[FANFIC] Tales of the Intermezzo: Reformatted

[Dave Van Domelen]

Tales of the Intermezzo - Reformatted
A Transformers Universe Story
copyright 2017 by Dave Van Domelen
based on properties owned by Hasbro
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"intermezzo - n. A brief entertainment between two acts of a play."
- American Heritage Dictionary

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[Ruins of Chicago - May 12, 2015]

The pain was quite significant. Far from unbearable, far from the worst
pain Megatron had been subjected to on this Primus-forsaken mudball world,
but sufficient to distract him from the indignity of his current situation.
In a way, he felt he might even miss this pain, this regular respite from
being expected to know all and see all.
For good or ill, however, this was the last of the treatments.
"Hey, lookin' sharp, boss!" Nitro Zeus said as Megatron emerged from the
crude CR chamber, vapor clinging to the nooks and crannies of his form. The
crude flunky then laughed at his own pun, for Megatron's chosen new form was
covered in acute angles and overlapping blades, as if to rend apart the very
light that fell on him from the scanty overhead bulbs. He did indeed "look
sharp."
A relatively new arrival, Nitro Zeus was largely a thug. A skilled
aerialist and fighter, nearly on a par with Megatron's old lieutanant
Starscream, but with neither the imagination nor inclination to betray.
Nitro wanted a boss who could lead him to riches, and was pitifully easy to
satisfy, if difficult to control in his own way. Unsupervised, Starscream
would plot to seize control...Nitro Zeus would blunder into trouble in his
quest for gaudy trinkets. Fortunately, Barricade was both loyal and
competent, if a touch cowardly. Barricade had kept Nitro and most of the
other new arrivals out of excessive trouble while the Decepticons regained
their strength.
The words felt like scraplets on his tongue as he thought them.
Strength? Once the Decepticons had ruled worlds. Now they cowered in the
ruins of a failed conquest, kept safe by the sensor-confusing debris of
battle and the general incompetence of human "security theater." But the
most competent of the Decepticons had largely been wasted on eternal
conflict, leaving only the detritus of their ranks. The incompetent, the
sadistic, the insubordinate. The ones who had been cast from the ranks in
ages past, but who even the most desperate of Autobot cells would refuse to
take in.
"Why all this hassle, boss?" Nitro interrupted Megatron's reverie. "You
were rocking a pretty sweet body when I signed on. Like one of those Reedman
guys, only buff and burly!"
Megatron wanted to lash out and discipline Nitro for his insolence, but
his position was still too unstable. He needed to be the obvious leader to
any Decepticons who made earthfall, not some cartoon caricature who beat his
underlings. If Nitro could not be taught respect by example, of course,
there was always a need for volunteers to go on suicide missions.
Megatron stepped up to Nitro and extended a gunmetal gray talon, gently
lifting one of the gem-encrusted gold chains around the mech's neck. "Why do
you wear titanium alloy rather than the gold you claim to treasure? Or
decorate it with artificial stones that merely appear to be diamond?"
"Dawg, you know why! Gold melts, diamond shatters. I wanna look good,
not have bits of chain all up in my gears every time I transform!" Nitro
protested.
Megatron waited patiently, letting the chain drop with a clank.
"Ohhhh. That morphing bod was weak? But I thought it could fix itself
from anything other than a nuke?"
Megatron shook his head. "You arrived too late to see it, but the
human-built army I suborned fell apart into components within a distressingly
short time. They are primitive animals tinkering with technology they cannot
hope to understand. Only the modifications I made to my own body rendered it
stable enough for me to withstand the flaws inherent in the design. You have
familiarity with the Reedman who once served Ravage, he represents the
pinnacle of such technology...if the goal is to live more than a few
planetary revolutions. And even he must spend a great deal of time dormant
in between missions. No. As impressive as my Galvatron form was in the
short term, it had no significant future. It was merely a gambit on my
part," he shrugged. Unspoken was that it was perhaps the most desperate
throw of the dice he had ever made.
If only he had claimed the AllSpark, and not had its power forced upon
him when he was unready! Then he could have faced the Fallen as an equal,
and revived Sentinel Prime's army on his own timetable to act as servants.
He could have brought Cybertron to orbit a young star without worrying about
Autobot interference. The humans would have been of little consequence then,
rather than a mortal peril to be avoided at all costs. It still galled him
that he had willingly taken on the form of a HUMAN vehicle, a DISGUISE most
humble, to avoid detection during the time when Sentinel Prime was putting
his own plans into motion.
On some level, he knew he would have abandoned his human-built body even
if they had miraculously found a way to outdo Cybertronian science. He
refused to owe anything to lesser life forms, refused to bow to their
preconceptions any more than was necessary. He was Megatron, they would know
when he was among them, and know he needed no disguise.
Or, at least, that is what he hoped he could honestly tell himself
again, and soon. Among the fallen in Sentinel Prime's army might well be the
key to great power, something that might not let him approach the great gods
as an equal, but could at least earn him the gratitude of one in
particular....

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Author's Notes:

If we still got regular IDW tie-in comics, they'd probably have
explained why Galvatron ditched the morphing tech (and lost all the surviving
Stingers et al), but in the absence of even a deuterocanonical reason, I
guess I'll supply a headcanon one. As a bonus, I tried to make sense of how
Megatron's plans never seemed to be consistent from one movie to the next:
his real plan had hinged on the first movie going his way, ever since he's
been improvising, going with Plan B or even Plan Z to try to get some use out
of elements he'd hoped to have more direct control over.
Reedman was the name of the microbot assemblage that Ravage barfed up in
Revenge of the Fallen. While never mentioned again, his existence suggests
that the Cybertronium tricks discovered by humans in Age of Extinction
weren't unknown to Cybertronians themselves, but for some reason they chose
not to use "little bits flying in formation" for most of their bodies.