Ep1 - 'Flash Drive' - Closed

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Once again, Megatronus felt that he and Optimus had parted on... incomplete terms. Frustratingly so. So much was missing from his memory core, so many arguments and fights and all-out battles that had driven them so far apart that a dead planet smoked between them. The experience of war was the position Optimus spoke from, and Megatronus knew that despite everything he was powerless against that knowledge.

That conviction.

When the Prime had left, Megatronus had taken himself back to the familiar, almost-haven-like shadows and stale, cool air of the sublevel. To absorb and think. To pace.

To not realise he'd punched into the rock until his hand was buried. Denta bared, he withdrew from the strike and dislodged flecks of energon crystals from his claws with a flick of the wrist.

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“We do not have an abundance of time,” said a voice from Megatron’s back. “So I’ll make this fast.”

A section of shadow lit up, two blue optics resolving themselves from the edge of the dark, catching on the lines of black and chrome. With precisely no preamble he tossed what was clearly all of the mechanoid’s removed weaponry at the gladiator’s pedes where the sheer weight of the cannon mod hit the ground, cracked the floor, and lay there between them. That note struck, Barricade separated from the murk of the corridor and moved into the smaller atrium.

//I’m Barricade// he said through spark frequency, halting, familiar and lazily obscene – his voice transmitted dark through the quantum physics of their link. //I’m your link-partner; despair over my not being taller at a later date. I’d have called sooner, but I’m slag with long distance calls. I have a data-pack to get your head on straight and it’s my dearest hope Ravage warned you I was coming so we can not waste time proving my identity.// He offered up one hand, palm up, titanium claws bouncing blue light, the armor at his wrist segmenting and splitting open over a hard-link port.

“We’ve got work to do."

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Megatronus regarded the mech silently for a long moment, absorbing his conviction and darkly knowing confidence. The mech he was apparently alligned with. Small in frame size, but devilishly lithe and broadcasting a field more fitting of a heavy frontliner. His hand outstretched, telling rather than inviting him to allow the gladiator to sink back into the past so that the warlord could return in force.

Communication over the link appeased a cold, corrosive ache he hadn't given much thought to in his spark. What he'd assumed were lingering pains from surgery now ebbed away in proximity to Barricade, and it was at this urge as much as conscious choice that Megatron closed the distance between them in three long strides. His optics traced across the arsenal on the floor, weapons his mesh memory had felt the absence of keenly, before clicking to the Saleen's.

Barricade smiled up at him with wicked familiarity, hand steady, the charge of it like nothing he'd ever experienced. It felt right like nothing here had, and Megatronus was utterly done with ineffectual arguments and restrictions of knowledge and action at every turn.

"Let's get to it, then," he finally murmured, reaching out to enclose Barricade's forearm in one hand at his own hardline connector spun out. Connection was quick, and the rapid uncoiling of the datastream into his processor was like plugging into the Hall Archive raw.

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“Welcome back.”

Barricade was grinning down at the Decepticon commander, crouched over him, blue optics hovering just feet over the mech’s face. If Megatron was irritated that the infiltrator hadn’t warned him that, you know, several millennia worth of war hitting a damaged CPU and re-contextualizing the sum-total of your neo-cortex might knock you on your back (literally), he didn’t mention it. The bigger mech did, however, give the infiltrator this exceptional world-destroying look that suggested – were Barricade not quantum bound to his godsdamned spark-core – the police cruiser would be in two pieces.

“That’s what I thought.” Cade stood up, plates buzzing familiar with the dark-matter burn of Megatron’s EM field – the one four-million years ancient and capable of leveling planets. “Nemesis is in shambles,” he said. “The in-fighting has already started and I’ll give Shockwave exactly two-hours before calculating that Starscream is more beneficial as a wall-smear. Historically, he’s useful though, so maybe in the spirit of not downing ourselves our least favorite back-stabber, we should hurry outta here… or take our time. I like him better as a wall smear myself.”