Metamorphosis: Chapter 25

[wyntir_knight]

Chapter 25
Disclaimer: This is a work of Fanfiction. The Transformers and all characters are property of Hasbro and Takara, and licensed to IDW. I do claim ownership of my Original Characters, and any similarity between their names and those of existing characters in Fanfiction or Canon is purely coincidental. I make no profit from this work.



Megatron strode out of the shuttle and toward the pathetic little building that was acting as the Great Hall of the Decepticon Empire. With a swiftly aimed shot, he blasted the door off its hinges sending molten stone and metal flying in all directions.

“Decepticons!” he roared. “Report!”

“What the frell?!” Octane yelled from within the building.

“Who in the Pit slagged our door?!” Astrotrain demanded as he stepped out of the hall. As soon as he saw Megatron he stopped dead in his tracks. “Oh,” he said dumbly.

Octane backed out of the door, examining the damage, but not paying attention to anything else. It wasn’t until he backed into Astrotrain that he took his eyes off of the hall and saw Megatron.

“Oh shi-”

Megatron cut the tanker off, raising his cannon and firing into Octane’s shoulder.

“Where are the rest of you?!” Megatron demanded, looking around the plaza. “I demand an explanation for this … insult!”

“Lord Megatron?” Astrotrain asked. “But I thought that -”

“You thought what? That I was that fool Galvatron?” Megatron demanded.

“Well … yeah,” Astrotrain said lamely.

“Well you thought wrong!” Megatron growled. “Now where are the rest of my troops?”

Swindle suddenly flew over a nearby pile of rubble followed closely by Dead End. The two combiners transformed mid-flight and skidded to a halt in front of Megatron. Before either could speak the rest of the Decepticons began to appear out of buildings and from behind piles of rubble. Whispers began to fill the air as the Decepticons came to stand around Megatron, Skywarp, and Thundercracker. The troops all carried looks of amazement, renewed hope, and bellow it all, guilt.

“Silence!” Megatron called out. “I want one of you to explain this to me! You are Decepticons! And yet you have been brought down this low?! By an impostor?!”

“Lord Megatron,” Astrotrain began, “we thought you were still leading us! It’s not our fault that--”

“Not your fault that what?” Megatron demanded as he closed on Astrotrain. “Not your fault that you believed me an idiot? Not your fault that you blindly followed an incompetent fool?”

Megatron slammed his fist into the side of Astrotrain’s head, sending the triple changer tumbling.

“I expected better of you,” Megatron said, calming from his fury. “Galvatron abandoned you here. You had the opportunity to follow a new leader, and yet I still find you on this husk. What have you been doing?”

At this, Swindle stepped forward.

“We were weakened from lack of fuel, Lord Megatron,” he explained. “Only the triple changers had the means to seek out fuel sources. And when they returned with energon, they distributed it sparingly.”

“You are telling me that you, Swindle, did not have the ability to get fuel?” Megatron asked as he approached the jeep. “I had thought better of you Combaticons. I had thought you Starscream's one success.”

“I had the ability,” Swindle said tightly as his gestalt-mates came to stand behind him. “It's the means that I lacked.”

Megatron paused, looking closely at the assembled gestalt, noticing the exhaustion and hunger etched on all their faces. Suddenly he turned away and threw his head back in a laugh.

“Ah, yes! I see!” he said as he approached the triple changers. “It's truly ingenious! You deny fuel to your strongest competition, thus ensuring no attempts on your position.”

“Yeah, that was the plan,” Octane said as he pulled himself upright. “Do you really think it's ingenious?”

“Now, which of you came up with it?” Megatron asked, ignoring Octane's question.

Astrotrain stepped forward with a smug smile. He opened his mouth to speak, but was knocked off balance by Blitzwing, as the tank pushed his way to the front of the crowd. Astrotrain was about to protest, but then he saw the dark look on Blitzwing’s face and he thought better of it.

“I came up with the idea,” Blitzwing said.

“No he did-” Octane began before being silenced by a slap to the back of the head, courtesy of Astrotrain.

“So you did this?” Megatron asked.

“Yes,” Blitzwing replied.

“Good. Now I know who to blame for this debacle,” Megatron said. “You and I will discuss this later, Blitzwing.”

Blitzwing looked defiant and the other triple changers looked relieved. Megatron turned from them and back to the other Decepticons.

“Soundwave was the only one of you who was loyal to me,” he said. “But I will deal with all of you later. Right now our concern is the Empire and regaining what we lost. We begin tonight.”

The Decepticons cheered, eager to follow Megatron anywhere, until a soft voice broke though the din.

“Not to put a damper on things,” Dead End began, “but we don’t have enough fuel to do anything.”

“You will by the time I’m done,” Megatron said ominously.

x-x-x

Beltane Prime had been a system of little consequence for most of its existence. It sat at the far end of galaxy, too far from the major shipping lanes of have caught anyone’s attention. In fact, the only people who had ever shown any interest in Beltane Prime were a handful of xenoscientists who came to study the strange atmosphere and even stranger residents.

The Beltane Globes, as they came to be called, were at first mistaken as nothing more than atmospheric phenomena. Unlike most of the rest of life in the known universe, the residents of Beltane Prime were not carbon based. Instead, they were made up of a strange mixture of ammonia and methane. The atmosphere was just as caustic as the residents, and no one ever spent much time on the surface. Then, just as even the xenoscientists began to lose interest, a form of high grade energon ore was discovered deep within Beltane Prime, and suddenly the Globes found themselves far closer to the trade routes than they had ever been before. And thanks to the combined oddities of weather and atmosphere, the planet and its refining stations were considered safe from piracy. And up until now, they were.

Megatron stood on the deck of the Shade’s Vengeance watching the strange green-pink world that rotated lazily below. This insignificant little world would be their salvation, and the architect of that salvation was a mech he considered to be a traitor to the cause.

He heard the doors to the bridge sline open followed by the distinctive treads of Red Eye and Swindle. Thundercracker, Skywarp, and Soundwave already stood near him, watching the approach of the two mechs.

"Tell me what I need to know, Red Eye," Megatron ordered.

“I’ve done all th’ research, Lord Megatron,” Red Eye began nervously, “and with our present power level, I can’t come up with a way for us t’ storm th’ surface. The atmosphere is just too caustic for us t’ manage it without massive casualties and not enough of a payoff.”

“That is not what I wanted to hear,” Megatron growled.

“I knew you wouldn’t like the news, so I spoke with some of yer troops and we think we’ve come up with a plan that’ll let us get th’ fuel while stayin’ safely up here,” Red Eye said.

“Elaborate,” Soundwave said, coming forward to stand next to Megatron.

“I’m thinking that we might be able to get the Globes to energon up to us. It’ll end up taking slightly longer than you wanted to take, but the payoff will be bigger,” Swindle explained.

“And what will this entail?” Megatron asked, sounding bored.

“We need t’ convince them that if they don’t do what we ask, we’ll blow their planet up,” Red Eye said.

“Yeah, but this ship doesn’t have the kind of power needed to hit the surface, let alone blow the planet up,” Thundercracker said.

“And that’s where the con comes in,” Swindle said with a wicked grin. “All we need to do is convince the Globes that we do have that kind of power. We’ll need to send some troops down secretly to plant some high explosives on a few key structures, and we’ll need something to simulate a laser strike. But it should work.”

“Do you really think that these Beltane Globes are stupid enough to fall for so obvious a trick?” Megatron demanded.

“Well, yeah,” Red Eye said with a shrug. “They’re pretty much guileless, the lot of ‘em. They don’t do this sort of thing themselves, and they can’t fathom that anyone wouldn’t tell th’ complete truth. The problem seems t’ be that they’re not carbon based an’ they share a hive mind. They physically can’t understand how th’ rest of us think.”

“They’ll believe the con because they have to. They have no other choice,” Swindle finished.

“I will admit, it is an interesting idea. And do you have any idea of how to implement this plan?” Megatron asked.

“Well,” Swindle began slyly, “we would need you here to demand the energon, and we wouldn’t dream of putting your lieutenants at risk. And since the rest of your troops are dangerously low on fuel, we thought that the logical choice would be to send the Triple Changers down.”

“And the fact that you feel slighted by them has nothing to do with your recommendation?” Megatron asked with a smirk.

“Of course not!” Swindle gasped, feigning deep hurt at the suggestion. “I am only thinking of how best to serve you and your empire!”

“Yeah right,” Skywarp muttered, just loudly enough for Thundercracker to hear, but not so loud as to interrupt Megatron.

“It has promise, I will grant you that,” Megatron replied, ignoring Skywarp’s comment. “And I take it that you have mapped out potential targets?”

“Yes, M’lord,’ Red Eye said, stepping forward with a data pad. “What we need is targets that damage the infrastructure without risking our delivery. We need to put fear into them, make them understand that we aren’t bluffing.”

“Yeah, but we are bluffing,” Thundercracker said.

“Yeah, but they don’ know that. Or they’re not supposed to, at any rate,” Red Eye said.

“Which locations are to be targeted?” Soundwave asked, bringing a map of Beltane Prime up on the view screen.

“We need t’ hit one of th’ mid sized refining stations, one of th’ larger storage facilities, an’ a residential sector, just t’ show them that we mean business,” Red Eye explained as he pointed the targets out on the map.

“Refining stations?” Skywarp asked. “I though that the energon was waste by-product?”

“It is,” Red Eye said. “Just trust me, you don’t want a further explanation.”

Skywarp's face twisted into a look of disgust, causing Thundercracker to chuckle in dark amusement at his trine-mate's discomfort.

"Anyway, these strikes will provide maximum effect for minimum effort," Swindle said, drawing attention back to the map.

"The plan has merit," Megatron said thoughtfully. "Soundwave, get me Astrotrain, Octane, and Blitzwing."

Comments

[ladyrhiannon873.livejournal.com]

Awesome chapter as always.Can't wait til the next one.

[wyntir-rose.livejournal.com]

Thank you :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/__wilderness__/]

You know, I never actually thought I'd end up feeling sorry for the Triplechangers... *grins* But you've got me feeling sorry for them!

[wyntir-rose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and I think it's only going to get worse for the boys. I'm glad I succeeded in making them seem sympathetic :)

[lilyoftheval5.livejournal.com]

Ah, Megatron..., always knowing how to make an effective entrance.
Nice con you got going there, worthy of the Desepticons, no?

[wyntir-rose.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! I always thought that we never saw enough cons from the Decepticons. After all, why put all that effort into taking energon, where there are far more effective ways of getting people to give it to you willingly?