Chapter Text
Megatron was once a gladiator. He was the Gladiator. The Gladiator of Kaon, unbeatable in the arena. He had faced the closest thing to Predacons the Cybertronian Golden age had, and he came out on top.
All this considered, said and done, when one of Starscream’s new… pets skittered up to him and smiled, he flinched and belatedly pushed down the urge to jump off the Nemesis as a whole.
“Now,” Starscream cooed, optics alighting red in sadism. “That’s not very nice of you all. Come now, come now! Here, ah, Purgatory.”
The scraplet that had hobbled up to Megatron—disgusting, nightmare of a thing—immediately spun around and hopped back to Starscream. Purgatory. Purgatory.
Megatron felt somewhat faint.
Starscream… named a scraplet… Purgatory.
“Starscream,” Megatron hissed. Starscream glanced up at him, sadistically amused. Megatron did not share in the sentiment. The throne of the Command Deck could only hold so much weight, and if he stayed atop it longer, it might just—
The throne creaked. Megatron’s spark stuttered. It gave out. He landed on the floor in a fashion most humiliating. Starscream collapsed with laughter.
“Starscream,” Megatron groaned and righted himself comfortably. Not-so-subtly, his fusion cannon was humming with a level of power only previously reserved for the early days of the war when his feud with Optimus Prime was fresh and there were far more Autobots to kill. “What are you doing, you imbecile?!”
At once, all the scraplets lounging on Starscream’s frame turned to him in synchrony. Megatron felt a deep, primal part of him shiver. Starscream merely pouted. “Don’t call me that,” he whined, so very clearly amused despite the overwrought complaining tone. “I don’t like being called ‘imbecile’. It makes me feel… angry. Hm?” Starscream grinned sharply, and Megatron wanted to strangle him. “You wouldn’t want me feeling angry, now would you?”
The scraplets, in unison, blinked. This time, Megatron shivered quite visibly. No. This was not the right route to go with Starscream. The power dynamics had shifted. Megatron took a step back and reassessed. Starscream, all of a sudden, seemed to go up in priority.
What do I need to know? Megatron’s processor whirred, all the efficiency of his time in the arena coming back to haunt him in a way most potent. What should I say?
The lights of the Nemesis blinked, and then it came to him.
“The Nemesis, Starscream.” Megatron implored. It sickened him to use such a seemingly submissive tone, after his time in the Pits, but with 600 scraplets staring him down, the bitter pill was quite easy to swallow. “The scraplets you have taken a fancy to… In the end, they still consume metal.” Megatron rose, and his frame was nothing if not regal with every step. “Trypticon would be… ah, betrayed.”
Starscream, as expected, stiffened at Megatron’s words. His wings fluttered anxiously, ever so expressive, and his optics darted around. Hm. Megatron should start pushing…
Starscream’s grip tightened on the scraplets.
…Now.
“Truly, Starscream.” Megatron stepped forward, siphoning more energy to the fusion cannon. Should a single scraplet move… Well, Megatron was no Seeker, but he was quite good at killing things. “Did you not care for him? Is this the extent of your so-called Seeker bonds?” Megatron stopped in his advance, close enough to have his shadow looming over Starscream, far enough to allow him time to react should the scraplets jump. “My opinion of you grows ever-lower.”
Starscream hunched over, and his wings drooped. The scraplets all buzzed over him, this strange, deviant, nightmarish monstrosity over his frame. Then, he perked up. “Scraplets!” he announced, “If any of you eat Trypticon—the Nemesis—I will eat you!”
The scraplets paused in their motion, and seemed to confer with each other—an absurd sight that made Megatron shiver—before they seemingly agreed. Starscream met Megatron’s optics then, insufferably smug. “Scraplets do not need to eat.” He murmured. “They are the damned given form. Parasites of living metal, to crave warmth they never attained. There, Master. How about it? I fixed our problem, didn’t I?” he sneered.
Megatron bared his dentae. Seekers, he thought darkly, and their silly little superstitions.
There was little other thing a scraplet was, than that of a parasite. All this belief of them being the spirits of the damned in the early days of Primus and Unicron was… stupidity. Still, Megatron was wise enough to hold his glossa. He doubted Starscream would truly send the scraplets after him—the fool Seeker craved Megatron’s approval far too much, after all—but Megatron did not want his endeavors to be harder than they already were.
“Can I have them eat Airachnid?” Starscream suddenly questioned.
Airachnid, who failed at her singular task of getting off the ship, squawked inelegantly. “No! Lord Megatron! Master, tell this—this wretch to—” she couldn’t quite string words together. Megatron stared at her blankly. Treasonous wretch, he thought dully. Disloyal to the cause, disloyal to me. Then, he turned to face Starscream.
“This is the one concession I grant you.”
Starscream’s faceplate brightened and his wings fluttered. Long since had the stage of verbal exclamations of happiness passed for them both, but Megatron, straining his audials, could hear a slight hitch in Starscream’s vents. “Much obliged, Master,” Starscream purred. And then he whipped around to point haughtily at Airachnid.
The femme stepped back.
“Go!” Starscream screeched, “Feed!”
Airachnid dropped all pretense of loftiness now, and she immediately shifted into her altmode to gain distance. Unfortunately, Megatron noted with a small amount of amusement, It is as Starscream said. Her vehicle mode lacks…
The scraplets launched at her, and tore an arm off upon impact. Airachnid screamed. Starscream and a few Eradicons cheered them on.
…thrust.
Airachnid stumbled away from sight, and a few moments later, Soundwave walked up to Megatron, perching on his data cables. “Lord Megatron,” Soundwave used Starscream’s intonation. Megatron’s derma reflexively twitched down. “Airachnid—is falling—body—unrecoverable.”
A myriad of voices assaulted Megatron’s audials, some Cybertronian, some these strange fleshling songs they played on the electromagnetic waves of the earth. Megatron grimaced and rubbed his forehelm. “Yes, Soundwave.” He bit out tiredly. “Much appreciated.”
Of course, this was exactly the moment Starscream decided he wanted attention. “You always appreciate him!” the damn Seeker whined. His wings flared out, “I’m the one who threw her out!”
“Yes, but you didn’t terminate her, did you?” Megatron patronized, only to stiffen imperceptibly at the scraplet that hobbled up to him earlier—Purgatory? Was it?—slowly turned its own bulging optics to meet his own.
As it was, Starscream didn’t notice the action, and merely sulked, wings drooping. “I terminated the Autobot Cliffjumper,” he reminded.
Before Megatron could reply, the doors to the Nemesis Command Deck flung open and Knock Out came strutting in, blue streaked across his chassis and faceplate set into an annoyed glare. “Yes, Kommandant, we get it, you’re pretty, now can you shut up about it?”
Starscream bared his dentae. “I would watch that finish if I were you, Knock Out,” he threatened, optics dark. The scraplets returned from the vents where they attempted to track Airachnid through the sky. “It is so easily ruined…”
Knock Out, sufficiently cowed—and whether it was by the numerous scraplets now surrounding Starscream’s form or the fact that the Seeker himself (regrettably) outranked him, Megatron did not know—shrunk back and whispered. “What in the Pits.”
Starscream seemed to be enjoying himself, lounging back on his pseudo-throne made of scraplets. “Well, Knock Out?” he purred. “Do continue.”
Knock Out visibly swallowed and shook his helm. “I was merely… asking what the commotion was! Yes! What was the commotion about?”
Megatron sighed. “Airachnid left the Nemesis,” he informed with no preamble. Knock Out stared at him in shock. Megatron felt compelled to add, “Through an escape hatch. Five minutes ago.”
Breakdown, who entered not too long ago, covered in red paint streaks, looked vaguely nauseated. “Our altitude is 4000 kilometers…”
“5000 kilometers,” Starscream corrected idly, toying with a scraplet on his wrist. It looked demented. Megatron wanted to tear it apart.
“That…” Breakdown seemed to be torn between disgust and ballooning happiness. The happiness was winning.
“Well I say good riddance!” Knock Out snorted. “No one liked her, anyway.”
A few brave Vehicons and Eradicons piped up their agreement. Soundwave, when Megatron glanced at him again, was perched on the topmost remnant of Megatron’s broken throne. Which he broke. By sitting on it. (Waste of a throne. A disappointment to its Decepticon heritage)
Megatron shot Soundwave a perfunctory glare and Soundwave responded with a smiley face. “Starscream,” he addressed. “You are responsible for those scraplets. If anything—anything goes wrong on this ship,” He turned and narrowed his optics. Starscream, as usual, shrunk back. Megatron felt a lick of satisfaction curl his fuel lines. “You will be the one to take the fall.”
“Wha—But Master!” Starscream’s wings were hiked up high, equal parts affront and panic gracing his features. “I am your Air Commander, not some—not some glorified repair-bot—”
“I did not ask you for arguments, Starscream,” Megatron cut in quietly, dangerously. “I did not ask you at all. This is an order. Do you understand?”
Starscream pressed his dermas together with a nod, his wings fluttering in a series of imperceptible emotions, and Megatron, remembering the pile of scraplets around Starscream, considered and added, “Good Seeker.”
Soundwave dropped the box he was picking Laserbeak out of. Knock Out stopped and turned to Megatron, staring at him incredulously, and then analytically, as if trying to pick out the processor malfunction from a distance. Breakdown audibly choked. But Starscream?
Starscream’s optics widened. Starscream’s derma started twitching into a smile. Starscream held his stupid little parasites close and murmured something under his breath. Starscream looked more loyal to Megatron in that singular moment of praise than he had in the past two-and-a-half million years.
And then, of course, the moment broke as the emotion covered up with a haughty flare of the Seeker’s wings. “Of course, Master,” he simpered, and Megatron wanted to strangle him yet again. “I am, after all, your only competent Seeker.” The pointed glare he sent Megatron’s way was an extremely unsubtle method of dissing Dreadwing while he was absent.
Megatron, on a normal day, would have powered his fusion cannon against Starscream. However, this was not a normal day, and Megatron’s gaze was strayed more often than not by the many, many scraplets surrounding Starscream’s frame, so, with patience worthy of the Primes, he held his glossa and merely glared Starscream into submission.
“Heh.” Starscream cowered, “I will be… taking my leave now… Master…”
O~O
Starscream… did not quite know what was going on. 600 scraplets followed behind him, some flying, some fighting. They all blinked up at him with their stupid, cute optics, and Starscream found himself crooning and cooing like an idiot over them before he could stop himself. “Listen,” he purred, “My babies. My cuties. My beautiful little idiots.” He ignored Knock Out’s snort. “If I find a single hole in any part of the Nemesis, in Trypticon,” he made sure to make optic contact with every scraplet he could, “I am going to eat you. Understand?”
The scraplets all nodded excitedly, absurd little dentae whirring with a nightmare-inducing noise. Starscream smiled fondly. “And no eating the Decepticons,” he added, after a moment of thought. “The spark-recycling system is long and arduous and the more we cycle back the drones’ sparks into cold constructs, the more ineffective soldiers we have.”
The scraplets seemed to wilt. Ah. It seems they were planning on consuming the Decepticons. Hm. “Don’t worry,” Starscream assured, gathering as many close as he could, and hugging them to his chassis. They snuggled over his spark chamber. It was a perilously adorable scene. “There are many, many fleshling buildings in this world,” he cooed. “And I care about absolutely none of them.”
The scraplets all perked up. Starscream stood on his own and cleared his throat. “Onward, minions!” he shrieked, before grabbing Princess and Purgatory—his favorites—and placing them on his shoulders. Princess bared her dentae and smiled ferally (more so than normal scraplets) while Purgatory shyly hobbled in place.
As the mob of scraplets skittered through the hallways of the Nemesis, traumatizing any poor Vehicon and Eradicon (except for one, who cooed over them the same way Starscream did), Starscream found his processor floating back to the praise Megatron had bestowed upon him earlier.
“Hm.” It took all he had to not glance back. He knew his gaze would be imploring. Stupid. Humiliating. Begging for more praise.
…Starscream had truly thought that such a mech was gone. That Megatron would never say that to him ever again. Starscream had truly thought… he was chasing a ghost.
(And he might as well have been, what with the sour expression Megatron had when he gave the praise itself)
Still, Starscream’s wings fluttered in pleasure before he could tamp them down, that small mech inside him that still looked at Megatronus like he hung the stars and sun and moon in the sky. I want… more.
And so, a terrible, dastardly plan started cooking in his processor...