EP 1: To Live a Legend -Closed

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To his credit, the amount of trepidation that Pistongasket felt as he stepped from the atrium into the tunnels beneath the Neutral Base toward the med bay only caused a nano-klik of hesitation. There were many things that he had wanted to do in his long operational cycles and this one just happened to be near the top of his list. Hundreds of cycles had passed in his life where he had wanted to meet the force behind the greatest change in Cybertronian history but he never thought that the opportunity would ever present itself again. Megatronus the usurper, the destroyer, the liberator of countless frames... and the killer of countless others had been lifted up in his processors as larger than life. Yet here he was, striding ever onward toward a meeting with...

*skreek*

Gasket's light blue optics widened as his helm scratched against the ceiling of the sandstone passage, his knee-assemblies bending in response as he remembered that these tunnels were not built for a Titan frame. Reaching up he pulled off his exterior helmet, the few meters difference noticeable right away. Shaking his head, Gasket silently chastised himself for allowing his processes to wander. Yes this was a chance to meet the mecha of Megatronus but these were no longer the days of the rebellion; Megatron was not the savior he had propped up in his processes.

To be honest, Gasket was unsure as to what he was actually going to say to the mecha or what he even hoped to get out of any dialogue with him.

Looking at the scratches on his helm he vented gently, the lack of a fire in his boiler making the tunnels slightly colder, less welcoming, darker than he wished. Perhaps Megatronus liked it that way, having been sparked as a miner. After several kliks of his dulcet steps, Gasket finally found himself coming into dim light, the same location in the Med wing where Cleaver had said he would meet Megatronus.

"Excuse my... intrusion. Megatronus... are you cleared for visitors?"

[Deleted]

He roused slowly, dazed, his sparkcasing aching, flares of what must have been pain if his systems weren't saturated with neural inhibitors pulsing out across his chassis. Megatronus checked his internal chronometer, physical stats and flicked a sensor around the cavern. Ravage was still in place atop the storage cabinets - light recharge and still monitoring, no doubt.

The medic had put him at the farthest recess of the medical bay - an act of kindness or cowardice, Megatronus hadn't yet decided. Sunstreaker was at the other end, closest to the Atrium, though hidden by a screen.

He was not unused to solitude, nor being cast to the back. Indeed, it was the realisation that the manipulations of the High Caste had made it that being underfoot felt normal that had inspired him to push to the front of the crowd. To speak out in a world where silence was obedience, and obedience increased the chance of living another vorn.

Megatronus did not stir as he heard the heavy vibrations of an approaching mech, the scrape of metal on metal as some great plate was shifted. His hydraulics tensed, ready to roll and dodge should his visitor share the same intent as Sideswipe had. The question, delivered in a distinct, halting voice, was quite unexpected.

"I don't believe Cleaver expected me to have any," he remarked as the Titan class came into his line of sight. He gripped the edge of the berth to sit up, felt something flex in his chassis - a thick weld that hadn't fully set - and thought better of it.

He led back flat on the berth with a hot exvent. It would be some time before Cleaver could put him back down into the sublevel. He decided he ought to make the most of this unexpected company. Particularly one that addressed him as himself, and not the reviled mech he had, over the lost centuries, become.

"I believe," Megatronus began, mouth quirking, "that you have me at a disadvantage. My memory files end before I met with the Senate. If we had met after that, I don't remember you."

[Deleted]

His entry into the medical bay had not gone unnoticed by the others at hand but the old mecha had no allusions of stealth in this situation. He had no intention to lash out, to vent his anger at this mech despite how much he may have wanted. Such wrathful anger had cooled long ago, vanished with the impetuous youth Gasket had once held. The dull sense of acceptance and calm filling its place as the vorns had drifted away, however, was almost as corrosive to his psyche.

He had finally encountered the legend... but the history, the memories that filled his neural cortex did not want to keep to the objective. Emotion was welling up. It took a considerable amount of his processing power to balance his admiration with everything he knew about Megatron, the mecha unsure of how to proceed.

The voice of Megatronus was more level, exploratory, even inquisitive. In all the times Gasket had worked with the Decepticon warlord the voice was cold, harsh. It was a nice change. The massive frame of Gasket moved into the med bay properly, placing his sizable armored helm on one of the "beds" as he plodded to Megatronus' bed.

"I believe, that you have me at a disadvantage. My memory files end before I met with the Senate. If we had met after that, I don't remember you."

"You may have recognized me... given another 5 vorns of your memory if my own calculations are... accurate." Slowly Gasket lowered himself to a seat on the edge of another flat bed panel beside the reclining warlord. "Any... advantage I may have had faded when I realized the name you would have used... is at least twenty vorns out of date."

The old mech had scoured his memory banks before meeting with Megatronus and, indeed, he'd not changed his name from Prast to Pressure, then to Piston, within vorns of the start of the war. His EFM was calm, many a glyph showing remembrance, nostalgia, and the long history behind Gasket's own history including many which nowadays went unused.

"Had we met in the days when... I was still a simple labor frame, I would have been Prast Gaskette. When last I spoke to you... as Megatron, I was... something else." Gasket's optics froze; they had an age to them as he spoke, remembering just how much he had changed over time. He rarely reflected on his days as 'Pressuregasket' as there were things in that life he truly wished to forget. "It may be out of date... but call me Prast."

Giving a kind smile he offered his servo; for this mech, Gasket found himself losing his animosity toward the gray mecha. If Megatronus shook it... well, it was on his scrapper list.

[Deleted]

Megatronus considered the Titan's extended servo without looking at it, weighing up the likelihood of this being some kind of ruse. The ancient mech's field was sincere, however, and he prided himself on being able to take the measure of another within kliks of laying optics on them. It had served him in the Arena as a gladiator and more recently, to his mind at least, as a the leader of mounting of civil unrest.

He did not have friends in this place, and Cleaver herself was not confident that he was safe within the DMZ even though it had been the commander of the Autobot faction who had sanctioned it. Allies of any kind, particularly those who saw past the monster who'd shared his frame to recognize his present identity, were to be encouraged and valued.

The gladiator who would become a warlord took the offered hand, grimacing as he used it as leverage to pull himself upright to sit on the edge of the berth. "Prast," he affirmed, mouthplates easing into a vague smile. "What brings you?"

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Gasket was forced to readjust his balance as Megatronus not only shook his servo but grasped it, pulling himself upright into a seat on the edge of his berth. While it was not what the old mecha expected, it was good enough in his archives. With Megatronus now upright, the silver mecha offered a small smile as his dentals curled upward; a strangely comforting and warm emotion from the being he knew would become a warlord. Gasket... Prast could only offer a smile in return.

"I can only state... that curiosity is the reason. History is an incredibly... subjective position if you have nothing to compare it to. I have... wanted to address you personally since the uprising. Such a thing was... impossible during the uprising... itself."

Come to think of it, Prast really didn't even have a certain point he wanted to ask or address on his matrix. Smiling and glancing down at his servos as he clenched them and relaxed, it was something he realized he'd have to change that.

"I was a laborer, sparked well before... the uprising. I watched the fall of Cybertronian civilization... to the caste system; corruption was always part of the ruling body but never like that. When one of my... companions was put offline for walking in the wrong section of Iacon, I got involved. We were part of the Construction Corps., you gave us something to hope for even as we were ground further down."

Pausing, Prast remembered how difficult it was to do anything valuable or constructive in the caste system when the higher caste was so repressive.

"What means were used... to begin this end, this resistance? Everything was so locked down if you weren't in your own caste."

[Deleted]

Aside from Ravage, Megatronus had not encountered anyone in the last few weeks who did not regard the Decepticons from some position of hatred. Even Cleaver, who had pleaded Neutral and taken him in as such, was skeptical. But then, he'd conceded, she didn't seem to have an abundance of trust in the Autobots, either. Too long spent looking out for herself in a universe of potential enemies. He could understand the position.

It had made him wonder if, during the vorns of civil unrest lost to his processor, he and those who were being deceived had managed to achieve any positive change. If they had gained more ground than just bodies and an upheaval for the Towers.

If what he had set about to do, the intentions of equality and destruction of the corrupt, had been completely forgotten in the fog of war.

Praust eased a burn of tension he hadn't been aware of, and he regarded the mech who asked him as himself, not Megatron, how his battle for justice had begun with an easier field than he had been exuding the last few weeks. The the older mech had been in the Construction Corps and experienced for himself the horrific results of a segregated caste system, where the High were at liberty to minimise the movements, actions and mere presence of those they deemed Low. Megatronus hummed a low note.

"Quiet words, scrambled frequencies, and sheer numbers," he began, optics brightening from his reverie. "Almost all of us were labor mechs, built to withstand difficult conditions without complaint. When such mechs pool their misery and anger, and it is brought to their attention that the foreman can dismiss one of them but certainly not all of the battered workers, they realize their true strength and power. The power the Towers suppressed through denying them the means to realize it themselves."

The gladiator's hands were clenched in his lap, one fist thumping just hard enough for emphasis. "Education. Equality. Respect. Mecha who do not have these will not readily protest corruption. I was a catalyst. I began with the words, and did not allow myself to be silenced."

The grey mech's mouthplates twisted, optics looking away to the poorly realised results of his ambitions. "Force came when it didn't work," he added softly, "and apparently I did not allow myself to be stopped.