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They find the ship in deep space.
Deep, deep space. Beyond the Far Rim of the galaxy, where no stars or worlds are, with only the inky blackness of the vastness of space around them.
It is an ugly, jagged thing; barbed and sharp. It reminds Megatron, faintly, of the Nemesis—if he had less taste, of course.
Still, needs must. There is no life signal to be detected—and even if there were one, there wouldn’t be one for long, not with the firepower of the (less ugly) Nemesis and Megatron’s ever-dire need for supplies. He raises one arm, and Shockwave slows the Nemesis, until they hover there mere meters away so Megatron can take a good look at the ship.
Megatron squints.
It really reminds him of the Nemesis.
“I will call it Nemesis, so that all of Cybertron shall know their enemy,” Soundwave repeats in Megatron’s own voice. Megatron grunts in agreement.
It’s not too out of the question. Spacebridges are wormholes, after all. Sometimes instead of moving them across the galaxy, they can move them across realities.
Apparently a Megatron from another universe had terrible taste.
Megatron pauses. He thinks to himself, about the long long distance they’ve travelled—on the run from Optimus Prime (he sneers), on the run from the Galactic Council, on the run and so very very bored.
Curiosity is never a good thing. The alternate Nemesis could contain anything. It could contain scores of energon, weapons of unimaginable power. It could contain an even more virulent form of the Cybonic Plague.
“My Lord?” Starscream peers up at him, wings tilted up in anticipation.
Megatron grunts again.
Starscream beams.
-
They find energon. It tastes a bit funny—Starscream had been volunteered to taste-test. He had licked his dermas while Shockwave ran a cursory scan of him for any side effects. Starscream, upon minimal prompting, described it as “fleshy,” whatever that meant, and Shockwave declared it fit for consumption.
They also find weapons. Lots of weapons. Strange ones with stranger, otherworldly power sources. One had a strange red goo at the center and Shockwave had taken one look at it and declared it unsafe, but not in an excited way, but in a concerned way.
Megatron stayed away from that weapon.
Deeper still they find offlined stasis pods, their inhabitants gone.
And deeper even still, they find…
“Hatchlings?” Starscream tilts his head at the massive egg, twice his own size. His wings do a strange flicker, one that Megatron couldn’t read quite yet.
Is it Quintesson, perhaps? Megatron has seen the eggs of the Quintessons; smaller, of course, and less…fleshy. Less organic, instead a disturbing mixture of tendrils and mechanical matter. Perhaps another race or species? It’s impossible to say—here in the space between space, in a ship from another universe, there is no way of knowing for certain.
Shockwave appears and makes a strange, high-pitched noise. “Larva,” he says, and if his emotions hadn’t been carved down into cold scientific curiosity, Megatron imagines he’d be beaming with joy.
Megatron sighs.
Boredom will be the death of them all.
-
Megatron dislikes organics.
It was one (of many) things he had disagreed with Orion—Optimus about. Organic flesh was soft and malleable, prone to bursting and tearing at the slightest amount of pressure. Pathetic, really; how could something so squishy survive, when his fellows from the mines could not? What gave them the right to live and breed and suffer when everyone else around him, made of sturdy titanium and precious platinum collapsed and burst and burned? A frame could be rebuilt, made anew, but organics had only the one. And yet they lived and Megatron’s foes—his friends—died instead.
It made his dentae ache.
He has to admit, they have some uses. Mostly as cannon fodder. An organic species, no matter its use, is still a fleshy, fragile thing, and ill-suited for anything but. Something that would take down an organic being would be nary a scratch on a Cybertronian.
Megatron is pondering what to do with these…eggs, whether to remove them or use them or let them hatch and then fight all of them just to have something to do, when Soundwave makes a long screeching sound resembling a series of loud beeps of varying velocities and pitches, or perhaps a Cybertronian in an agonizing death throes (Megatron has certainly heard enough of them).
Megatron stares.
“Soundwave?” he asks.
“Species—identified,” Soundwave answers in multiple voices.
“Well? Is it Quintesson? Can we use it?”
Soundwave pauses. He waits for a good long while, silently, and Megatron wonders what in the hell can be so terrible Soundwave is reluctant to say anything.
“Species: Cybertronian.”
“What,” Megatron blurts out.
“CNA match: found.”
“To what? Cybertronian can’t,” he waves at the eggs, “lay eggs.”
Soundwave’s helm tilts minutely. “Oviposition: vestigial ability.” And Megatron never, ever wants to hear about Cybertronians laying eggs ever again, thank you. “Oviposition—”
“Stop saying oviposition!”
Soundwave waits a klik. “Egg-laying: dormant trait by select Cybertronian races.”
“What Cybertronian race can possibly lay eggs!?”
Soundwave waits one more klik, his data cables hovering in the air, opening and closing nervously. “CNA match of sire: also found.” Megatron gets the feeling he is about to regret the next words out of Soundwave’s visor, “to Megatronus.”
Megatron wheezes.
“Prime.”
Megatron’s processor stops. Prime? As in…Megatronus Prime? As in the Fallen himself?
Megatron had never particularly believed in Megatronus. Oh certainly he enjoyed the stories well enough—well enough to take them into his servos, to craft them and make them his own. But they were just that: stories. To believe in the Primes was to believe in Primus and Optimus could spout all of the religious nonsense he wanted to about that artifact in his chest, because Primus wasn’t real.
Megatron opens his derma, ready to refute his amica because the sheer thought is lunacy when Shockwave pipes up with “multiple tests run and confirmed. CNA displays abnormal traits consisting of extremely high amounts of Primal energon, known only to occur in Primes,” Megatron makes a disgusted noise, “and of previously-unseen levels of purity.”
Megatron opens his dermas. He closes it.
He stands there, blinking, for a full ten kliks, before he mutters an, “I see.”
Soundwave’s cables wave around more; Megatron recognizes it as Soundwave’s desire to give comfort and affection.
Shockwave, however, is oblivious to Megatron’s shattered atheism. “CNA of carrier has also been discovered,” he repeats.
“Oh,” he says faintly, still reeling from Megatronus Prime sired hatchlings, “and who was—is—these,” he gestures again, “eggs’ carrier.”
Shockwave turns to Megatron’s right, and looks down. Soundwave too, turns his visor in the same direction.
Megatron raises an optical ridge, and looks down.
Starscream blinks.
Megatron blinks back.
Starscream makes a squawking noise and runs.
“Seekers once capable of carrying multiple progeny,” Shockwave says, seconds before Megatron takes off, thundering after his second-in-command.