re_alignment | [Broadcasting from the tallest peak he can find in the junk pile.]

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!event: glyphless

[Broadcasting from the tallest peak he can find in the junk pile.]

[Someone has been through this before. Someone knows this drill. Someone has worked very, very hard to finally make it back to his Cybertron, only to find it all wrong. Again.

Someone probably has destroyed a few piles of junk in their anger.

However, someone also has paid attention to the communications on the network, and has ventured to the 'temples' that were mentioned, and has found them locked against him.

This someone is not surprised.]

Listen closely, and listen well.

[It is time to act. The feed opens with a closeup on Megatron's faceplates, optics blazing red, the scant remnants of gladiator paint still burned onto the metal.]

This is not where we belong, and I am done with this.

I am done with waking up to see an unfamiliar sun obscuring all-too-familiar stars. I am done with strangers being cast from world to world. I am done with mechs-who-would-be-gods so graciously patronizing us by allowing us to remain while simultaneously enforcing unethical segregation and I am done, finally, with the thwarting of destinies that I and my allies have slaved, toiled, and died to create.

You can listen to those who make the rules here if you desire to. I have heard a song like theirs, before.

Or.

[He flashes, briefly, a datapad that seems to have some sort of schematic on it--a schematic that looks (to those who are familiar with them) like a complicated space bridge.]

If you are 'done' as I am, you can help me.

I am Megatron, and I will deliver anyone that joins me to their rightful homes.

[A single, pointed tooth is visible in the smirk that finally dawns on his face. His interdimensional portal had only worked, once, but with the right mechs he would see it to completion again. Immediately.]

I guarantee it.

~~~~~

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

But Wing is not a Decepticon. [Therefore, he's not within the chain of command.]

And a field commander would also need to be a Decepticon, Deadlock. To have a team. To accomplish goals. To build a new and greater Cybertron.

Nothing says I need separate you from the mech you've worked so hard to live up to.

I could take you both. Keep him from returning to his time and meeting with his fate.

Give you a purpose, again.

I know. I don't want him to become one.

[It's an admission that he knows, all too well, how convincing Megatron can be.]

How do you know that your vision is the 'greater Cybertron' we need?

[Oh. Ouch. ]

He could stay here and live. Which is better than the risk of going anywhere with you.

I have a purpose, Megatron. To make right what I ruined before.

I know you don't.

I know you don't want to see him fall, the same way you see yourself having fallen, prey to twisted ideals... [He knows it from the other end, but that is enough.]

But I have not yet lost those ideals, Knight. I still believe in a changed Cybertron...a whole Cybertron...and I, alone, have seen what ill the future brings.

I can avoid it.

I will avoid it.

I will keep my promise.

And you....

You can keep your purpose.

[He laughs.] But I still doubt Wing will let you go alone.

Your ideals, Megatron. Own them. [Drift struggles to master the distress. This was Megatron, who knew him all too well. ]

[He can't hide the laugh, almost familiar, almost fond. ] You think you can fight the entire weight of history. [Only Megatron would have such arrogance.]

Let that be between Wing and me. [He'll cheat if he has to, to keep Wing safe, and live with the loss. ]

I may have given them names, Drift, but the ideals of choosing one's life for oneself were not mine alone. Nor were many others.

[He likes that laugh.]

I'll admit it would be easier with allies.

Will you come?

But that's only part of what we believed. 'Peace through tyranny', Megatron, wasn't that your goal? Conquest because we were 'superior'.

[Remember? Drift does. Deadlock does.]

Allies. Is that a new word for you?

[Suspicious, wary? Drift has reason to be.]

We will take what we can. [He acknowledges that.] And thus the strongest will inherit Cybertron. The most deserving. The most capable.

[He smirks.] Which I'm told leaves plenty in the dust of our exhaust. I've had it cautioned to not underestimate my foes, and with as many humans as I've met... [Primus, he was never going to set foot on earth. It was a death trap.]

I've learned a piece of that lesson.

And 'allies,' no. Not a new word. Better than 'friends.' [Friends, who just when you make them, tend to get exploded. Or deported. Or consumed by darkness. It has not been a good few years for friends.]

But there is no double-standard with them, either. No betrayals. You know where you stand with a Decepticon, and you know how to gain respect.

[He bares a tooth.] Don't tell me you don't miss it.

What about those whose skills aren't in butchery? They're not important? They're not capable? What society can you build that's made only out of killers?

I prefer friends. A friend will tell me when I'm wrong. An ally might just part ways. [If Drift knows nothing else, he knows this distinction. Which is why he values Wing so highly.]

What I miss...isn't important.

You can't.

[He's listening to what you have to say. He's heard this before, but that does not make it less correct.]

You can't build a society with only warriors, but you can't win a war with gardeners, Drift. There has to be a war.

There has to be a world after the war, as well.

A world where 'friends' might be a possibility, once more.

[He leans closer to the screen.]

Which is why it is important.

Tell me, Deadlock.

It might make a difference.

Does there? I know they wouldn't have listened to us any other way, but we could have stopped.

We should have stopped before it...changed us.

[He can't figure out when that would have been. But there had to have been a moment they could have turned aside.]

[There's a slight in-vent at the screen at the name. Only Megatron could know how much that name meant to him: it was his first real possession.]

[His mouth twitches.]

I miss the power, of course. The respect of the gun. But it was false, all of it: fear, not respect.

Can we?

I intend to try, but what shall be my meter? How will I know when it's 'too late?'

For me, it all must crumble. When there's not enough left of the problems that came before, then, and only then, will there be a foundation to begin anew.

It will be easier to build, however, if I know when to stop. [This is an intense stare.] That's where Wing comes in.

It sounds like you've had to tell yourself that many, many times Drift--when you know that fear is only half of it. There's an admiration of power, as well...a driving ambition that pushes us to be our best.

When you care more about results than the methods.

You remember Zeta Prime. When you are like him you're too far.

[Drift shakes his head.] That's impossible, Megatron. You can burn the world to cinders, but you'll never have a clean foundation.

Because we'll always remember.

[Drift shrugs.] I never had that admiration. [His mechs feared him, but they never respected him and definitely never liked him.]Only felt it once.

Zeta...

No. I do not remember him, but I remember Sentinel.

I remember Sentinel turning a blind optic to the massacres, and focusing instead on ruining the livelihood of mechs barely surviving in the underground.

I remember, and we shall always remember, as you say. We'll remember that, and we will never return.

[Never to that. Only to something new. Something better. Anything had to be better.]

When was that?

[He gives a wry snort.] You killed them both.

We'll also remember what we did in your name, Megatron. You don't put war, and the bitterness that fueled it, aside that easily.

Trust me. I've seen after the end of the war.

[A shrug.] You should remember that, at least. And if not...you will.

Then we stopped them, as was needed. I do not regret doing that.

Even if Sentinel did not die by my hands the night that we burned Kaon. I held back, then. [To make a point, but still.]

You put aside your bitterness, though, Drift. You put it aside enough to join up with the very mechs who hurt us. Who demeaned us.

Do you have any cleaner solution? Shall I not return to Cybertron, and leave it to Sentinel Prime?

That was probably the only time you held back, Megatron. Why then? Why not again?

[He sighs.] Because I saw what we let ourselves become. And I saw what the Autobots were becoming. And I couldn't do anything on my own.

[He sounds...dissatisfied.]

I can't answer that question, Drift. Sparring him was the last action I performed before I was pulled from my world.

[He doesn't know why he does what he does in the future. There must be circumstances. Sentinel must not have learned.]

You wanted to, though, didn't you. You wanted to be able to make a difference somewhere.

[He sees your dissatisfaction, and he factors in the helplessness that Decepticons had felt--the action that had been so easy to spur in them because they needed something to do to better their lives.]

Then you don't know you merely made an even bigger monster.

[It had been easy to feel right and justified fighting against Zeta Prime.]

I want no one to have to do what I've done. Any of it.

No. I don't. Tell me.

[He wants to know.]

I find it difficult to believe that, Drift. I believe that you hate what we become, but I can't believe that you think we weren't justified to begin with.

The Clampdown. The Decepticon Registration Act. There were rumors about the Institute.

[Just for a start.]

We paid too high a price...for a hand full of cinders, Megatron. Tell me that's worth it.

I remember those...

But they had been present before me.

[He doesn't know what he could have done to prevent them.]

What do you think I'm trying to prevent?

What else would you have me do?

Some of them, yes. But they were all, in short order, turned against us.

And then Zeta Prime decided to sacrifice an entire city to his weapons. Thousands of innocent civilians, not like you or me who chose the badge, who willingly took the danger, killed.

Leaders view their soldiers as numbers, statistics, force multipliers. Anything but actual lives. Zeta did. And you as well.

Find another means than killing, than terrorism. Use your power to break away, not merely break. Maybe do what the Circle of Light did, and just...leave.

[He listens, soaking this information about his potential future in. So Zeta would be Prime, before Optimus...not that it mattered. It changed nothing who was Prime, except that he knew who he'd have to dispose of and when.

And Drift...isn't telling him anything new, in a way, but also is.]

Cybertron...is my home. [He says it carefully, after a bit.] It is our home.

We don't exactly have the resources to leave it for elsewhere.

[They'd need energon, for one.]

A home that we--all of us--spent more time destroying than trying to fix.

We let hate blind us, let our old hurts make us selfish.

Yet we had resources for a war. [Skeptical? Yes.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Broadcasting from the tallest peak he can find in the junk pile.]

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