Work Text:
Fortress Maximus’ defenses aren’t what they used to be, Megatron muses as he strides down an empty side corridor. Its armaments had certainly been bolstered, almost excessively so, courtesy of the current Magnus, but in his haste to double the size and number of cannons he’d seemingly overlooked much-needed upgrades to the security grid. Shockwave’s old bypass codes had worked like a charm.
The former spy’s intel had been accurate, it would seem— the corridors and guard postings of the Autobot stronghold are conspicuously depopulated. In preparation for some sort of “mandatory formal gathering”, Shockwave had reported, using information gathered through one of his still-intact backdoors into the Elite Guard secure channel, which would make it all too convenient for them to stage an infiltration to purge the Fortress’ memory cores of all useful tactical data regarding the Decepticons.
Megatron had deigned to do this himself in part because he trusted no one else to complete such a sensitive mission, but also partly out of boredom. Since his trial and subsequent escape, hostilities between the two factions had solidified into an icy cold war, with only the occasional flare of vicious fighting. A direct blow to one of the hubs of Autobot command would be as entertaining as it would be humiliating for his foes.
Quickly cross-referencing the schematics on his HUD, he frowns. The memory cores should be located in Sector 61B on the first sublevel. Following the directions, he should have been close, but the nearest wall plaque indicates this is office block 27B. Had he gotten turned around?
With a low grumble, he turns, only for his audials to pick up on the sounds of voices from further up the hall. While he’s certainly amenable to the idea of crushing a few Autobot helms, he’d rather avoid detection until necessary. He accesses the door to the nearest vacant office, finding it unlocked, ducks inside— literally, as the Autobot-size doorframes hardly accommodate his stature— and shuts it behind him. No sooner does he do so, however, is he rudely and suddenly made aware of the fact that the room is, in fact, not vacant after all.
“MEGATRON!”
Of course it had to be Optimus Prime. Since their first encounter, the wretched Autobot has seemed determined to make his functioning a living Pit. Through what can only be the whims of the Ancients themselves, he seems to encounter the firetruck everywhere he goes, taking each and every opportunity to stand in his path like a particularly stubborn speedbump.
He’s had other formidable opponents in the past, bots larger and stronger and far more ruthless, but none with such sheer single-minded determination. It would be almost admirable if it weren’t so irritating.
He turns his back to the door to face the other bot with a snarl. “So, it seems you still function, Optimus Prime. Allow me to do you the favor of remedying that little condition.” He draws one of his swords. In response, the Prime glowers, tightening his grip on his…lamp…?
Upon second glance, it is, indeed, a light fixture he is wielding. Which isn’t immediately too strange— the Prime in question has proven himself quite handy at improvisation— but it’s odd enough that it causes Megatron to pause his battle protocols and call the situation into question. Why is Optimus Prime at Elite Guard headquarters? The most up-to-date intelligence on his military career suggested that not only had he been barred from their ranks once before, but that he had declined to reapply when the ban was lifted upon his return to Cybertron with Decepticon prisoners in tow.
Moreover, where are his weapons? Why has he swapped out his usual garish colors for silver and white, and his bulky plating for armor that looks far more decorative than practical? Really, you’d think he was—
Megatron feels his optics cycle so wide he thinks the lenses might pop out.
“…ah.”
Because really, what are you supposed to say to your arch-nemesis on his ‘junxing day?
Optimus glares at him through the fine mesh veil he also somehow hadn’t noticed until just nanokliks ago, “What do you want, Megatron?”
Megatron realizes he looks like a colossal idiot, pointing his sword at an unarmed bot in full bonding regalia. In an attempt to regain some semblance of control over the situation, he sheathes it and crosses his arms. “None of your concern, Autobot. Merely taking a little stroll.”
A flat, unimpressed look. “Through Fortress Maximus?”
“Just a bit of sightseeing.” He grins. “It has been a long time since I last visited my home planet, after all. Perhaps I’ll stop by the Metroplex next.”
“You’ll do no such thing!”
“Or what?” He takes a step forward, allowing menace to fill his voice. “Speak wisely, Prime; I would so hate to make your future bonded a widower before the ceremony’s even begun.”
He watches Optimus take a step back, still holding the floor lamp as if it were the staff of his axe, optics flicking to and fro. Doubtless he’s already attempted to raise the Guard on comms, only to find the signal blocked, courtesy of the short-range signal scrambler Megatron keeps on him, and he has no way out of the room save for the door currently blocked by his nemesis’ rather sizeable frame. It would be so terribly easy to offline him here and now.
Which is precisely why he won’t. There would be no sport in it, and it would be a dint upon his honor as a warrior if his troops ever got word.
A voice that sounds suspiciously like Starscream’s howls in the back of his processor that he’s being a fool for not offlining an enemy while he’s got the upper hand. He kills the voice as swiftly as if it were the real thing. All whilst internally cursing out Shockwave for having failed to mention that the unspecified “formal gathering” was a wedding, let alone whose!
“Rest assured, however, I will not be extinguishing your spark this solar cycle.” With a sneer, he adds, “I would not want to deprive your future conjunx of the lifetime of misery you’re certain to bring them.”
“How generous of you.”
“Yes, I’d like to think so.”
An odd silence falls over the two of them as they stand there, neither seeming to know what to say or do next.
Megatron turns his helm, for the first time really taking in the contents of the room that aren’t the office furniture and the bridegroom-to-be, which turns out to consist of a sad little stack of boxes sitting on a table and nothing else.
“...rather meager dowry, is it not?”
“It’s all I have, ” the Autobot snaps.
“Hm.” Again, he finds himself at a loss of what to say. This is not the Autobot Prime who greets him on the battlefield, axe and wits sharp and gleaming. It isn’t as if he’d never considered his greatest opponent in the last millennia might be a mesh-and-energon Cybertronian, too, somewhere under the battlemask and the bluster and all that heroic nonsense, but he hadn’t expected to encounter him like this, visibly stressed and exasperated and for all appearances just an ordinary civilian on their bonding day.
He suddenly feels very awkward.
“So, who is the unlucky suitor?”
That earns him a scathing look. “Don’t you have a “little stroll” to get back to?”
“Not at the present moment,” Megatron says, pushing aside the internal chronometer pop-up informing him of how many cycles he has remaining before the rendezvous.
He expects another snarky comment. That’s how things go, with the two of them. Instead, Optimus just exvents deeply and slumps back into the chair he must have been sitting in before Megatron burst in.
“I don’t know.”
“Come again?”
“I said I don’t know. It’s this— new thing Sentinel is trying. He thinks he can avoid another Longarm if all ranked officers are in enduring bonds with each other.”
Megatron thinks his processor might actually overclock itself trying to work out the logic of that decision.
“That’s idiotic.”
Optimus’ head jerks up to meet his optics, the veil jangling as he does so, “I know!”
“Then why in the Pit have you agreed to go along with it?”
The firetruck’s gaze drops again, and he mutters something too quiet for Megatron’s audials to pick up.
“Speak up.”
“It’s so I can stay a Prime.”
Megatron resets his optics once. Twice.
“Elaborate.”
“There’s not much to say. Sentinel’s been looking for any excuse to demote me since he got instated. The Council won’t say anything because they never approved of me getting the title in the first place. If I get conjunxed to another Prime as part of this initiative—”
“You’ll have to remain at equivalent rank.” Megatron finishes, begrudgingly impressed. “How very Decepticon of you, to leverage others for power.”
“That’s not what I—”
“No need to be so humble, Optimus. For once, you’ve earned my sincere and genuine respect.”
“Oh, frag off.”
“Truly! Which is why I shall do you the favor of ending this farce before it begins.”
Optimus does not move from the chair, but does very slowly and purposefully reach for the lamp he’d previously set down. “I’m sorry?”
“An enduring bond is not something to be trifled with so carelessly, Optimus Prime. I cannot allow my arch-nemesis to bind his frame and spark to some mediocre excuse for an Autobot, least of all one selected by your so-called “Sentinel Magnus”.”
A short, frustrated huff, “What, are you going to offer yourself in his stead?”
“Obviously not. But seeing as you apparently cannot bring yourself to risk your precious rank, I’ll take this into my own servos.”
“What do you m— Megatron? Where are you going? MEGATRON?”
Later that solar cycle, from the comfort of his quarters back on the Nemesis II, Megatron settles back to peruse the newsfeeds. His optic catches on a very short, very terse bulletin issued by the Office of the Magnus of Cybertron, stating that the conjunxing of two Primes (one an honorary Prime, the bulletin stresses, unnecessarily) had been called off indefinitely due to “a large and violent explosion” destroying the bonding hall, which is one of the more polite things Megatron’s been called.
There are no pictures attached, which is a shame; he would’ve liked to see the image captures of himself fighting Optimus Prime in the wreckage, the latter still in ceremonial armor, veil and all, having reclaimed his axe from one of the dowry boxes. It had been a great fight, too; his shoulder pauldron still smarts a little.
The use of enduring bonds to maintain loyalties. Really? If anything, that would have made things even worse. It was becoming increasingly obvious that there was only a matter of decacycles before that big-headed Magnus either ran the Autobot faction into the ground or he was deposed by a coup.
Judging by the peculiar gleam he’d seen in Optimus’ eye as he watched his former friend rave and ramble, the latter might be coming sooner rather than later.
Truly, he muses, closing the feed and returning to the datapad on which he’d been researching the ritus for inimica endurae, there was just no helping some bots.