A distant world uncharted and unworthy of a name.
The sky is a sickly violet glow, clouds hanging low like infectious tissue stretched across the horizon.
It feels dead like everything that was once here is gone.
Among shattered stone and ruptured chitin lies a figure of metal and sheer will.
A lone Gladiator opens his optics.
For several Nano-Cycles, he does not move.
Purple lightning flickers far above, briefly illuminating the ruin around him. The ground is torn apart by deep wounds carved into stone. Acid has melted portions of the terrain into bubbling craters. Thick, viscous energon stains the earth and his armour alike.
Megatron rises slowly.
Servos grind. Damaged plating shifts. Torn cables spark.
His left pauldron is half-melted. Deep rents slash across his torso, exposing internal framework. Acid has eaten through portions of his forearm casing. Where the creature's last attack fused with Cybertronian alloy.
He looks forward.
The body lies where it fell.
The beast is massive even in death — six limbs twisted unnaturally, chitin split open, its torso cleaved nearly in two. Its flesh still twitches, spasming reflexively as though unwilling to accept death.
Its blood smokes where it touches his plating.
Megatron studies it in silence.
Then a low, satisfied rumble escapes his vocaliser.
"Impressive."
He flexes his servos. Pain ripples through his frame, sharp and invigorating. It has been cycles since something tested him so thoroughly.
Not since the pits. Not since the battle on the Ark, what a glorious battle that was.
Not since the days when survival meant tearing your opponent apart before they tore you apart, that was a true test of mech that was were he made his name.
He looks at the creature's head — severed cleanly, optics dim but still faintly glowing with residual bio-luminescence.
There had been intelligence there.
Not animalistic fury.
But a cunning intellect.
It learned as they fought.
His optics narrow.
Good.
He steps forward, planting his pede upon the creature's thorax. The exoskeleton cracks under the weight as he pushes his weight on it.
"This world breeds worthy prey, a surprise for sure how I wish I could breed this into my army."
Lightning flashes again, revealing the cavern entrance beyond the battlefield. Its walls pulse faintly with an inner glow.
Purple.
The same signature his scanners had detected before the ambush.
The Blood of The Chaos Bringer
His spark thrums at the thought.
He turns from the corpse and begins moving towards the cavern. Each step leaves faint scorch marks where acid residue drips from his armour.
Behind him, the dead creature finally stops twitching as it succumbed to its wounds.
---
Moments earlier.
The cavern had been silent.
Too silent.
Megatron advanced cautiously through a tunnel lined with hardened organic growth. The walls were not stone; they were layered flesh fused with mineral deposits, as though something had burrowed and reshaped the planet itself.
A low vibration trembled through the ground.
Then it hit him.
A wall of flesh and blade-like limbs burst from the ceiling, tackling him with crushing force. The impact drove him into the cavern floor hard enough to fracture the rock beneath.
"ARGHHHH!"
The creature's six limbs slammed into his frame, hooked talons scraping against armour seams. Serrated claws tore through plating, sparks bursting into the dark. Its inner jaw snapped inches from his faceplate, dripping saliva.
Megatron snarled and forced one arm upward, bracing against its neck. His other cannon arm shot forward blade flying out.
With a roar, he cleaved sideways.
Two limbs fell away in a spray of acidic ichor.
The creature shrieked not mindlessly, but in rage.
Megatron fired his fusion cannon point-blank into its torso. The blast hurled it backward, carving a molten trench through flesh and stone.
He rose, smoke curling from his armour.
"Impressive creature," he growled, rotating his shoulder as internal systems recalibrated. "What a fine beast you are. Your head will look magnificent mounted upon my ship."
The monster's optics flickered.
Not dull.
Calculating.
It adjusted its stance.
Then the second battle began.
Panels along its spine split open and a stream of pressurised acid erupted outward. The liquid struck Megatron's left pauldron, eating through metal in seconds. Armour bubbled and sloughed away.
Tentacles shot from its maw, wrapping around his cannon arm, constricting with unnatural strength.
Megatron's optics flared red.
"Disgusting."
He transformed instantly — mass shifting, components reconfiguring with violent force. The sudden transition snapped the tentacles free. In vehicle mode he surged forward, smashing into the creature and driving it into the cavern wall.
He transformed back mid-charge, blade already descending.
Steel met flesh.
He carved deep across its abdomen, splitting layers of armoured flesh open.
The creature lashed wildly, one claw punching through his side plating. Warning indicators flared across his HUD.
Pain.
Real pain.
Megatron laughed.
It had been too long.
He tore the claw free and plunged his blade through the beast's thorax. Acidic blood exploded outward, splashing across his chest and faceplate. It burned. It melted. It ate through armour as if Cybertronian alloy were nothing.
"ARGHHHH!"
He staggered, armour smoking — but did not retreat.
With one final swing, he severed its head cleanly.
The body collapsed.
Silence returned.
Megatron stood alone in the cavern, smoke rising from his frame.
"You fought well," he said quietly, lowering his blade. "A shame if only my warriors held an ounce of your fury."
The accumulated damage hit him at once.
Systems faltered.
Energon reserves dipped into critical.
His vision flickered.
He turned towards the deeper glow within the cavern — the faint violet pulse calling to him — and took one step forward before his systems shut down.
He fell into stasis where he stood.
Victorious.
—
Stasis does not last long for a will like his.
Warning glyphs flicker across Megatron's HUD as emergency reserves reroute power through damaged conduits.
His optics flare open again — slower this time.
Pain remains.
Good.
He rises. The cavern is quieter now. Too quiet. The beast's death has silenced something deeper within the tunnels.
The violet pulse still glows beyond the fractured stone.
He advances.
The tunnel narrows as he descends. The walls are no longer merely organic — they are layered. Hardened growth fused with crystalline veins that pulse faintly beneath the surface.
Dark Energon residue, nothing refined or anything interest but the sheer value of this. What I would give for Shockwave and his genius the Dark Energon has seeped into this.
The deeper he moves, the more the planet feels… wrong.
Stone gives way beneath his pedes not collapsing, but softening, as though something beneath the crust is still alive.
He reaches a chamber.
And stops.
The cavern opens into a vast hollowed womb.
The walls are lined with ovoid structures — dozens of them. Semi-translucent. Veined with faint purple light. Suspended in resinous webs of hardened secretion.
Eggs.
Some are inert.
Others twitch.
One splits along its seam.
A malformed shape writhes inside — limbs too long, jaw unformed, optic clusters flickering weakly in the violet haze. Its internal fluids are not red or green.
They glow.
Megatron steps closer.
The hatchling inside spasms violently as if reacting to his presence. Its undeveloped maw opens in a silent scream.
He studies it.
This is no random fauna.
This brood fed on the seepage.
It adapted… The Dark Energon did not kill it. It refined it.
His optics narrow slightly.
"Evolution.."
He extends a clawed servo and presses against the membrane. It gives easily. His talon pierces through the sac and into the writhing form inside.
The hatchling convulses.
He grips it and pulls it.
The malformed body tears free, limbs flailing weakly, ichor spilling across the cavern floor.
It snaps blindly at him.
He crushes it without hesitation.
Its skull collapses between his servos with a wet crack.
The body falls in pieces.
Megatron looks at the surrounding eggs.
Potential.
Savage.
But interesting.
He turns from them.
The true treasure lies deeper still.
The cavern narrows once more before opening into a final chamber.
This one is different.
The walls here are no longer layered in flesh.
They are fractured.
Split.
As though something forced its way through the planet's crust from beneath.
At the centre of the chamber stands a crystalline protrusion — jagged, blackened, and pulsing with deep violet light.
A shard.
Small.
Insignificant in size.
But the energy radiating from it warps the air around it. Dust particles hang suspended mid-fall.
The cavern hums in a low frequency that resonates through his frame.
His spark responds. The sheer need he feels in that moment to throw hesitation to the side and sup on what he deserves is tempting.
Megatron steps forward slowly.
His armour still smokes in places. Systems still flash caution warnings. His reserves are critically low.
And yet…
He feels stronger in its presence.
He circles the shard once, analysing it. This is not synthetic. Not refined. Not harvested from a corpse of some lesser being.
This is raw.
Untamed.
The Blood of the Chaos Bringer.
He kneels In study.
He extends his servo and grips the shard.
Pain detonates through his arm instantly.
Purple energy surges up his forearm, flooding exposed circuits. Warning glyphs scream across his vision.
He tightens his grip instead of releasing it.
"Good," he whispers.
The cavern trembles faintly.
For a moment, the eggs behind him begin to twitch again.
The shard pulses brighter.
And the world goes silent.
Not quiet.
Silent.
Sound itself withdraws.
Megatron's optics flicker as the cavern dissolves around him, stone peeling away into nothingness.
The ground beneath his pedes fractures into a void of violet storms.
He does not release the shard.
He does not look away.
He will persevere.
Within moments the violet void expands enveloping everything.
The cavern is gone. The planet is gone. The shard remains in Megatron's grip —its violet glow now the only anchor in a sea of storm-wracked darkness and it guides him.
Lightning forks across an endless sky that has no horizon. Currents of cosmic debris spiral in impossible patterns, broken moons, skeletal starships, fragments of worlds turning slowly in the maelstrom almost alive.
Megatron stands alone upon nothing.
The shard fuses into his palm.
Energy courses through his frame, tearing across exposed plating, sealing fractures with volatile violet seams.
Not repairing a transformation the storm above begins to move with purpose at first it is only turbulence then structure clouds coil inward, compressing, folding into themselves as though drawn toward a centre far beyond perception.
And then....
Eyes.
Two vast spheres of burning violet ignite and turn towards him and buckles him to his knees with the power of unimaginable might.
Lighting crashes around him, splitting the void in binding arcs. Each strike is thunderous and the storm leans closer, not physically but existentially.
A pressure descends upon him crushing him and violating his mind in ways he's never experienced.
After what feels like years it finally relents and a voice echoes outwards.
"MEGATRON LORD OF THE DECEPTICONS WHY HAVE YOU DISTURBED ME." The voice bursts his audio receptors and he spits energon onto the not floor.
Megatron gathers his wits and it clicks in his mind that this is the being he has searched for. "I have travelled far and wide for you my Lord and Master the mighty Unicron I have come to offer myself as your herald." Megatron uses all the charisma he can to get what he wants.
The storm tightens, it twists and turns before speaking once more. "YOU WHO HAS ALREADY TASTED MY ICHOR, WISH TO SWEAR LOYALTY WHY SHOULD I AGREE, WHEN YOU ARE MINE ALREADY." Megatron ducks his head below and snarls before masking it placing his servo on his chest in a sign of humility "My Master with your blood I was able to vanquish my enemies and turn Cybertron into a symbol of power, but then the power faded even my own body was made with Dark Energon, but the strength it had granted me faded grant me your power… I beseech… and I shall rule the cosmos for you."
"YOU WOULD SERVE."
"I would lead in your name."
That distinction matters to him at least.
The storm coils downward, vast beyond comprehension.
"YOU BELIEVE YOU WILL USE ME."
Megatron's spark stutters — just for a micro-klik.
He masks it instantly.
"I believe we are… aligned."
The storm laughs.
Not loudly.
Reality fractures with it.
"YOU ARE MINE."
Lightning strikes him directly.
The shard in his palm liquefies completely and drives into his spark chamber.
This time he screams.
Because this is not an enhancement.
This is binding he has damned himself there is no chance of redemption not anymore the violet energy coils around his spark like chains made of thought.
His systems rewrite themselves.
His spark signature changes.
He feels it.
Ownership.
Not domination.
Possession.
He collapses fully now.
On onee knee.
Both hands braced.
The storm lowers.
"SWEAR IT."
Megatron lifts his helm.
Optics burning red and violet.
"I, Megatron… Lord of the Decepticons… swear myself, as herald to Unicron, Chaos Bringer. Let my will carry yours. Let my blade strike in your name."
He believes the phrasing gives him control.
It doesn't.
The moment the vow completes—
The storm seals.
A pulse of violet energy detonates outward from his spark.
The void collapses.
The cavern returns.
But something is different.
The eggs behind him crack simultaneously.
Hatching.