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D-16 shot Orion Pax. Megatron, Cybertron’s newborn savior, let him fall.
Orion Pax didn’t re-emerge from the pit where Megatron left him. Optimus Prime did, with the Matrix of Leadership in his chassis and words of banishment spilling from his glossa.
Optimus Prime looked like D-16’s friend. Same face (if a bit wiser looking), same voice (if a bit wearier sounding). But whatever he was, he wasn’t D’s fallen brother. Megatron knew that painfully well.
Because Orion Pax had decided to haunt him.
The war room hastily installed in an old building at the heart of Kaon wasn’t much to look at. Neither was the rest of the once-abandoned city, really. But the fortifications made it ideal for defense against Decepticon enemies, and to its credit, the war room itself made up for in function what it lacked in style. Sometimes Megaton found himself lingering in the seat that crowned the multifunctional conference table after meetings, using the solitude to refine his plans.
Or at least, the war room usually settled into solitude. So when the gentle voice of a dead mech spoke in his ear, it caused his spark to drop in more ways than one.
“What are you doing here?”
Megatron leapt off his chair in an instant, whirling around and pointing a quickly charging arm cannon at the shadowy corner beside him. Something in his chassis twisted at the sight.
“D?” asked the voice of Orion Pax.
The stone-grey mech held up an arm in surrender. Only one arm. The other still probably lay in whatever hole it had fallen into, and in its place gaped a hole D– Megatron had unwillingly burned into his processor. Singed at the edges, the blackened cables still feebly flickered.
“What the frag are you?” asked Megatron, his cannon still pointed at the creature’s spark.
The thing tilted its helm. “You know who I am, D.”
“That’s not my name,” Megatron hissed, at a loss for anything better to say.
“Your name is D-16,” it insisted. “We're best friends—”
“Don’t mock me! What kind of Autobot trickery is this?!”
It frowned. As his gaze trailed up its face, Megatron expected to meet the piercing blue optics he had grown to hate so much. Instead, the sockets were dark. Empty. Like the creature didn’t have any spark at all.
“No Autobot trickery here,” it said softly. “Just me.”
“I’ll repeat myself, then: what the frag are you?”
“My name is Orion Pax,” he said.
“Impossible.”
“Why is that, exactly?”
“Optimus Prime,” Megatron said, nearly spitting the name, “is commanding the war effort out of Iacon. He’s probably sitting in some boardroom somewhere, waxing poetic about loyalty and honor to sycophants that cling onto his every word.”
Pax nodded, his frame slumping slightly. Megatron looked away, unable to meet the empty sockets.
“If you aren’t– if this isn’t the result of Prime, then…”
“Then…?”
The bolt from Megatron’s cannon hit far above Pax’s head, but when the flash cleared, he was gone. Not even a body.
Starscream burst in moments later, guns at the ready. “Lord Megatron! I heard a shot!”
The silver mech stood still for a moment, staring at the smoking patch of black wall before tearing his optics away.
“There was an intruder.”
“Did he escape?” Starscream said, his voice glitching with intensity as he guardedly looked around.
“I took care of it.”
“Where is he?”
“I took care of it,” Megatron repeated with a growl. “Are you questioning my ability, Commander?”
Starscream took a long moment to respond, weapons gradually deactivating his weapons as he gazed at Megatron slyly.
“Of course not. Sir.”
The Autobot spies collapsed to their knees with their arms cuffed behind their backs. Two of them: a red, horned mech that looked familiar to Megatron and a pink femme he definitely recognized from his time as a miner.
“So the Autobots have finally begun sending espionage missions. Took Prime long enough. I was beginning to think he had grown incompetent,” Megatron said, leaning back on his throne. His cannon lay extended on his lap in a lazy threat, but that was probably overkill. The severed wings of Sentinel Prime spreading like a halo behind him did the job well enough.
“Don’t you dare–“ the red bot began before a nudge from the femme cut him off.
“It’s just the two of us,” she said instead. “We went AWOL. Don't blame Optimus for our mistakes.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Megatron responded, “but thank you for telling me that no one will be looking to recover your bodies.”
The air tensed with malice alongside the click of Decepticon weaponry ready to fire. As the spies hunched in, the mech’s whispered “Great going, Arcee!” sarcastically resounded throughout the silence.
Which must have been why Orion decided to start talking.
“Another execution without a trial, D?”
Megatron’s head whipped up, the gory grey sight causing his tank to churn. Had the wires in Pax’s arm always dripped energon like that? Had the residue staining his face always made him look so mangled?
He opened his mouth to retort, words dying in his throat as he realized the gazes of the troops still lay fixed on him. Not even a twitch from his forces at the new invader.
He seemed to read his mind. “They can’t see me. Only you can.”
“I don’t have time for your idiocy, ghost,” whispered Megatron. Soundwave, stationed just to his left, turned his helm inquiringly.
Orion’s sorrowful laugh stabbed directly into his spark. “Is it idiocy to not want our friends to die like me?”
“It is none of your concern,” Megatron retorted. A bit louder this time.
“We know these guys, D. You rooted for Cliffjumper in the first ever Iacon 5000 we watched together! And Arcee worked nearly as hard as you did, remember? Down in the mines?”
“You are traitors to the cause of Cybertronian independence! By allying yourselves with the corrupt Prime, you have marked yourselves for death. I expected better from a bot who suffered under the tyranny of Sentinel’s deceitful primacy.” Megatron wasn’t entirely sure whether he addressed his words to the spies or Pax.
Arcee clearly thought he aimed them at her. “Optimus has done more for Cybertron than you ever have! He–”
“I freed us from the oppression of the false prophet!” Megatron snarled. “Your leader is too weak to understand that!”
“Oh, D…” Orion sighed. “You made the wrong choice.”
“Shut up!”
The Autobots exchanged a glance. “Neither of us—“
“Throw these traitors into confinement!” shouted Megatron. “Soundwave, with me.”
“Affirmative.”
As a few Decepticons dragged the prisoners away, their leader headed to the private office behind the throne room. Soundwave’s steps echoed behind him along with, regrettably, the softer sound of Orion’s pedes.
As the door shut behind the trio (duo to anyone else), Megatron allowed himself to lean heavily on his desk. “Soundwave, you’ve been with the High Guard longer than anyone else, correct?”
“Nearly,” the blue mech answered, his deep voice as unreadable as ever.
“Did the Primes ever encounter anything resembling…”
Megatron swallowed. “Ghosts? Or similar phenomena?”
As he paused, most likely scanning his memory banks, Orion made a disappointed noise in the corner.
“Shockwave:” Soundwave answered, “proposed a hypothesis on the subject. Evidence: inconclusive.”
Sighing, Megatron waved him away. However, he remained in place.
“Report status.”
“I’m fine,” the silver mech answered more harshly than he intended. “Why would I be anything else?”
“Starscream–”
“You’re not fine,” Orion interrupted, though Soundwave continued to speak as though nothing had happened.
“—strange incident—”
“—decided to kill your friends—”
“—rumors—”
“—you used to be so noble—”
“Enough!” Megatron snapped with enough force to force the blue bot a step backward. He pinched the bridge of his olfactory sensor. “That’s enough, Soundwave, I get the picture. You’re dismissed.”
From the brief moment of hesitation in his frame, Megatron got the feeling that Soundwave knew more than he cared to let on. But at this point, the leader had grown beyond caring.
“Affirmative, Lord Megatron.”
The dead bot watched him go, then approached the desk. In life, his gait had been smooth (even more so after receiving a t-cog), but in death, he walked with erratic, almost puppet-like footsteps.
“You’re a bad leader,” Orion said plainly.
“I’m a better one than you are,” Megatron growled, not entirely sure why he bothered to argue. “Even if the body that resists me has a different soul.”
“You said it, not me.”
“And I’m certainly better than Sentinel.”
“Are you?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Megatron asked, shooting a startled glare at him.
Orion gave him a melancholy look. “You tell me.”
“Sentinel mutilated us!” he thundered, slamming a fist on his desk. “He created a caste system to keep himself in control and give the efforts of our labor to the Quintessons! I know you couldn’t stomach an execution, Pax, but I was merciful compared to what he deserved!”
“And what have you accomplished besides killing people you disagree with?” Pax asked.
Megatron growled. “I ought to have aimed for your helm instead of your arm.”
“Do you really think you can solve all your problems by shooting them?”
“At least I would have had some peace and quiet.”
“Not true. I’m always with you, D.”
Pax placed a servo on Megatron’s shoulder, and the silver mech flinched. For a ghost, the freezing touch felt uncomfortably real.
He raised an arm to smack Orion away, but before he could, the ghost had gone.
“Shockwave.”
“Yes, Lord Megatron?”
The Decepticon scientist barely looked up from the terminal he tapped away at. Kaon was, in many ways, less advanced than Iacon, but Shockwave had expressed confidence in his ability to wring some use from the old tech. Sometimes Megatron thought he cared more about it than the cause, unpleasantly enough.
Pax had started following him more consistently, and now, he stood practically close enough to touch. Mocking him.
“Soundwave informed me that you’ve done some research on the paranormal?”
“Oh.” Shockwave stilled his servos. “Yes. But that was a long time ago when I was a much younger mech.”
Megatron resisted the urge to roll his optics. “I don’t care how old you were. What did you conclude?”
“There wasn’t much evidence,” he answered, “and what existed could easily have been interference from the Primes’ natural mysticism. I abandoned it as a waste of time.”
“What did you really expect?” asked Orion, his gaze sad. Had there always been tracks of energon drying on his cheeks like that?
“Without any true Primes clouding the results, your experiments are sure to be more accurate. I want you to restart the project,” Megatron said.
Shockwave squinted in suspicion. “And why is that, exactly?”
Casting a long, cautious glance around the empty room, Megatron leaned in.
“Something’s been haunting me,” he said quietly.
Orion sighed.
“Many bots complain of paranormal activity,” Shockwave said dryly. “Nine times out of ten, there are completely mundane explanations for their so-called ‘hauntings.’ As is logical.”
“This isn’t just slamming doors and cold vents on my neck,” Megatron insisted. “I’ve seen the ghost of Orion Pax. It’s spoken to me!”
Shockwave leaned back, surprise flickering in his optic. “Lord Megatron, the idea that a still-living mech is haunting you would be most illogical—“
“Orion Pax is dead,” said Megatron, gripping the scientist’s shoulder. “I know that now. Optimus Prime is merely puppeting his body.”
“Yes. Okay. Well…“ Shockwave said, seemingly struggling for words, “have you considered hallucinations? Receiving Megatronus Prime’s transformation cog may have impacted your processing units. If you would let me study—“
“I’m not hallucinating!” Megatron snapped. “You can’t see him, but I can. He’s practically on top of you right now!”
Shockwave looked to where Megatron pointed at Pax (who now sat atop the terminal). It didn’t take a genius to figure out that they saw different things.
Orion shook his helm, fixing Megatron with that empty gaze. “All you’re doing is making your followers concerned for your health. Starscream won’t even need to spread any rumors at this rate.”
Shockwave turned back to Megatron. The leader didn’t like his sudden look of shrewdness.
“Lord Megatron, if your symptoms continue to persist, I would recommend consulting Knock Out.”
“He thinks you’re crazy,” Orion said, hopping off the terminal to look closer at Shockwave, “but Elita would have believed you. Bee would have. Even your inner circle is disloyal, D.”
“I’ve told you that isn’t my name!” Megatron snapped.
“What—“
“Shockwave, I wasn’t talking to you.”
The scientist clearly considered speaking but thought better of it. Orion’s optics held only accusation.
A blaster shot hit Megatron’s right. He responded in kind, arm cannon at the ready as he ducked and activated his t-cog. Living metal crunched beneath his tires, and an unidentified Autobot shrieked.
“Bad form,” tutted Orion as he sat atop the tank. While the Decepticon couldn’t quite see him, he knew instinctively that the ghost looked out over the battle happening on Cybertron’s surface.
Megatron took a shot at the distant form of Jazz. Missed.
“You saved his life, and now you’re trying to snuff it out?” the ghost said.
“I didn’t ask for your input,” grumbled Megatron as he swerved to avoid a blast from Ironhide.
“You’re inviting it with stunts like that,” Pax retorted. “I see Cliffjumper over that ridge, it’s kind of you to let the prisoners escape."
“Stop distracting me!”
For a brief moment, the smoke and dust of the battlefield cleared. Megatron transformed into bot mode, looked around, tensed. There he was.
“Prime!”
Optimus Prime turned from his scrap with Thundercracker, optics widening as he glimpsed the charging mech. As Thundercracker (wisely) flew off, the two leaders crashed into each other, and the Decepticon found himself blasting on instinct.
“Megatron—“ Optimus panted in between attempts to hit him, but he cut him off.
“What did you do to me?!”
The blue and red mech’s optics narrowed as they exchanged blows. “What are you talking about?”
“You know perfectly well!“ Megatron grunted as he parried a fist.
“You already know he doesn’t,” Orion interjected as he stood deathly still beside them.
“I do not know what you speak of,” Optimus said in an unintentional mimic.
Megatron managed to knock his legs out from under him.
“Liar! Who else could create such a perfect ghost?!”
Optimus just barely jerked out of the way of Megatron’s fist as the silver mech held him to the ground.
“Ghost?”
“Don’t act so innocent!”
“He isn’t the one that shot me,” Pax said.
Optimus blinked. As Megatron had gradually gotten used to the ghost’s presence (as much as he could anyway), he had grown to expect its sockets. Hollow, dark, decorated with freshly dried tear tracks. But as he gazed into the ever-familiar blue of Optimus’s optics, he realized they had grown too piercing to look at.
“Old friend—“
“Do not call me that,” Megatron hissed. This time, the punch made contact, and he felt something crack beneath his knuckles.
“My name—“
Crack.
“is Megatron—“
Crack.
“and you aren’t Orion!”
Optimus looked up at him, his battle mask damaged enough to reveal the face below. Megatron hated it. Hated him.
His fist connected with the Prime’s cheek again, but when he pulled it away, it was Pax’s gaze that met his.
“Do you regret what you did?” he asked.
“I don’t regret anything.”
“Wasn’t the cost too great?”
“It needed to be paid!”
“Aren’t you tired?”
Before Megatron could hit Orion in a feeble attempt at an answer, Optimus’s face returned with the suddenness of a curtain being pulled back.
He gripped his wrist weakly. “What has rattled you so deeply?”
“I’m sick of Pax’s voice constantly in my ear. Talking to me like things should have been different,” he said, cursing the way his voice shook. So far off the edge that even his mortal enemy showed concern. Weak.
Those blue optics burned with something infuriatingly like pity, and he realized with a horrified jolt that hot tears had begun to roll down his face.
“I just want some quiet!” Megatron continued to shout. “Why won’t it leave me alone? Do I need to rip out your spark to finally have some peace?!”
“We have both changed,” his enemy said gently, “but I am as much Orion Pax as you are D-16. Whatever is affecting you did not come from my spark.”
With a swift movement, he jumped back to his pedes, leaving Megatron kneeling on the ground.
“The battle is won,” Optimus said, looking around at the quieting field. “Your forces are retreating. May our next meeting be under better circumstances.”
Megatron sent a poorly aimed cannon blast at him but didn’t pursue when the Prime transformed and drove away. He could barely even gather enough energy to stumble back up.
Turning, he spotted Starscream staring at him a short distance away. Megatron knew how it looked—a fight with Optimus that resulted in barely a scratch and tears on his face—but he didn’t care. Orion’s cold servo on his shoulder felt much more real right now.
Starscream must have been a theater actor in another life because his voice easily projected from the throne room into the office behind.
“Megatron is no longer fit to lead the Decepticons!” the second-in-command screamed to the crowd of soldiers he had gathered. His voice, still easily glitching at the slightest provocation, held all the grandeur of Sentinel Prime’s old speeches and then some. “The strain of leadership has caused the young bot’s processor to crack! Not only has he been hallucinating the ghosts of traitorous wretches, but his pathetic will has cost us battles! He’s lost to Optimus Prime with barely a fight!”
Megatron sat at his desk, nursing a helmache as Orion sat on the floor across from him. The ghost stared but didn’t speak; he had grown much quieter after the encounter with the Autobots.
“Only I, Starscream, have both the strength and stability to lead our forces to victory!”
“Are you going to try and stop me?” Megatron asked the ghost bitterly.
The wires in Orion’s arm sparked. He didn’t move. Sighing, Megatron stood and stalked to the door separating his office from the throne room.
“Follow me, and– Lord Megatron!”
Starscream’s voice ended with staticky shock as he flinched at the sight of his leader. Megatron crossed his arms, unimpressed.
“You spread treasonous rhetoric amongst my soldiers and then have the audacity to call me ‘Lord?’”
“I–” Starscream said quickly, “you heard all that?”
“It was hard not to.”
The Seeker paused, clearly considering his options, and then his optics narrowed.
“I speak for the betterment of the Decepticon cause, and I stand by what I said. You’ve grown weak,” he said stubbornly.
Megatron activated his arm cannon. “Care to put that to the test?”
Without a moment’s notice, Starscream launched himself forward. The Decepticons let out a gasp, though if it was of excitement or horror probably depended on the individual. Orion’s dark gaze looked up from the crowd.
The fight ended in moments. Even with the element of surprise, Starscream failed to anticipate the sheer, cold rage Megatron felt for his second-in-command. Cold rage that sharpened his abilities into precision rather than spilling out like it had in his fight with Optimus.
And so before he could consciously think, Megatron found himself with a pede on Starscream’s chassis and his cannon pointing straight at his spark.
“I expected more from the former leader of the High Guards,” he said with a note of near-disappointment in his voice. He clicked the cannon on.
Starscream’s optics widened, and his voice short-circuited in panic. “Megatron– Megatron, please–”
The cold servo of Orion Pax chilled his shoulder, but he didn’t bother to look up. For once, he begrudgingly agreed with the mech’s silent condemnation.
The blast hit just to the right of Starscream’s helm, close enough to stain the Seeker with threads of black. To his credit, he didn’t flinch, but the shock in his crimson optics said enough.
“Despite your often complete lack of sense,” Megatron said, addressing his words to both the bot below him and the ones watching, “the competence you show against the Autobots has earned you my mercy. But that won’t hold true if you, or anyone else, try this again. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Megatron could see in the way Starscream’s denta gritted that the title hurt to say. But the discipline would hold strong, for now.
After watching him stumble back onto his pedes, Megatron turned and headed out of the throne room. The silent crowd parted before him like wires splitting beneath a knife.
A large ravine closed off Kaon’s west side from the rest of Cybertron’s surface, one of the features that made it such a good base. Not only did it limit Autobot options in the chance of an invasion attempt, but it also made a perfect dumping ground for less-than-valuable POWs. Sometimes, Megatron found himself traveling to the spot to think—usually during sunsets when he pretended that the bitter nostalgia created by the sight was merely determination.
He stood just by the edge of the ravine, servos clasped behind his back as he stared at the fiery pink and orange. Orion stood just beside him, his wires brushing his arm.
“You did a good thing,” the ghost said quietly.
“If you’re commending me, then I must be doing something wrong.”
“You and I both know your conscience is on the lacking side.”
“Conscience is what weak bots use as an excuse to avoid doing what needs to be done.”
“Like killing me?”
“Here’s the thing…”
He looked to the side, into Pax’s optics. The tear tracks had long since dried, but that didn’t make his face look any less empty.
“I’ve known Optimus Prime,” Megatron said slowly, “for as long as he’s existed. The false savior is a lot of things, but a liar is not one of them.”
“What are you trying to say, D?”
Shaking his helm, Megatron felt his gaze darken. “If he says he used to be Orion Pax, then I believe him.”
“All that means is that he believes what he says.”
“You sound like Starscream.”
“Do I?”
Megatron ignored the question. “But if he’s Orion Pax, that means you’re…”
Orion gazed steadily at him but chose to let the implications linger. They both understood what it meant.
“What are you going to do?” Pax asked.
“I’m going to mend an error from our past.”
The ghost didn’t flinch when Megatron’s arm cannon activated, didn’t flinch when Megatron moved behind him. Didn’t flinch when he pointed with cold determination at the crescent in his chassis. All he did was turn his back to the ravine and face Megatron.
“Sentinel isn’t here this time,” he said.
“I know,” Megatron responded.
“Do you wish things had turned out differently?”
The silver mech went silent, taking a moment to mull the question over.
“The only regret I have,” he said finally, “is letting you hold me back.”
A dim ringing filled Megatron’s audial receptors as he took the shot. It traveled a familiar path through Pax’s gaping emptiness but didn't quite connect with metal beyond the brushing of a few exposed wires.
Nonetheless, Pax fell backward, the impact causing him to lose his footing against the ledge. Time slowed for a brief moment, and he stared into his sockets. There was no shock, no betrayal like there had been the first time. Only sober resignation.
Megatron didn’t stretch out a servo to catch him. All he did was watch the grey bot fall. There would be no core to catch him this time. No Matrix of Leadership to revive him into something more than himself.
When Pax had fallen too far to see, Megatron turned his back—on the sunset, on the ravine, on the ghost—and headed back to the Decepticons.
D-16 lay at the bottom of the ravine alongside Orion Pax.