respond, still intently focused on her, his attention not diverting once, not even when she gestured to the equipment, as if she were his sole focus, then and now. But when his response came, it was in the form of a revelation...

"In that case, you may also wish to account for a lack of gravity."

He couldn't presume to know that Sparkplug was entirely aware of every minute detail regarding the recovery project, but he expected the scientist working on their equipment to be at least partially aware of the broad strokes—the ones affecting her work at any rate. Perhaps it concerned him that not once has she mentioned gravity clamps, anchors, or zero-G modifications to the water pumps.

From where he stood, it almost seemed as if Sparkplug was not aware that the majority of their efforts would be performed in Earth's stable orbit, rather than a stationary position on the planet's surface, where they risked discovery, open attacks, and further exposure to the elements.

Whether she was aware of this key point or not, it weighed heavy on his shoulders—as it no doubt would hers, were she fully appraised of the station. In short, the recovery would proceed in outer space. No atmosphere, free-floating. Only the Nemesis and innumerable gallons of saltwater.

[Sparkplug]

Sparkplug blinked. It was a snap of spiral shutters, like those of an old fashioned camera, briefly obscuring her vibrant green optics. She couldn't help herself; she stared, her mouth opening slightly as she tried to marshal the legion of objections while simultaneously having to slam down roadblocks in front of every word before she blurted something insulting to the warlord.

Are you Unicron-shafting insane?, for instance, would be very apt but also very, very immediately fatal.

She vented a little breath, aware on some level that the intensity of her reaction would have been plain as day. But to open a portal from under the sea to orbit? How in the name of rustworm-ridden synaptic glitches had this madness ever gotten this far?

Gathering herself, Sparkplug spoke with a care and precision quite alien to her, her words forced into the stiff straightjacket of self-preservation. "I had assumed that, if the Nemesis were salvaged from the sea by portal, it would be onto land. That is why I believe floating it to be safer, and less likely to be discovered; there is much more sea than land surface, and much less travelled outside of known routes."

She opened her mouth, gesturing mutely, then again discarded a whole slew of words that would get her blasted into plasma-scorched paperweights and went on, "If the Nemesis is flooded when transported to space, it will very rapidly freeze. Frozen water expands. It'll tear apart every system inside the vessel, rip wires from their housings, buckle fittings, misalign couplings... the bubble of sea water around it will freeze solid, and the ship is designed to hold pressure in, not withstand it from outside. In an hour, you'll have a comet with a heap of expensive scrap buckled to pieces inside it. I just – we can't do that, sir. My Lord."

[Megatron]

Sparkplug's measured attitude went unregistered. To restrain oneself from espousing a merry collection of expletives in the face of Lord Megatron, a famously uncharitable individual, constituted the very basics of self-preservation for every Decepticon—and few were they who could afford to do so or live to tell about it. That said, even on her best behavior, she did not seemingly escape his ire. Though Megatron could be a patient individual if he so desired, some matters required a sense of willingness, a pro-active attitude—one that he felt was sorely lacking in her assessment.

She read a catastrophe into matters that could be influenced, madness into strategy. This did not please him. His brow sunk, his optics narrowed. That piercing gaze of his became ten times sharper in an instant. He stepped closer, one heavy footfall, then another.

Then he responded almost immediately.

"Ah, but that is where you are mistaken. We can and we shall."

He emphasized strongly the word "shall" as if to suggest that despite Sparkplug's reservations, her visions of a catastrophic failure, he would not be deterred. Surely, she must have known that Megatron would desire more from her than a handful of pumps and some Vehicon upgrades. Surely, she must have known that great and terrible things would be asked of her.

Every Decepticon must have known.

Maybe he was projecting onto her the expectations he would have of Shockwave, were he the one employed in the recovery. But he wasn't. Sparkplug was. And if fear kept her from action, then he would have to give her a reason to think about something other than a frightful comet. He gestured in her direction, a broad swing of his hand that brought to attention her entire form, and continued to speak.

"But perhaps... You have forgotten your place in this project, so allow me to offer some fresh perspective: You answer to my will. You are not here to question our chosen course. You are not here to second-guess my decisions. You are here to enable them, to make possible the desired outcomes."

To make possible the impossible, if she had to. There was a stringent urgency to his words, a cold and commanding rasp that gradually increased in volume and intensity to make a point of Megatron's presence. He did not seek to intimidate her into submission but one would be hard-pressed not to feel intimidated. His word was law, after all. A thundering law, more forceful than any earthly music. And with nary a pause, the law grew more demanding.

"I will not leave The Nemesis exposed to hostile interference simply because it would ease your burden."

It was clear now where they diverged. It was not in something as trivial as the physics of water. It was in their attitude towards them. Where Sparkplug saw an immutable factor, Megatron saw an obstacle to overcome. In the spirit of this, he would offer the scientist a few calmer words, ones that sought to encourage rather than to admonish. The Warlord must have been certain by now that he conveyed the point sufficiently if he was allowing himself to flatter Sparkplug.

"Surely, an intellect as vast as yours can fashion creative solutions to a problem as trivial as the vibration of molecules."

Steely words bereft of emotion. No. This was no flattery after all. It was an expectation. The Warlord folded his arms behind his back importantly, his imperious visage shifting into an expectant one somewhere along the way. Curiosity beset him as if though there was more to this conversation than the plain realities. He must have been gauging her reaction, measuring it for... something? It was difficult to tell what exactly.

[Sparkplug]

Sparkplug was a creature of many, creatively elaborate curses. It had long ago gone past being a game and become a mere autonomic process, inventive invective flowing into her voice modulator like a smooth river of obscene lava. Yet, when it came to the moment, there were some old favourites that even she fell back on.

Oh, scrap my aft.

The Warlord moved closer, his scarred faceplate furrowing into lines of displeasure, and spoke in tones that were pure, crystallised doom. He did not want to hear about petty, mundane nonsense like physics. The decision came first, and the not-ruining-everything part, that was someone else's responsibility.

In fact, her responsibility.

Hot slag on a tin sandwich.

Pushing aside both her deep, intimidated alarm and her incredulous annoyance at the triviality of 'vibrating molecules', a phrase that described virtually everything that wasn't monatomic plasma, she raised a finger in an instinctive plea for a moment to think. Fortunately, there were rules that she'd formulated over aeons of research to fall back on when she was out of ideas.

Rule one: if the problem was impossible, try restating the problem.

Okay. Picture the Nemesis, in space, emerging from a bridge in a bubble of sea water. What happens next? The outer layers of the water would instantly boil due to the lack of pressure. That would cause the temperature of the rest of the water to plummet, the bubble of water freezing from the outside inwards, generating terrible pressures and asymmetric loads. It would happen almost immediately; that was the power of evaporative cooling in vacuum.

Put that aside for a moment. What did she need, in order to move water? A liquid-compatible temperature, at least partial atmospheric pressure, and gravity. Without gravity, water bobbed around aimlessly, impossible to chase down. Without partial pressure, water couldn't be pumped with most forms of pump. Sidenote: centrifugal pumping could do something in zero pressure. If the temperature was too low, it'd crystallise, and destroy everything.

In other words, the absolute zero, weightless absence of pressure in orbit was literally the worst possible location to do the work. Fine; she already knew that. Solutions. What did she know about the Sol system?

Put it near the sun to keep the water at a useable temperature? No. The sunward side would melt, the shadowed side would freeze, the rapid cycles of expansion and melting would do even more damage, and to stop that, she'd have to spin the ship fast enough to make working on it impossible. No good. Venus had an altitude band with workable temperature, pressure and gravity, but the Nemesis couldn't support itself in atmosphere without major repair, and a failure of the AG units would send it crashing down to crumple and melt below. No good. Mercury had a twilight band where it might be briefly workable, but the slow rise of the sun would sweep over soon enough, raising temperatures fit to melt lead. No good.

Gas giants were out; same reasoning as Venus. Besides, the ranges involved were escalating out of control. Smaller jumps, more immediate places to work: Moon, Mars. Mars had an average surface temperature of about -50C, atmospheric pressure and low gravity. Heating units could keep the interior of the Nemesis warm enough not to freeze, and the external water would simply fall away as soon as the bridge closed, draining into the sand. Second best option to working on Earth's surface. The Moon came in third; barely enough gravity to drag the water from the hull, absolute zero and no pressure again. Consider a force shield. Erect over the Nemesis once transferred, open bridge to ground and let atmospheric pressure equalise. Issues; maintenance of field, heating elements required. Of course, the more water that was disposed of, the lighter the load on the necessary heating elements.

Return to the original proposition: Earth orbit. Enclosing the bubble of water with a force shield would stop evaporative cooling once it had raised the shield bubble pressure. Slows the cooling of seawater drastically; radiative cooling is slower. Maybe slow enough to keep up with, with heating elements. Still difficult to siphon water from the hull in zero gravity, though, if not impossible.

Stop. The problem was no longer impossible, it was difficult. That made it time for the second rule.

Rule two: if a problem has a complicated solution, it likely has a much simpler solution.

Restate the problem. She needed to get rid of a lot of water. But how fast? Just how long would it take to get rid of all the water clinging to the hull and flooding the interior? Consider them as separate problems; the exterior water was utterly exposed, while the interior water was at least somewhat shielded by the ship's bulk. Less prone to explosive evaporative cooling.

Just how fast would she have to be to get rid of the water bubble? Surface tension would tend to pull it into chunks when disrupted, and she didn't have to get rid of all the external water, just enough so it didn't crush hull plates. Once the Nemesis was refitted, it'd reenter atmosphere, after all. A pressure wave, then, to push it outwards. Compressed air, distributed emitters over the hull.

That left the interior water. Getting rid of it on Earth really was easier, but... perhaps she could press her case.

Yes. Good enough.

Sparkplug's brows had drawn together as she thought, her expressive field flickering with hints of the torrent of calculation, estimation, mental prototyping and discarding she was doing. Then, after a couple of moments, her optics focused clearly on Megatron once more.

She had to admit, she'd been wrong to dismiss the prospect out of hand. It was bloody annoying and difficult, but given the plan as an immutable fact, new paths could be – had to be - devised. Nothing like the prospect of being crushed like an empty drinks can to concentrate the mind on alternatives. "You're right. There are ways around the inherent issues. Apologies, my Lord. Let the surprise get to me." She paused. "It's more time-efficient to move water in gravity." She nearly went on to list the various factors and why, but again, her barely-used self-preservation circuits screamed and cut the feed short.

"I propose repressurising as much of the ship as possible where it lies. I'll lay hoses over the hull, perforated. When the Nemesis becomes buoyant, we can use the portal to bring to orbit, then flood the hoses with compressed air to blast the exterior water bubble free before it crystallises. The timing will be, uh, tight. I'll want to be onboard to oversee it." It would likely be a quite beautiful sight, a huge bubble of seawater bursting outwards like a flower, freezing in seconds into a blossoming hail of ice. "I'll need to construct a force bubble generator. Once the exterior water is shed, raise the bubble, pressurise it via bridge. From there, getting rid of the remaining water should be fast and easy."

Obviously, the vehicon frames would need to be modified with RCS thrusters for zero-gee... and once they were working on draining the last compartments, the first necessity would be getting artificial gravity back online. From there, pump the water out into the artificial atmosphere bubble, then shut it off when done to shed the last ice safely. She could envisage it now, step by step, dumping as much water as possible in each phase. The artificial pressure bubble would do a lot to reduce evaporative cooling of what was left, and even reduce some of the radiative. Keep the air flowing, draining heat from the Earth's atmosphere...

"It can work. It will work," she went on, with increasing confidence as the fine details assembled in her mind. Field generator was hard, but possible. Hoses were trivial, just a matter of time and patience. Getting it right would require a whole choreography, with several precision uses of the bridge... she'd have to coordinate with Soundwave. But as always, the master of the Decepticons got what he wanted.

[Megatron]

"And here I was... Beginning to fear the limits of your creativity," Megatron exclaimed in a deep hackle after Sparkplug's rundown. He seemed to have been an attentive listener all throughout her explanations, not once breaking away from the scientist. But now? His steely focus disappeared under biting comedy.

"I'm pleased to know that you could devise a quick solution to our little problem, but in the future, you would do well to remember that we are Decepticons."

He gave her a knowing look, but maintained his lighter attitude now that Sparkplug found her footing in the new order of things. Was he hinting at her past or merely reminding her of who they were in the grand scheme of things? It was impossible to tell.

"When there is a mountain in our way, we turn it to rubble. When there is a world in our way, we raze it to ash."

Megatron's voice soared before he paused importantly, taking a step closer, briefly waving a servo in the scientist's direction, almost as if though he were beckoning Sparkplug forward—or attempting to raise her up. It was crowd-work for one, an ancient habit. Not even a full second later, he continued.

"And when there is a black hole in our way? We bend the laws of spacetime to our will."

The outstretched servo swung down and Megatron formed of its hand a fist, then lowered it entirely.

"Do you understand?"

There was a sudden grimness to his tone as if though he flipped a switch somewhere in the midst of that brief silence. His optics remained fixed upon Sparkplug, steady, curiously awaiting a response... But also searching for something else.

[Sparkplug]

Ah, mockery. It'd been a long time since she'd had to sit before a research review board, back when the Antilla 4 base had been properly staffed and the various mecha involved hadn't drifted off or devolved into obsessing over their own private projects. In some strange way, the huge mech's cutting flash of mocking humour reminded her of that.

Dumping megatonnes of sea water into orbit remained, in her professional estimation, a stupid, dangerously risky idea. She'd found a way to make it potentially not an instant, irreparable failure, but she still didn't welcome the prospect of making it work. Or the personal consequences if she failed, if any of it failed. The feeling of personal responsibility for a collective endeavour settled across her shoulders like an old, familiar coat.

And then... oration. There was an element of the showman, the ringmaster, to any great cult leader. That ran strong in Megatron, exceeded only by his capacity for violence and his ability to survive. It'd always been something she distrusted. Long, long years ago, she'd been habitually cheerful enough to take political posturing lightly, to make fun of it. Later, as the war had ground down her spirits, she'd been numb to it. And then... then she'd perked back up again. Because nothing mattered, did it?

The Warlord's speech was surely for an audience of one. But not her. Himself. Sure, it was fun to explode things, but who exactly found stirring inspiration in worlds burned to ash? Something he'd managed quite handily on Cybertron. No assessment, no reason, just blind, furious stubbornness forcing everything – including the universe – to his whims. But only when it came to ruination. Unicron's black aft, it was infuriating.

In that moment, she and her past self were as close to touching as they ever came. Remember that we are Decepticons. Why was she even following this tin-plated horror-

And just like that, the Reason flooded her mind. Her usually-expressive field had been shrunk to chassis minima to avoid giving away frustration or annoyance in the instant-death-review of the Warlord's presence. Now it blossomed, with a sharp, violent crackle of bleakly unbearable, spark-cracking hatred, and the purpose of Megatron's words reassembled themselves into a different shape in her mind.

She spoke, her large optics glowing a coldly luminous green. "I understand, my Lord. That's why I follow you. Because you don't let anything stop you, not ever. Because you can do the impossible and finally kill Him for what He did."

[Megatron]

Impervious to all scrutiny, Megatron loomed, still as a statue, and waited while Sparkplug processed his speech and answered in kind. His expression remained unchanged for a while longer, then it relaxed—back into that steely, unknowable sense of imperious command. She had weathered a trial of sorts, even though she may not have been entirely aware of it.

Then, the Warlord spoke again. He understood perfectly who she meant. Sparkplug need not have said his name out loud.

"Yes," he replied calmly, "We mustn't let anything deter us."

Megatron paused, then took a step back, leaving Sparkplug some room to breathe.

"Mark my words. I will not rest until Optimus Prime pays for betraying our kind and neither must you. Find your purpose in my bidding, and I promise that one day, you shall bear witness to his termination."

Amidst a crowd of Decepticons, his loyal host—cheering on the final moments of a legend—in Kaon, surrounded by old warriors and a new generation. A Decepticon Cybertron, resurrected at any cost. He could almost see it, and he hoped that the scientist's vision was as boundless as his—that it would keep her chained to the cause another day. Keep her working on his cruel and twisted implements.

Finally, the old tyrant turned with a mighty motion, facing the door.

"For the time being... I shall not keep you from your labors."

There was much to be done. They both knew as much. He would leave soon, should she give him no reason to remain.

[Sparkplug]

The promise hung burning in the air. Sparkplug's optics half-shuttered, transported by the great war machine's words to a vision of the future. The damned traitor that killed their race, chained in crackling violet light. Megatron, his plating scarred and pitted from the ferocity of battle, strutting across the centre of a vast arena built for this one purpose, this one moment. The speech; the inevitable speech, broadcast to every star.

She was there, among the front row. Filled with a thrilling, heady height of her passionate hatred, her fuel pump whirring loudly in her audials as she howled His great sin at Him. She dared to dream He glanced at her, cyan optics meeting poisoned green, before the cleansing wrath of the Warlord's cannon wiped Him from existence.

That moment. It was all that mattered. All she lived for. Hope was dead! Punishment was all that remained, and it needed to be levied before the end.

Dimly, she was aware that past that moment, the race would dwindle and die. Maybe the Warlord would burn a few more planets before the end; who cared? Better to go with a bang than this long, slow grinding to dust.

Her spark ached for it.

Sparkplug's green optics opened fully, their wide irises rotating as she focused on Megatron's face. The great destroyer. The ultimate means to an end, to the end. She spoke more softly, with a terrible sincerity that bled from the obsession rammed like a spike through the core of who she once was.

"Whatever I can do, whatever I can give to bring that day closer, whatever it is, command it of me. I'll find a way."

[Megatron]

At the precipice—just at the cusp of leaving—Megatron would stop a final time, turning at his hip to regard the scientist with his piercing gaze, an over-the-shoulder glance. He marked her words well, finding a permanent place for them in his ancient mind. He would remember her like this and hold her to these words. It need not have been said, his intense gaze doing all the talking necessary.

And yet, speak he would. Regarding her not as a lesser minion, not with dismissal, but as the mind she'd become in Decepticon care.

"Soon, I will return to bestow upon you a new task. For now, however, your every innovation brings us closer to restoring the Nemesis, and thus the ultimate end."

He had longed for that day like no other, and though Sparkplug's desires were facsimile in part, they were not so in full, and something in her words rekindled the mote of ire burning in the steely depths of his own Spark. In that moment, he imagined the future as tangibly as any present.

But more work remained to be done. Stepping past the threshold, Megatron left to the sound of his heavy footsteps. Their thrum echoed down the mine until they'd faded into a scintillating nothing, the whirl of a Space Bridge gateway.

Sparkplug would be left alone to chart this new course, for now.

FIN.