Rebirth

Chapter 5

His optics had locked on a heap of discarded body parts, the kind of scrap heap seen in the aftermath of an industrial accident, when dead Cybertronians lay awaiting reclamation and reconstruction. It was obvious, but Megatronus had long since realized that few of his opponents had any tactical subtlety.

Above and around him, the crowd thundered. He looked up at them and raised his arms over his head, waving them into an even greater frenzy.

This had dual purposes. One, it got the crowd on his side. And two, seeing Megatronus pantomiming victory before the fight had even begun would enrage any opponent with a shred of self-respect. Angry opponents were careless opponents. Careless opponents were dead opponents. The logic was flawless.

From the pile of body parts erupted not one, but three fighting bots. They were collectively one of Shockwave's combiner experiments, he could tell right away from the way they moved together—and these three were primitive, drones barely capable of what more advanced Cybertronians considered consciousness. One immediately changed into an all-terrain vehicle, its tracks studded and magnetic; it headed for one wall of the pit, looking for a higher vantage point to establish a crossfire. Megatronus kept focused on the other two, which sprang immediately at him. The first he knocked down with a blaster shot; the second he swatted aside with a sweeping backhand. Keeping the ATV in his peripheral vision, Megatronus pivoted to prevent the two bot-form combiners from flanking him. One of them reared up and sprayed a stream of corrosive fluid at his face; he ducked aside, feeling the spray of it bum on his shoulder. The second made another pass at him, its blade-tipped hands flicking out at him.

Megatronus caught the combiner's arm just above the bladed wrist. Another jet of acid spattered across his back. With a roar, he broke the arm off and flung it into the crowd.

This was a calculated maneuver. He wanted them to know that he was dangerous, that when you went to watch Megatronus fight he was always on the verge of bringing the entire arena down on all of their heads. He fought like he knew he would die and did not care, but also like he knew he could never die and so could take any risk without fear. The arm, sparking and leaking the residue of the vibroblade's Energon reservoir, spun into the second deck; some spectators lunged out of its way while others reached to catch it. In a klik, Megatronus saw the blade slash and eat through a spectator's arm; saw another in the crowd grab the arm near the break and fling it up into the deck above him; saw fights break out in the aftermath...

But he could watch it no further, because the bot on the walls was opening up on him with concentrated energy fire beyond what he would have expected in a Cybertronian so small. The blasts knocked him off balance momentarily, and the acid-spitter closed in to take advantage.

Megatronus took the next volley of energy fire across his back as he closed with the mutilated combiner. Always finish a kill was his philosophy. Two wounded enemies were still two enemies. He closed the distance between them in a leap and used his larger mass and greater strength to drive the wounded combiner into the base of a pile of debris. Acid streaked his back again but Megatronus ignored it. He had taken the best shot that combiner could give and it would not kill him—at least not sooner than he could kill it and its wheeled comrade.

He held down the wounded bot, rammed the muzzle of his ion cannon into the joint where its neck met its multi-armed thorax, and blew it apart. Now the three bots would never be able to assume their combined form; this was another reason to finish a kill. A chittering sound reached him, even over the hysterical collective scream of the crowd at the match's first kill. Megatronus lifted the dead combiner up, swung it over his head, and flung it away to crash against the wall opposite the seating deck where he had thrown its arm. The acidsprayer landed on his back in the next moment, its pointed nozzle looking for vulnerable points on the back of Megatronus's head and neck.