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.
He was Megatronus. He had no vulnerable points. He reached back with both hands, grabbed the acidspitter, and slammed it to the floor. Small pieces of it broke off, and Megatronus went in for the kill. This one he would do with his bare hands.
But surprises were yet in store. The combiner wriggled out of his grasp, then slithered with surprising speed across the broken terrain of the floor to join the ATV on the wall. The two of them then merged, combining into a single alternate form that leaped up into the air and hovered.
So, Megatronus thought. I was wrong. Even with only two of them, they can combine.
It stopped, hovering perhaps forty mechanos above the center of the pit floor. Extruded tentacular cables unspooled to catch on girders and keep the combiner up in the air. From there it rained energy blasts down on him from blaster-adapted legs, occasionally swooping lower to discharge globules of acid from its mouth. What strange forms the combiners were, Megatronus thought. To surrender their individuality and merge together like that. It repelled him. He hated them, all of them. Any Cybertronian willing to give up its own identity was not worthy of the name.
He changed form, adopting the alt-form he had learned soon after his creation, a tank adapted for heavy mining and demolition work. The combiner darted away as Megatronus's battery of proton blasters exploded across its carapace and severed one of its cables; it fell, swinging back down on the other cable toward the arena floor. Megatronus roared toward the higher end of the arena, closing with a speed it hadn't anticipated; it zigzagged through the pit, jinking so close to the balconies that the front-row audience alternately ducked away or reached out to grab it. Megatronus caught it up near the top of a debris pile that was the highest point on the arena floor, reassuming his proto-form as he collided with it and kept hold, one hand on an arm and the other clamped on its thorax. His optics momentarily flared out as it jammed an energy cannon in his face and fired. He ile of debris. The savage glee of the crowd vibrated in all of Megatronus's sensors.
Now was the time to end this. Megatronus reared up over the disoriented combiner and manifested twin maces in both hands. He stomped down on the combiner's back, holding it in place. It chattered, tried to divide, and failed. Its limbs scrabbled for purchase and leverage, but he was far too strong. Raising both maces, Megatronus let his gaze roam across the crowd, which was if anything more berserk than before. Combiners, he thought scornfully. Next they would send out Minicons for him to step on.
"Who defeats Megatronus?" he roared out, and struck. Lubricants and bits of combiner spattered him. "No one! No one defeats Megatronus!" He struck again, and again, butchering the combiner where it lay. Then he emptied his hands and raised his arms again. "I STILL FUNCTION!"
Striding from one end of the pit to the other, he pointed into the crowd. "Would you challenge me? You? Anyone! Any five of you, any ten of you, challenge me now for everything I have ever won! No one defeats Megatronus!" Back in the center of the pit, he kicked apart the remains of the combined Insecticon flyer and flung pieces of it into the crowd for trophies. "Remember!" he called out. "Remember that you saw Megatronus! It is the best day of your life! Remember!"
Their adulation rained down on him like Energon, like life itself. Never again will I be nameless, Megatronus thought.
MEGATRONUS! MEGATRONUS! MEGATRONUS!
Something odd happened as the chant intensified. The last syllable of the moniker started to fade out as the crowd made a collective choice to end the chant on a strong syllable. Megatronus listened, and felt a strange thrill as his name modulated, changed... transformed. He was renamed by his followers, given a name that no Cybertronian had ever carried. The arena shook with the force of the chant.
MEGATRON! MEGATRON! MEGATRON!
Yes, he thought. I will be Megatron.
And Cybertron will never be the same.
He raised his arms amid the smoke and debris of the pit, and the shattered bodies of his opponents. No Cybertronian could oppose him.
Megatron was destined for great things. Soon he would no longer be a gladiator. Soon he would lead the gladiators.
He strode victorious out of the pit and into the complex of abandoned maintenance tunnels below a factory that had once churned out components for semi-autonomous mining machinery. Now most of the subterranean space in the factory complex was given over to the illicit but highly profitable gladiator tournaments. Gladiator mechas and Cybertronians lived, trained, fought, and were repaired here. The ones who died were turned into useful scrap.
Until perhaps an orbital cycle ago, all of this had been under the control of a syndicate of crime bosses who ran the gladiators like machines. Who was to know or care? The caste that produced workers in the factories of Kaon was beneath the notice of the higher castes. As long as raw materials were turned into finished goods, the engineering and government castes never spared a thought for their fellow Cybertronians who slaved in the refineries and smelters. The criminal syndicate took advantage of this in a number of ways. One was the creation of the gladiator circuit; another was the manipulation of results in that circuit.
Megatron had chafed under the control of the bosses for some time. Things came to a breaking point when they came to him one day offering a deal. You're the finest gladiator we've ever seen, they said. A real immortal. But the stands aren't as full. They won't be as long as everyone knows you're going to win.
At that point, in a room much like the one he stood in now, after a match much like the one he'd just fought in, Megatron had known what was coming.
We need someone else to win, the bosses said. Not every time. But once or twice. Starting next time you go into the pit.
It had been a moment of the sort that comes along only once, perhaps, in a sentient being's life. The moment, Megatron reflected, when you decided whether you were going to surrender control to someone else... or fight to the death to keep it.
He had decided to fight. Moments later, the bosses and their strong-arm bodyguards were in pieces, save one. Megatron sent him out to spread the word: The gladiator pits were under new management.
Now Megatronus was no longer. Megatron thought of that moment, that transformative moment, as he came into the infirmary and saw Soundwave and Shockwave waiting for him. "Soon you'll be leading more than gladiators," Shockwave said, coming over to examine Megatron's damage. Shockwave was Megatron's pet mad scientist, the kind of mind who would take two critically damaged gladiators and try to make one superCybertronian out of them. He had no ethical sense that Megatron had ever been able to detect, and Megatron did not trust him; but Shockwave was a believer in Megatron... at least for now. There would come a time, Megatron knew, when Shockwave would turn on him. Until then, the Cybertronian genius would be Megatron's most loyal ally.
Soundwave was a different matter. Spymaster extraordinaire, controller of a horde of Minicons so small that Megatron could crush several of them with a footstep, Soundwave was the only gladiator Megatron had ever fought who had a chance of beating him—they had met in a match to first wound rather than death; otherwise only one of them would still exist. He was nearly as single-minded as Megatron, nearly as dedicated. He possessed a suite of abilities that Megatron very nearly envied, with his multiple transformations and the triple Minicons that he contained within his proto-form and could eject into combat at any moment. These were Rumble, Ravage, and Laserbeak.
Megatron looked around and did not see any Minicons. That suited him well. He did not trust the Minicons, any of them. He was unsuited to subterfuge, disliked telling lies except when it was absolutely necessary, and would have much preferred to take whatever he wanted on Cybertron by straightforward force of arms.
Part of the reason he kept Soundwave and Shockwave close was that he trusted them to remind him when this was not possible. Megatron was mighty—he knew that—but he could still benefit from associates whose abilities complemented his.
"Minimal scarring from the acids," Shockwave pronounced. "The energy weapons had little effect. As is typical, Megatronus, you emerge from a battle with few signs of ever having been in a battle. What fascinating prototypes I could create from you."
"Megatron."
Shockwave stopped in mid-reverie, blinking and returning to the real world from his imagined army of Megatron-inspired supermechs. "What?"
"You heard the crowd. I am Megatron."
Soundwave and Shockwave looked at each other. "All hail Megatron!" they said.
Orion POV
I looked up at the stars, and between myself and the stars the twin points of Moon Bases One and Two. The other near-Cybertron object, Trypticon Station, was out of sight on the other side of the planet. I walked the swooping streets and bridges of Iacon, pondering some of what I had heard Megatron say.
Freedom is every Cybertronian's right!
Perhaps. But what did freedom mean? If there were no castes, if Cybertronians were not organized and channeled into productive lines... if every Cybertronian simply decided what he wanted to do, the entire planet would descend into chaos. I remembered being taught that freedom consisted of being free to contribute to the tasks that were appropriate and necessary to the caste you were born into. But that moment I saw a Lush green land with a light blue sky and white fluffy things in it but I could not tell what it was until I noticed a group of Organix having fun they seem to be a family, but yet something was off about them I do not know why it Disturbed me so but soon as I started to think about it was gone, Unlimited choice, rather than leading to freedom, led to the paralysis of confusion.
This was the teaching of... who, exactly? Sentinel Prime had never said it out loud, but he had overseen the rise of the caste system, preserving Cybertron when individuality threatened to tear the civilization of the Cybertronians into contending splinters.
Who does the caste system benefit? The higher castes! Who do the higher castes live off? You.
I climbed a tower to an observation deck from which I could see all of Iacon. The contours of Cybertron, the living expression of Primus, arced away in all directions. Canyons leading to the interior, where Plasma welled up from the Well at the center of Cybertron, split the surface. Far, far to the west, I could see the highest peaks of the Manganese Mountains. To the north, over the horizon, was Six Lasers Over Cybertron. Thinking of the amusement park, I felt a twinge of anger, I had never been there. It was the preserve of the higher castes. Only rarely did lower-caste Cybertronians pass through its gates, and I had not yet been one of those fortunate lower-caste individuals.
Individuals know what is best for them! Who but I know what I need? Who but you may decide what is best for you?
I would like to go to Six Lasers, thought to myself.
But if anyone walked up to Six Lasers and demanded to get in whenever the desire struck, the park would be overwhelmed. Structure was necessary. And individuals would never impose Structure on themselves. Would they?
Surely not. Sentient beings banded together and made decisions for the collective good. Not all of those decisions would benefit every individual.
I was tangled up, uncertain what I should be thinking or feeling.
What I need, is a conversation that doesn't happen inside my own head. I looked down my little turbo Fox Kurama "what should I do Kurama." kneel down to pet him knowing that I couldn't get a reply from him only small yep, "let's go see Jazz." I picked up Kurama and made my way to Jazz home.