Ep1 - 'Que Sera, Sera' - Closed

[Deleted]

His conversation with Piston Gasket had been surprisingly relaxing, and Megatronus had left the Medbay feeling better than he'd ever done immediately following the kind of surgery that demanded stasis. He'd been tempted to return to the sublevel, to continue exerting his confliction on the thin energon veins at the bottom of the mine until his processor felt clearer. After speaking with Ravage and Gasket, however, to do so seemed more like hiding than the simple means of avoiding stirring up conflict that it had been previously.

Ravage had left him at his request, only watching the large mech make his way along the tunnel neighbouring the one leading to the bar. Megatronus knew the layout of Haven well enough to find the storage room, where cannibalized parts from deconstructed ships and trade deals waited to be utilized in the new DMZ. Parts from Cybertronians, he knew, Cleaver kept locked away in the Medbay under the label of 'reclamation', though he thought he saw a few things from a Cityformer scattered about the cavern.

Pacing amongst old parts, weathered by events he'd lost all knowing of, Megatronus opened a comm. channel that his processor flagged as locked and disused, but his spark felt easy familiarity with. He traced a talon along a thick plait of multicoloured cables that hung in thick loops from a bar installed in the wall.

::I think we ought to speak again, Optimus.::

[Deleted]

::Is that what you think?::

The phrasing wasn’t exactly a question, more like an observation from an onlooker some several techo-meters off and completely uninvolved. The perfectly conversational mien of Optimus Prime’s response hid, of course, the reflexive surge down and up his spinal column when Megatron accessed and commed him on what was, now, a long, long abandoned venue of communication between them. Point of fact, during the outset of the war, Optimus had endured quite a lot of unwanted communiques with the Decepticon warlord on the off chance that some negotiation could be reached between them. It worked a handful of times. All the thousands of other times, Megatron had used their old comm-line for the sole purpose of telling him how and in what way he was going to find and kill him as recompense for whatever tactic the Prime had thwarted of late.

After a while, he’d simply stopped responding. And, no longer getting a rise from his once-brother, Megatron had stopped trying to contact him through it. Optimus recalled Ironhide telling him to delete it. Shut it down. Extract it from his systems like a viral string in his sub-routines but for whatever reason that link had seemed as essential to Optimus as any of Ironhide’s Guardian protocols and precisely as difficult to tear out of himself – like extracting his own nervous system by the roots and pulling. But perhaps that was just stubbornness. Or pride. The point was, Megatron had never eradicated his end of the link either.

Optimus, alone in one of the side-corridors, braced a hand against the cool stone at his right, dermal-sensors transmitting the coolness across his palm. He looked up at the ceiling, blue optics flickering in the semi-dark.

::Several members of my team would advise against my speaking to you at all, much less a second time.::

And yet, said part of him, you haven’t left yet.

::What do you want, Megatronus?::

[Deleted]

The mech on the other end of the channel, who knocked like a square peg against a round whole in the sphere of his spark, sounded grieved and weary. Megatronus had no interest in indulging it, particularly when he was spoken of like some kind of bad influence that was being disapproved of.

It was Optimus who had harried and hounded in the sublevel to his own satisfaction, finally dragging out an event that the gladiator had never disclosed, raw and bleeding. And then just walked away, leaving Megatronus to stew in the turmoiled wake of it.

It felt like betrayal.

::I gave you the satisfaction of your answer,:: he began, not as an indicator that he felt that the other mech now owed him something - but a reminder of that callous exit he'd left on. ::And you know that the Decepticons will come to retrieve me. Have you made up your mind as to what you're going to do about that?::

[Deleted]

::The Decepticon-Autobot ceasefire within the DMZ still holds.:: said Optimus.

His tone remained level and unflappable, utterly unreadable as had become his default in the last twelve hours – an old habit of command, to simply have no readily obvious reaction to the terrible things that happened or he made happen. He Prime knew, as he had known for eons, that his had no appreciable talent for deception and that remained so. The best he could manage was what Jack and Miko called ‘a poker face’, though he had some doubt that he much managed that during the course of the war. It seldom worked on Ironhide or Ratchet and Megatron, for all that they had distanced themselves, tended to fall for none of it either.

::There is no decision to be made or action for me or mine to make on that fact. I am far from assuming that I am capable of persuading you to take my word over that of your acolytes when they come for you, Megatron. So again, what is it you want?”

[Deleted]

::Why did you defend what you claimed to oppose?::

The reply was immediate and hard, Optimus' dismissive response rankling Megatronus further. He stood in the centre of the room, surrounded by the charred and battered debris of his dead world, and saw none of it. Glowered instead at the air holding a vision of Pax's frame, holier-than-thou attitude and all.

::I took down the Towers, and I must have destroyed at least part of the Council. I toppled the ruling caste that was grinding the Low Tiers into so much slag with a gesture and a smile. I won. And then what? You retaliated to avenge them? Fought me when you could have alligned with me to fill the void left behind, and bring about the equality we'd both sought?::

Megatronus vented a disgusted note aloud, the raw feeling behind the sound drenching his glyphs with bile. He paced without thought, his pedes knowing when to stop and turn. He'd spent time in cells far smaller than this. Pacing because the alternative was punching the walls, and that led to bolts, inhibitor chips and 'behaviour managing electrical charges'.

There could have been peace. Once the corruption had been excised, a new order of prosperity, free from conflict and slavery based in utility could have been built. We could have done that. But instead you fought over the casings of those you claimed to revile.::

[Deleted]

“You speak in hypothetically from a place of no authority about events you do not recall to condemn me for the actions I have taken to stop you when our coup against the ruling elite did not place you in the position of power you had intended?”

There was a single beat, the frequencies through their fraternal link fritzed with something that could have been betrayal, throttled back to a phantom on the wavelengths. Optimus examined, for a moment, the construction and arrangement of his emotions for that moment and found that his calm was oddly undamaged by Megatron’s accusations. They held almost no power from a mechanoid with no context. Like a new-spark speaking of a war he never fought. Optimus terminated the connection.

It was about two minutes later that the corridor to Megatron’s left was blocked by Optimus’ figure, standing in the semi-dark, blue optics glowing, battle-mask shut, optics holding unmovably upon the once-revolutionary. Accusations were to be made face-to-face, in his opinion.

“Very well.” The Prime didn’t move from where he stood. “You are right – We had won and then what? I did not suddenly become Zeta and abandon our cause because they called me Prime – it is not so simple, as you would attest were you whole. The process of treachery is slower than that. You abandoned the Senate floor and firebombed the Towers – forgive me that I did not rally to you in your time of vengeance. Forgive me that and I will forgive that you did not rally to me when they named me Prime and you, instead, cut ties with me and chose your war of retribution, one planned and executed behind my back, instead of the means to end the oppression you so hated.”

Optimus narrowed his optics. “I did not abandon our cause. Do not visit my motives for fighting this war.”

[Deleted]

In the face of Optimus's bristling field, all indignant angles and impotent rage, Megatronus smiled. Still sensitive; enough so to be baited down into the face-to-face meeting that the Autobot Commander had been actively avoiding. Optimus had clawed at the gladiator's weak weld until he'd gotten what he wanted and then left, seemingly intending for that to be the fnal note on his interactions with 'Megatronus' before his memories were returned.

Hardly.

Optical ridges slanting to further radiate a sense of mocking indulgence, Megatronus turned to fully face the mech in the doorway. A backstep brought his heel into contact with the bottom of a cargo container, and he folded his arms as he leaned a portion of his weight back.

The gladiator's centre of balance remained over his pedes, however. Ready. He had learnt from their last encounter, and he would not lose ground twice.

"I do not doubt that I enjoyed destroying the Towerlings for my own grievances,but that it was a supported action by enough of the disenfranchised populous to sustain the civil war that followed implies that the act held far more legitimacy, outside my 'vengence', than you claim." Megatronus angled his helm back, optics narrowed. "There is a movement behind me now, and there is an army behind the mech I am to become when my memories are restored. An army that felt, in some way, that each step of destruction to the point of annihilating our world was necessary."

The larger mech raised one hand, indicating towards the Prime. "As you say - it could not have been so simple."

Megatronus' hand snapped into a fist, the plates of his back flaring in the gaps between his mass and the containers behind him. Mundane artefacts to him, but precious in a universe where Cybertron was ashes.

"So tell me: what else was there behind the Decepticons? Behind their war, and not just Megatron's."

[Deleted]

Optimus remained where he was, watching the casual and suddenly familiar contempt of Megatron in the mechanoid he’d once called brother. Perhaps that capacity had always been there and he’d simply never visited it upon Orion Pax. That did not in any way alter his reaction which terminated through his body as a cold surge from his spark, through every nerve directory and lacing the back of his throat his static, sparking clear and sub-zero behind his dental plates. He comprehended that Megatronus, again, was not speaking from a place of context and did not, perhaps, understand that he’d just excused Megatron’s leading the Decepticons to world-ending civil war on the basis that he’d had support for the initial push and therefore his personal vendetta was somehow irrelevant.

As though that absolved the consequences.

Optimus held the other mech’s gaze, remained unflinching. “The Primacy’s response to the disenfranchisement of the underclass was the legal sanction of relinquishment technology through the major city states. Laws favoring pre-preprogramming and personality filtration in the crèche-lines began to push through guild sanction. I will not go into the greater details, but you, I, and several acolytes within the law enforcement sector uncovered facilities practicing state-funded menticide.” The Prime gauged Megatronus’ reaction. “I released the evidence on the Communication Grid and went public with my identity. This triggered global rioting and mass-walk outs. We were called to the Senate floor two months later, we presumed, to be recognized as political party leaders.”

Optimus closed his optics briefly.

“They trusted you,” said Optimus, opening his eyes again. “Your followers - they suffered. The Primacy betrayed them, betrayed everyone that depended on them to protect us and they were killing and throttling us. The cumulative oppression and loss of a people who had every right to rebel and violently – that is the weapon you held with your leadership. You are right. They supported you. They supported war. They supported vengeance. And after what we showed the Primacy to truly be you were the only thing standing between our civilization… and a civil war.” Optimus let his EM field get away from him, the airwaves coloring sorrow, regret, then… “You chose war."

[Deleted]

Megatronus had not truly heard anything that Optimus had said after the three damning words; the concept so horrific it sent a chill through his tank.

State-funded menticide.

Impossible. And yet Optimus's field had projected sincerity, an echo of the disgust boiling through Megatronus's own, and regret that it had, in fact, been possible.

The gladiator's fists tightened, stilling the tremor that had passed through his frame.

Of course the people had supported vengeance.

Megatronus approached the other mech in a wide arc, pacing left to the opposite corner of the store room as he spoke. "Any remaining government could never be trusted - not after that." He stopped at a deliberately non-threatening distance, though his stance was agitated with the want to shake the naivete out of te slim mech. "Rather than channeling funds to conciliate the rebelling oppressed and abused, the Senate instead elected to invest in menticide amongst the dissenting?"

Optimus's silence was confirmation enough, and Megatronus bared his dente. "If they did it once, they would do it again - to make a silently compliant, slaved hive." His tone lightened into a scuff. "Far safer for those in power than an autonomous Low caste."

Little wonder there was a civil war of such magnitude. And, of course, Orion's first impulse would have been to forgive. Weak. Pathetic.

Megatronus inclined his helm, bright optics narrowed as if the mech before him had just said as much."Consider, Optimus, once they had deemed it permissable to change, to mutilate people for the sake of peace, how far would they have gone? If war had been averted, that betrayal accepted as past, would it not have been prudent to subject the revolutionists to the same treatment?"

Then quieter, accusing. "Or are you so gullible that you'd believe a corrupt government can change, against their ease, for the better?"

[Deleted]

“You presume too much,” said Prime, “and know too little. Your words have been said to me, and many times, before by the mechanoid who led half the planet to war and genocide, my former mentor, brother, and partner in the uprising that ultimately broke the Primacy. He knew the nuances of the rebellion and in more exacting detail, so forgive me, Megatronus, if I find the words of that warlord more legitimate than the taunting of a neural ghost who is, as it turns out, a pale shadow of what I remember. I tell you our world is dead, our species beyond decimated, and your interest is in telling me what I already know?”

The Prime’s EM field shifted slightly, wavelengths taking on a more muted pitch.

“I just told you: The anger of our people was weapon – do not speak to me as though I was ignorant of the threat, the leverage, we possessed in that. We broke the legitimacy of their rule and forced them to concede power to the revolution to avoid the wrath of that people. We won with the threat alone. We were not idly standing by awaiting their self-correction. We forced them to it. They named me Prime. We were in a position to cut out the corruption and protect the people without gutting our whole planetary infrastructure in the name of revenge. But you didn’t see it that way.”

Optimus optics burned a bit brighter in the dark.

“You carried out the threat and to its fullest measure. The ruling elite are indeed gone. If your intent was to build from ashes then you have succeeded, at least, in attaining the ashes upon which to build”