Irruption

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Title: Irruption
Rating:PG-13
Continuity IDW/Megatron Origin
Characters: Megatron, Soundwave
Wordcount: ~1200
Time: 1:45
For tf_speedwriting  advent calendar prompt 'scenario: entrenched during a long-running seige'
A/N: Part of the idea for this came from a random comment saeru  had made to me once, that Megatron in MO was originally supposed to be some sort of secret weapon (but that that part of the story got dropped in the actual MO plot). 

 

 

 

“Report!” Megatron barked, striding down the labyrinthine corridors that twisted under the defunct arena.  He had been to inspect the recent damage from the heavy shelling.  Autobot tactic—long range artillery. Soundwave could see his irritation at their refusal to come out and fight, choosing to lob heavy ordnance from a distance. But, well, after he had single-handedly defeated Sentinel Prime’s Apex system, not many were foolish enough to face him in combat.

Soundwave trailed behind him, face a bland mask. “It is a common tactic that the Council authorizes,” Soundwave said, coolly, as if he were not at all betraying his former allegiances.  “They simply blockade their enemy off and starve them out.”

“Cowardly,” Megatron said, barely turning his head.  He was aiming for the room they had set aside for combat planning—crude maps tacked to the walls, lit entirely by simple chem lanterns.  Their power had been cut off solars ago. He had done with less in the mines. 

“Perhaps, but it is the way they fight.”

“It is NOT fighting,” Megatron hissed.  “In combat, we can defeat them.”

“They clearly know that.”  An eloquent shrug, wasted on Megatron’s back.  “Which is why they turn to such tactics for victory.”

“Victory,” Megatron spat, crossing the threshold to the planning room.  “Paltry victory.” He turned to face Soundwave, his face beginning to show signs of strain.  Not from the limited resources.  Not from the darkness, but from sheer frustration. 

It struck Soundwave as an important key. Should he ever need it. “Effective.  Survivors are few and broken.”  Soundwave had sat through enough Senate meetings to know their thinking with an almost intuitive ease.  And if that wasn’t enough, he had the former Senator himself, Ratbat, thrashing away in his chassis compartment.  The more upset Ratbat was, the more accurate Soundwave knew he had been.

“Sounds like what they did to us at the mines.” Megatron’s mouth twisted at the memory. 

“The strategy is not…dissimilar.”  Ratbat howled silently against Soundwave’s cortex.  “A way of…stifling dissidence in general.” 

“It,” Megatron said tightly, “Did not work.”

“They were not counting on you.” No one was.  Soundwave had been surprised himself.  There had been…limited discontent around the closure of other energon mines, but nothing like what Megatron had started.

And had continued with a meteoric record of success that had blazed a light across the darkness of the lives of those in the lower zones.

Megatron was something unknown.  Impossible to predict, impossible to prepare for.  Impossible, as Megatron himself well knew, to defeat in combat.

Which was why the ragtag remains of the Senate were trying so hard to starve him out. They had had their moment of ‘victory’—Megatron, bound, in chains. They had been running that image nearly nonstop on what few news outlets that were still operational. As if it still meant something. As if only the first half of the story mattered. They ruthlessly suppressed news of the breakout, of Megatron's rising strength. Of Sentinel's defeat they said only that it was a 'temporary setback'.

A narrative they could not control, however.  Even the story of Megatron, even the image of him brought low, did not deter.  If anything, it raised discontent, stirred more potential troops.

Soundwave had seen it coming, and chosen.  They had not, and blundered along their own path. In a way, that was also choosing: refusing to change, refusing to adapt.

Adaptation, Soundwave knew, always meant survival. Movement was life; stagnation was death.  And Megatron knew this too, which was why he was chafing, nearly raging, at this forced stagnation.

Megatron grunted, turning to study his maps, blunt fingers tracing out existing tunnels, known blockades.  He was unaccustomed to praise, and Soundwave did his best to inure him to it.  Soundwave had seen—firsthand—the damage done by someone who took empty words of praise too seriously, too solidly.  Megatron would learn to face praise and blandishments with the same quiet stolidity with which he had borne insults and injuries.

“Where is my air support?” Megatron glowered at the map.

“Free of the tunnels,” Soundwave reported. “Starscream had speculated that they would be a more useful asset with unfettered movement.”

“Unfettered,” Megatron echoed.  “He has perhaps…too much freedom.”

Soundwave approved of Megatron’s mistrust.  A leader must trust his subordinates…but not too much.  A truth he was already learning. A truth Senator Ratbat had forgotten.

“He has his uses. And a certain native political cunning.”  Soundwave would grant the white jet that much. Starscream's knowledge was hot, quick, intuitive. Much different from Soundwave's own aloof coolness.  And Starscream’s craftiness was another thing Megatron must learn, if only to arm himself against it.  They had all fallen for political manipulation before—even Soundwave, long ago. 

“And what use are they to me?” Megatron asked.  “Politics are…irrelevant now.”

“Politics are never irrelevant,” Soundwave said.  There was an old saw, one that Senator Ratbat had sneered at, that war was simply politics with clearer battle lines.  Ratbat wasn’t sneering anymore.

Megatron jutted his lower lip, disliking being crossed, even as he acknowledged Soundwave’s point with a nod. “But he needs to be…more useful.”

“Would you owe a rescue to him?” 

“Yes,” Megatron said.  “I have trusted him with all of our fates before. He has not let me down.”  He turned to a list of active mechs, optics furrowing as he tried to divide them into teams. Combat, actual combat, was a skill long dead on both sides, but Megatron was proving a quick, if methodical, study. As if he were born to it.

Simple, Soundwave thought. A miner’s thinking. And, perhaps, a soldier’s reasoning.  Something Soundwave himself could not comprehend—but his wisdom was in realizing that much, drawing a boundary between what he knew and what he could not plumb.

And that was, in essence, what drew him to Megatron—that he could not figure him out, could not predict him, could not manipulate him.  Megatron…did not bore him.  As Ratbat had, and so many others before him. He had seen something he could not grasp, even that first meeting, when Megatron was merely a promising profit for Ratbat’s graft.

“Shall I contact the tetrajets?” Soundwave surrendered. 

Megatron thought for a moment, his optics shifting from staring at the roster to staring at his hands.  A miner’s hands, and a killer’s hands. Hands that did, and did not know fear.  Hands that hated idleness.

“No,” he said.  “They think of me as a warrior.  But they forget I am a miner.” 

“Were,” Soundwave said.

“Am.  We might change, but we don’t shed what we have been. I can never leave behind what I learned there,” he said, his deep voice filling the room.  His hands clenched into fists.  He looked up at Soundwave. “Get me a map of the surface.  Every miner knows that putting pressure on the bedrock causes irruption.”

Soundwave inclined his head. “Yes, Megatron,” he said, quietly.

“We shall take the fight to them. I, for one, am sick letting them set the terms of the contest.  I am sick of hiding.” He said the last as though the word were an obscenity.

Comments

[oni-gil.livejournal.com]

*squirms in delight* Now I know what I should have asked for back when you were letting people toss requests at you. Gaaah I love your MO stuff. (*rabidly loves MO*) Especially the parts with Ratbat squirming. >3

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Ratbat, that jerk. :P

MO really is one of the best things IDW's done, and definitely my favorite of their G1 things (Reign of Starscream will always be my all time fave IDW!)

Glad you liked!

[oni-gil.livejournal.com]

Oh, he is. *crunches him*

I add another 50 points to your overall awesomeness score, because we share tastes in comics. MO and RoS were the first comic books I ever bought (yes, in my whole life)!

[gunmaxual.livejournal.com]

*squeal*

I adore the tie-in of miner to fighter. It's not a side of Megatron much explored after his meteoric rise to power.

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

It's really fascinating to play with. One way or another I don't think you forget that kind of history.

I'm glad you liked! :D MO is my favorite Megatron.

[ithilgwath.livejournal.com]

...I like this. A lot. I could totally feel Megatron's charisma just bleeding through all of Soundwave's observations.

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

He is strangely charismatic, and I can't figure out exactly how or why. (I think I'm like Soundwave in that respect). Glad you liked! :D

[ithilgwath.livejournal.com]

Yeah... you just know that dealing with him is handling a deadly snake... yet you find yourself wanting to hold on all the same... ..._{he's using hypnotism! Like Kaa from the Jungle Book!} o_o

[chibirisuchan.livejournal.com]

oh purrRRRRRRRrrrrr. This one kind of feels like the flip side of Ratchet's rant-about-miners fic to me -- a medic sees it as senseless destruction, but Megatron sees it as necessary reshaping of the currently unacceptable infrastructure of the world. And he just oozes charisma here, even though setting out to impress anybody is the farthest thing from his mind. prrrrrrrrrr.

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Someone's got to stick up for the long tradition of miners! (Flies Welsh flag)

It's an interesting metaphor, mining, because it's at once a sort of refining--separating useful or valuable from useless and valueless--but it's also, in a sense, eating the planet from the inside out.

[not-your-gun.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite things about this Megatron is how no-nonsense he is...and you've really captured that perfectly. His plans are simple, but have a deeper complexity that is, in essence, just simple steps thought ahead to their logical conclusion.

What interests me the most about this is Soundwave's point of view--the way he interprets Megatrons actions, and especially the reasoning behind why he follows Megatron. It gave me a little shiver to think of Soundwave being fascinated by him because he isn't boring in a world filled with the predictable.

And, as I said before, I really appreciate that Megs still acknowledges his roots. <33

Thanks so much for sharing this with me!

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

I think Soundwave considers himself Megatron's mentor, in a way--there are things he knows that he knows Megatron doesn't. And part of his interest is that I imagine he got treated differently by Megatron than by Ratbat, who was always a bit dismissive of him. He definitely saw something in Megatron that caused his loyalties to shift.

It's interesting and sort of sad to try to track Megatron here to the character in AHM and beyond.

I'm glad you liked it! :D

[bymycalculation.livejournal.com]

*nodding* There's so many worlds of difference between Ratbat and Megatron--and Megatron is out to change Cybertron, not just having petty personal goals. It's...neat to see. Impressive. And what Soundwave has to contribute for Megatron has so much greater impact. Better to be lieutenant to the world than Secretary to a politician.

Personally I love drawing parallels between Origins and AHM megs, because they DO feel like an extension of each other. Both have this morbidly certain ability to predict the actions of their foes and be ready for anything, and both can read people so well. But...you're right. It's kind of sad to see how fighting the war tempered him into cold steel--he's not a Megatron to pal around with, and he's not a Megatron who can easily acknowledge he's wrong, anymore.