AN: So, I was browsing my recommendations on youtube when I came across
this video. That video makes
way too much sense to me not to be canon…
I hate how much sense it actually makes, to be honest…
It actually explains quite a lot about the overall story of the Bayverse… and answers some rather uncomfortable questions, including why Optimus allowed the Decepticons to turn Chicago into a fortress. Who would have thought that the 'Bay humor' in the movies was an actual plot point as to humans being the spawn of Unicron?
Hope you enjoy the chapter!
I swung my flail in a wide arc, destroying a hanging office and sending fire and debris all across the room and its panicking occupants.
A catwalk swung into the side of my head, and I growled, grabbed onto it with my free servo, and ripped it down, before tossing it towards the humans, flattening a few. I swung my flail again, blowing through one of the cryo generators at the foot of the platform, leaving only the bottom part of it remaining. The humans, already fleeing, were even more terrified by how quickly I could destroy the room with them in it.
"Pour it on him!" Someone shouted as soldiers with cryo blasters began firing on me.
Attack.
I growled as I turned my massive body to glare at the humans that had kept me imprisoned in ice, then retracted my flail and pulled out my Fusion Pistol. One well placed shot had pieces of the entire group flying through the air. I fired again, blowing apart a nearby truck and sending more pieces of humans flying, as all of them began to flee in fear of me.
After a moment, I let out a mechanical roar which broke the will of those that dared to remain.
I fired off another shot into a tunnel when I saw more soldiers coming through it along with a few buggies with cryo sprayers attached to their roofs, causing the roof of it to collapse around them. After that, one of the lines in the ceiling burst, and liquid nitrogen started raining down on the platform that I was standing on, making ice start to form on my plating again. I growled, then finally walked off of the piece of concrete that I had been stuck on for decades.
The few humans left were firing handheld cryo blasters at me to try and contain me, but I fired a few more rounds at them, which quickly solved that problem. When bullets and cryo streams finally stopped pinging and sliding off of my frame, I just… stopped and took a moment to enjoy my freedom. I tilted my helm back and actually closed my yellow-red optics for the first time in a little over
seventy years as I cycled in deep vents, my breath coming out in tiny clouds of vapor from the quickly cooling room.
My auto-repair systems were hard at work fixing up the old damage that I had sustained when I crash landed on earth, along with the exploratory probing that the humans did to my surface panels.
Being frozen in ice for thousands of years, then later stuck in a primitive cryo-prison kept my auto-repair systems so cold that the nanites that make up my natural healing factor couldn't activate and heal any of the damage. So, I was stuck with a couple bits of thousand-year-old reentry damage, along with some ice damage from small pieces of the frozen water that had sunk into the crevices in my plating. But with the Allspark so close to me, my auto repair nanites had become briefly supercharged, and instantly started healing everything that had ailed me in mere moments.
I cycled in a deep vent of relief, my plating shifting and shuttering slightly as I felt a dull pain in my back struts finally stop hurting. Old minor aches and pains that I could feel from my planetfall, and frozen imprisonment were slowly being washed away by nanolathe healing, until I finally felt as good as I did before I left Cybertron.
I let out a deep sigh, my breath making visible clouds in the now cold room. I shook my helm slightly, then turned to the tunnel that I
think my canon self transformed and flew through in the movie.
…Which I accidentally collapsed during the brief fight with the humans.
Frag.
I growled in irritation when I realized the predicament that I put myself in, then started to look around the half-destroyed room for another exit. But while my optics were scanning around my 'cell', a question that I could never figure the answer to, came back to the forefront of my mind full force again now that I was free.
How is it that no one -except me- supposedly knew where the Allspark was, and why did no Cybertronian figure out that it -or
me for that matter- was here on earth for thousands of years even with the Guardian Knights and other Autobots roaming around the planet?
Something that always bothered me about my time imprisoned in the ice, was the fact that the Autobots -and Cybertronians in general- had been on earth quite a few times while I was either frozen in the arctic ice or contained under Hoover Dam.
Did not a single one of them ever think to ask if the humans had hidden a giant metal cube under a man-made structure like they did the Star Harvester? Or did none of them ever try to find out if they had a giant, silver colored metal man with red optics in the back of their metaphorical freezer?
If the parts of the fifth movie which took place in earth's past (which I should state that while I can't remember any specific details of the movies, I do remember some of the very broad strokes of the lore, plus my own knowledge of our history) was all really happening while I was on ice,
and the Allspark was just sitting in the middle of the Colorado River until it was found and later hidden by humans in the 1930's with the construction of Hoover Dam, one very damning question comes to mind.
If the Autobots (including Optimus, who was on earth at least as far back as the time of Napoleon, and Bumblebee, who literally fought the Nazis in WW2) were around on earth long enough to be ingrained into the command structures of some of the planet's militaries, then why did they never bother looking in the western part of the USA, find the Allspark sitting in the middle of the Grand Canyon, and take the glorified Transformer Maker for themselves? Let alone sense the energy of the damned Cube either?
The questions swirling through my processor also led me to once again wonder why Optimus started making some rather… questionable decisions around three fourths of the way through the war. Those decisions involved the treatment of the Decepticons in combat, the situation with Sentinel and his space bridge pillars, and later Optimus's removal of the Allspark from our home planet.
Optimus may have been more bookish than I was, but he could -and did- fight alongside me numerous times. But over the years we lived, he started to become a bit… vicious in his methods of taking down our foes. Even though he told me he was fine countless times, I knew he was haunted by our pasts, just like I was. I believe the root of the problem was caused by our forced tenure as slave fighters in the gladiator pits.
Orion never really was the same after all of that. Not to mention that we were quite literally on the run from our 'owners' at the Arena when we found Sentinel's stasis pod and were saved by the old mech. The righteous anger that Sentinel had in his optics when we told him we were runaway slaves from a gladiator arena, and his actions afterwards, was a memory I preserved with all possible care.
But later in our tutelage, I honestly don't know what Sentinel was thinking of, giving Optimus unfiltered access to Cybertron's ancient history in his state (Primus knows
I had been disgusted by some old practices, even now, and I know that I am not a good person by my old
human standards anymore), but his problem was apparently only exacerbated by learning the ancient history of our kind.
I do admit to overlooking many of Orion's flaws, but, in my defense, we had been together since we were literal children in the Cybertronian sense. I had long learned to ignore the sometimes strange and slightly malicious things that he said or did. I thought he was just a traumatized orphan just trying to survive each 'day' like me in our sunless world. I later learned to regret that, because I swore at some points -even during the war- that when I looked at Optimus, it was like I was looking at him through
shattered glass…
I only have one memory of an Optimus colored purple with crimson optics associated with that term, but whenever I did remember it, a shiver went down my spine.
And I think that at one point Sentinel recognized what I saw as well, because when we met in secret to discuss ending the war and using the barely put together humankind to help rebuild Cybertron by being 'benevolent gods' to them, the look that he had in his optics whenever Optimus came up looked eerily similar to the look that Starscream had said I had. He even mentioned that Optimus sometimes looked off into the distance towards Kaon with a blank look, occasionally twitching his digits like he was going to pull out a weapon.
That was all I needed to know to cement that something in my former brother had drastically changed, or just simply broke.
And to make matters even worse, up until I went chasing after the Allspark when Optimus launched it off world, we
still had never learned who actually fired the cluster missile that destroyed one of the engines and sent the Ark hurtling through space. I know it wasn't Starscream or any of my Deceptions, because the soldiers that actually attacked the Ark were under strict orders to only harass the ship until it left Cybertron's atmosphere.
Guns only, no missiles. That was what I ordered.
But before I could think any longer on how weird Optimus and the Autobots started to act near the end of the war, one of the Fallen's compulsions ripped into my processor, making me stagger into a wall and grip onto my helm tightly.
Find the Allspark.
NOW.
I should probably mention that the compulsions aren't exactly just a one word order, but rather a series of mental attacks that physically hurt my already pained mind, to the point that it feels like Optimus is stabbing me in the head with one of his heat swords repeatedly (which he almost managed to do at one point, another point to add to the list of how weird he started behaving at some point in the war.) Not a very fun feeling, especially if you're just coming out of a primitive cryo-stasis after seventy-two years.
It's times like this that I remember that I didn't actually
start the Autobot-Decepticon war, I merely
restarted it in 'modern' times under the Fallen, who was trying to activate the Star Harvester. He never said why exactly he despised the human race and wanted to kill them though, which I found confusing. I only dislike them now because I was imprisoned by them for nearly a century.
I shook my head roughly to try and clear my thoughts in the wake of the compulsion, then turned to the tunnel that the humans went into when they mentioned the Allspark.
"
The salvation of our race will finally be in my servos, after all this time." I muttered in Cybertronix.
The tunnel was slightly cramped, but it was easy enough for me to stand straight up in it without slouching.
I raised one arm and let my claws rake across the wall, sending an echoey screeching noise through the tunnel as I walked through it. As soon as I turned a corner, a rocket slammed into my shoulder, and I let out a pained grunt. I returned fire with my fusion pistol, small arms fire pinging off my frame. There was an APC at the other end of the tunnel, and it had what my sensors detected were TOW missiles attached to its turret.
One of the missiles fired, and I ducked out of the way, practically throwing myself into the wall as the missile sailed past me and slammed into the wall behind me. I dropped to a kneel, and the panels on my arms rearranged. I raised up and slammed my arms together, transforming both of them into my telescopic fusion cannon. After a moment to aim, I fired, blowing up the entire APC and taking down all of the humans in my way in one fell swoop.
I rose back to my pedes, then pulled my arms apart as they transformed back into my claws. I gave a decisive nod that my primary weapon systems were running smoothly, then I pulled my fusion pistol back out and continued down the tunnel. My pedsteps echoed off the walls as I walked, but to my hearing the echo was getting lesser, which meant I was getting closer to the end.
When I came out into the room, the one thing I instantly noticed was the two tanks aiming their cannons at me. Bullets pinged off of my frame, and I dodged a HEAT shell from one, and a APFSDS dart from the other. My telescopic fusion cannon folded back out, and I fired a shot into one, blasting the front of it apart, sending molten slag across the ground.
The other drove behind a large concrete divider, while two buggies with cryo cannons drove out and started firing at me.
'What is this? Some sort of game?' My thoughts supplied.
I fired at one buggy, blowing it to pieces, then ran over and stomped on the other. A tank shell whizzed by my helm, and I spun around and fired reflexively, blowing the .50 Cal machine gun off of the top of the turret. The tank reversed back behind the divider as my fusion cannon folded back out. I stalked over to the divider and slid around the corner, a tank round going right over my helm. I fired, blowing the tank apart as it tried to reverse away from me.
"Parasites." I muttered.
My fusion cannon folded away as I separated my arms, and I looked around. There were only three tunnels in the room, the one I came out of where the burning remains of an APC sat, a smaller, human sized tunnel, and one for my size on the other end of the room. With only one way to go, I walked into the big tunnel.
I encountered a few more cryo buggies and one more APC while making my way through the tunnel and quickly dealt with all of them with swift efficiency. But it strangely seemed as though the humans were retreating.
When I walked into a massive room, I figured out just why they were retreating.
"
The Allspark… it's GONE!" I bellowed into the empty room.
I knew it was where the Allspark once was. Not only were there traces of the Allspark's power literally hanging in the air of the room, but there was a massive platform with a large indent in it, like where a massive cube might sit at an angle. I fell to a kneel and slammed my fists into the concrete, leaving massive craters where my servos landed.
I let out an enraged roar that echoed through the room.
I stood back up and stared at where the Allspark once was for a few moments, seething in rage that the damned scout had already stolen it. As I looked around for any trace of where the Allspark went, I suddenly heard humans screaming, along with gunfire. I looked into a smaller, human sized tunnel, and raised one eye-ridge when the screaming was suddenly cut off by even more gunfire.
After a few moments, Frenzy ran out of the tunnel on all fours like a minicon possessed, followed by a few more soldiers. I quickly pulled out my fusion pistol and fired, collapsing the tunnel as Frenzy ran out of it. The minicon saw where the shot came from and let out a cheer, then ran over to me as I holstered the weapon.
"
Lord Megatron, you live!" Frenzy cheered in Cybertronix.
"Frenzy? So, my most loyal soldiers have come for me after all." I responded as the minicon knelt before me.
"
Stupid insects shot at me. This body is brand new!" The minicon grumbled.
"What do you mean 'brand new body', Frenzy?"
"
The stupid humans sliced my helm off! But the Allspark was here, and she gifted me a new body to help free you, Lord Megatron!"
I leaned down, closer to the small bot. "When was the Allspark here?"
"
Just a few cycles ago, my lord."
I looked around the room, taking in the traces of the hurried exit the humans made "So it must not be far then. Is my army here to assist with retaking the Allspark?"
At my question, Frenzy's EM field recoiled back to himself, and the minicon ducked his head.
"
My lord… there were only seven of us that came to free you." The minicon said.
"What? Who?" I demanded.
"
Just Blackout, Barricade, Bonecrusher, Scorponok, Brawl, Starscream, and myself. No one knew you were even here under Hoover Dam, my lord, not until just a quartex ago. Starscream didn't even believe you were still alive until we reported to him about 'Project IceMan'. We are all that managed to get to the planet before the Autobots arrived. Soundwave and the other minicons should be arriving in around a quartex."
"And what of the other Decepticons?"
"
All of the others are too far off to get here in a timely manner, and many others are simply dead. A lot has changed in the last few thousand years, sir. It is only by the grace of the Allspark herself that most of us are still functioning after the last big battle we were in. Some of the troops won't be here for at least a stellar cycle or two at most while their wounds heal."
"And the Autobots?"
"
Best I saw of them I believe that Jazz, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Ironhide, Arcee, Cliffjumper, and Optimus himself are here. OH! And two humans! A male and a female." The minicon tilted his head to the left slightly. "
I may or may not have hitched a ride with them as a mobile phone."
"And are these humans important?"
"
The boy is virtually useless, and he screamed like a sparkling when I was chasing him. I never even hurt him besides a single cut on his calf! The female… She's much more ruthless. She took an electric saw to my neck while I was trying to interrogate the boy. But the boy did apparently have a pair of corrective lenses that you imprinted the data to the Allspark's location on."
I thought back, and my processor showed me a small memory file of an old human touching one of my claws and accidentally activating my navigation systems, causing me to shoot out the files on where the Allspark landed directly into his eyes. Captain Archibald Witwicky. Didn't that human go insane afterwards?
"Apparently, I did. We must acquire the Allspark before the Autobots can."
"
Before you go, there is a group of humans still here, my lord. They're trying to call for reinforcements."
"Deal with them. I am going topside to find the Allspark and kill whoever gets in my way."
Frenzy quickly sent me a file that showed me all the exits that would fit me, then took off running into one of the human sized tunnels. I turned to the tunnel that would take me out of the dam and started moving. As I made my way down the route that I chose, I noticed that the ceiling was getting lower and lower. Eventually, I walked into a small underground parking lot.
I let out a small growl when I noticed that the next tunnel was too small for me to walk or fly through, and I absolutely wasn't going to crawl through it.
"I suppose I'm getting a ground alternate mode early then." I muttered, slightly irritated that I'd have to frame-shift into a different alt mode for a bit. "It is absolutely only going to be temporary though."
I looked around the parking lot, which was more of an armory now that I was looking at it properly, until I spotted a tank sitting in one corner of the room. An M1 Abrams. Completely unattended, and perfect for my current frame to adapt to, since I had used a tank alternate mode for a while back during the war on Cybertron. I quickly walked over and scanned the tracked AFV.
[Compatible alternate form detected]
[Scanning initiated]
...
[Scan complete - Scanned vehicle: M1A2 SEP Abrams Main Battle Tank - Detected armaments: 1 × 120 mm L/44 M256 smoothbore gun - 1 × 0.50 caliber M2HB heavy machine gun - 2 × 7.62 mm M240 machine guns (1 pintle-mounted, 1 coaxial)]
[Acquire and save alternate mode? y/n]
I accepted, and my body instantly started changing.
Plating reshaped, tracks formed, wheels spun into existence.
Cybertronians -true to their moniker as 'robots in disguise'- can reformat themselves to take on quite a few different alternate modes, as long as they have the correct mass and designs in their processor, be it a tracked vehicle, a wheeled vehicle, or a flying vehicle. It's why my canon self was able to be a Cybertronian jet, then a Cybertronian tank/jet, then finally a semi-truck with an oil tanker attached.
But to change into a different kind of alternate form, a Cybertronian has to reformat themselves in something called a frameshift. An action which can take anywhere from a few seconds to a full minute, depending on the changes necessary to take on a new form. They also have to stand still the entire time, or it may mess up the process, forcing them to do it again to work out all the kinks. If it's a mech or femme with say, a Camaro or a Mustang alt mode, changing to a Silverado or an F150, or simply another type of car, not much needs to change in the way of wheels, plating and layout.
But for mechs like me, going from an interstellar jet mode to a ground mode, and a tracked one at that, I needed quite a bit of time to fully shift into a different form.
After nearly two minutes of my body shifting and reformatting, the frameshift finally stopped, and I took a second to look over the changes that were made to my body.
You could definitely tell that I had an earth alternate mode now.
My lower half looked like a slightly less armored and streamlined version of my second movie body with human tank treads in place of the Cybertronian ones, while blocky pieces of tank armor covered my body, along with my fusion cannon, which was reshaped into the tank cannon itself and attached to my right arm like so many other incarnations of myself. Other than that, not much else changed on my body, besides the bronze highlights that were merely accents on my body before, showing more of themselves on my new panels.
I rolled my shoulders a few times to settle my plating, then transformed, folding down into a perfect recreation of an M1A2 SEP colored a dull silver with bronze accents.
The turbine engine within me roared to life, and I started moving through the lower tunnels with haste.
Surprisingly, the resistance began once again, starting with a whole squad of buggies coming my way. I opened fire with my machine guns, perforating the front two with holes, then fired from my cannon, blasting what remained of them. Another two were behind it, and I fired right between them, which tossed both of them into the walls like toy cars. The last buggy tried to turn around and escape, but I simply crushed it under my alt mode's weight and continued driving through the smaller tunnels.
After nearly a whole minute of just driving through tunnels that I never expected to exist, I finally reached a ramp leading to the exit, which was sealed to prevent me from escaping.
By human standards, at least.
A shot from my cannon blew the door outward a bit, making light shine through the center of it. Another shot blew off a chunk of the doors, and the final one blasted them out of the housing, allowing me to drive out into the Nevada sun and rocky sand.
I transformed back to bot mode, the signature three loud clangs of my converting form attracting the attention of my SIC, who flew down and landed in front of me as my plating settled.
"Lord Megatron. I live to serve." Starscream greeted as he kneeled before me.
"Ah, Starscream. I am not surprised to see that you are still alive." I responded.
"Of course, my liege. After all, in your absence, someone had to take command of the Decepticons."
I tilted my helm slightly. "And yet, did you manage to acquire the Allspark?"
Starscream briefly froze, then slumped slightly, before he lifted his helm to look at me in the optic. "Apologies, my lord. But the humans have taken it."
"Not even an entire hour out of the parasite's primitive cryostasis and you have failed me. New record, my treacherous old friend."
Starscream groaned, putting a servo over his faceplate in remembrance of his one-time failed coup. "It was
one time, my lord!"
I chuckled. "And I shall continue to bring up your hilariously failed coup until it is no longer funny, which means forever."
Starscream grumbled as he stood back on his pedes. "The first words you say to me after centuries of searching for you, and it's that? I just know that Soundwave is going to have that insufferably smug look on his face whenever he looks at me when he gets wind of this conversation."
"I may be the leader of the Decepticons, but Soundwave will always be the king of gossip."
I looked around, spotting a few blown out military vehicles, then back at my triangular friend with a raised optic ridge, finally noticing the dents, scratches, and bullet marks on his frame. "Were you attacked, Starscream?"
The seeker nodded. "I was, my lord. I did try to get the Allspark from that scout, but I was teamed up on by Arcee, Cliffjumper and Jazz. I barely managed to retreat back into the sky, but by the time I was there, the Autobots had disappeared from my sensors. They must be hiding their signals"
"Then where are they?" I growled at nothing.
"
Lord Megatron, I have intel!" Frenzy's voice suddenly broke over the comms, the sound of human gunfire along with his own coming over the channel.
"Report, Frenzy." I ordered.
"
The humans are going to one of their cities twenty-two miles north from here, called Mission City! The Autobots are definitely going there to hide the Allspark!" More gunfire, along with the sound of a few of his shurikens firing from his chest. "
Human resistance is much heavier than I anticipated!"
"Excellent work, Frenzy. Get out of there if it gets too bad. You are the best saboteur we have while Soundwave isn't here."
"
Yes, my lord! Stop doing that you slagging-!"
A massive amount of gunfire came from his side of the comms, making Starscream and I glance at each other for a moment as Frenzy let out a battle cry. After a moment, he finally remembered to turn his comm off.
"...Interesting little minicon. Starscream, make your way to the city and attack the Autobots. I will be there momentarily." I ordered, transmitting the coordinates that Frenzy had sent to my SIC.
"Yes, my lord." Starscream replied, before leaping into the air, transforming into his F-22 alt mode, and shooting off into the sky.
Once Starscream left, I started a frameshift back to my jet mode.
I looked to the dam, where humans were perched, and my optics zoomed in, seeing the various expressions on all of their faces. Fear, wariness, terror. Dozens of similar emotions flickered across all of their faces as my body shifted back to its Cybertronian form.
"Decepticons!" I roared into my comm as my plating settled back into my jet mode. "MEGATRON HAS RETURNED!"
I received a roaring cheer from my comm as the Decepticons on earth made their voices known to me, and I laughed at their enthusiasm for my return. With a final chuckle, I leaped into the air, then transformed and blasted off into the sky.
"
My lord." Blackout commed.
"What is it?" I asked.
"
During our mission to find you, I found an interesting bit of information while searching for information of your whereabouts. Commander Wreckage is alive."
"Wreckage? I am surprised he still functions. Where is he?"
"
He is located in a secure facility fifty miles west of the dam, and was imprisoned similar to how you were. I am currently on the way to the city to stop the Autobots from absconding with the Allspark, but I was wondering if you would like to add one more soldier to the ranks. Wreckage may give us an edge over the Autobots."
"I suppose Wreckage would be more inclined to follow if he sees his own leader rescuing him… I accept. Transmit the coordinates."
I banked to the right, and readjusted my course, with only one thought on my mind.
'I just hope those humans haven't scrambled Wreckage's processor like they tried to do to mine.'
AN: Hope you enjoyed!
