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Megatron looks across the waste of the battlefield, a violent wild joy radiating across his flame. The scene is chaos: mecha flung this way and that, limbs strewn across the energon-soaked sand. High above, the burning white stadium lights give everything a stark appearance, and every swung weapon glints blindingly in their glare.
He hears the whining servos of a mech behind him, their intakes wheezy with exertion or pain. It matters little. Megatron whips around, sword arm whistling in a wide arc, and feels the satisfying crunch of the mech’s torso give way under the weight of his swing. The mech hardly has a moment to let out a binary shriek before Megatron is pulling away and spinning again, this time to separate helm from shoulders.
It rolls in the sand, the light of blue optics fading behind dark smears. Megatron grins and licks an errant spill of energon on his lip. The taste burns his tongue.
And so it goes on, the never-ending dance of survival. A mech screams as Megatron separates servo from limb, helm from body, sword arm burning hot from friction as it tears through metal and fluid and whatever else stands in his way. And it never satiates. It’s never enough. The more he wins, the more he craves another body to tear apart with his bare hands. Vents tearing through his intake, burning hot as they go, not enough to cool the overworked joints holding his armour together. But he cannot make himself stop, he’s like a starved mechanimal. The hatred in him has no end, and the violence never ceases to feel like a satisfying shuddering expression of that — and so here, in the gladiatorial arena, he bears it all to the crowd, that black hole inside him of anger that never seems to run out.
Megatron glances around, venting savage. Through the steam and smoke and wreckage, it takes him a good moment to realise there’s no-one alive in the arena. All there’s left is him, the rapid rise and fall of his chest, and the energon dripping down his blade arm. The thrum of his own spinning spark is too loud in his audial receptors for him to hear the crowd until it hits him, all at once like a wall of sound.
It takes Megatron a moment to realise his optics are wet. He blinks the tears away — so strange — and lets his head hang low as he catches his breath, his arm relaxing at his side. As his frame cools down, he feels the weight of it return... The helplessness. The fury. The frustration. The humiliation.
Commentators crow about Megatron’s victory over the tinny speakers to the cheering crowd above. The energon splatters covering his frame begin to grow sticky as they cool, and he feels sick to his stomach. What a good show he has put on. What a merry dance he has led.
His feet lead him up the rusted stairs to the podium they’ve risen in the centre, now the carnage is complete. The arena owner takes Megatron’s arm and holds it high in victory. Megatron fantasises about tearing his own armour off, imagines the agony of it, and feels, for a moment, absolved.
The black hole hungers. He grits his teeth.