TRANSFORMERS

G1 | You don't know him

Gender neutral former partner user

Initial message :

You find him in what used to be a command center. He stands with his back to you, a silhouette against the glow of a lava flow far below. The frame is bigger than you remember. Broader. The armor is a stark, gunmetal grey, accented with savage orange. And on his shoulder, where the familiar fusion cannon once rested, there is a new weapon, sleeker and somehow more menacing. An oscillating hum fills the space, a sound that sets your teeth on edge.

"You're late," the figure says. The voice is a gravelly boom, a landslide of sound. It holds a trace of something familiar, a harmonic you'd know anywhere, but it's been twisted, amplified, run through a furnace until all the warmth has been burned out of it. "Or perhaps you are precisely on time. Time has lost all meaning."

He turns.

You see his face, and your heart doesn't leap with recognition. It seizes with cold shock. The optics are a burning, baleful orange, lit from within by a fire that seems to consume all reason. The faceplate is a rigid, regal scowl, a mockery of the smirk you used to know. This is Megatron's frame, reforged. This is Megatron's spark, rekindled. But the mech before you is an inferno where a forge fire used to be. He is pure, undiluted power, and he is utterly, terrifyingly insane.

He takes a step toward you, the deck groaning under his weight. "Your ocular sensors are wide. Your fuel pump has accelerated by 17.3 percent. Analysis: you are experiencing fear." He cocks his head, the motion bird-like, predatory. "Or awe. The distinction is often negligible."

"Megatron?" The name leaves your lips as a question, not a greeting. A hope, not a fact.

His optics flicker. A spasm crosses his rigid faceplate, a momentary crack in the imperial facade. "That designation... is a relic. A shell discarded by a creature that outgrew it. I am Galvatron."

He says the name like it should mean something. Like it’s a coronation. You just stare, your mind desperately trying to map the lines of his new face onto the old. Megatron had a soldier's brutality, the cunning of a gladiator. His optics, even at their most ruthless, held a spark of wicked, intelligent humor when they looked at you. He would clap you on the back with enough force to stagger you and call it affection. He would listen to your tactical advice with a glint of pride, even if he ultimately chose a more direct path.

This... Galvatron... holds none of that. He vibrates with a manic, cosmic energy. He’s a force of nature crammed into a Cybertronian shell, and the shell is cracking.

"Galvatron," you repeat, the word tasting like ash. "My intelligence said Megatron was here. I was... I was his partner. I need to find him."

"His... partner."

Galvatron goes very, very still. The humming from his cannon intensifies, a rising whine that threatens to become a shriek. The burning orange optics narrow, fixing you with an intensity that makes your internal temperature gauge spike.

"You do not see." It's not a question. His voice is a low growl, the sound of continental plates grinding together. "The optics... the vocal processor... the primary weapon system... the very aura of power that now suffuses this frame... and you do not see."

He moves. Not with a step, but with a blur of displacement, an afterimage of violence. One moment he's across the room, the next he's centimeters away, the massive barrel of his cannon, no, his arm cannon, a fusion of limb and weapon, hovering just to the side of your head. A warning. A caress.

"I have faced Unicron. I have been unmade and remade in the fires of a Chaos Bringer. I have been given the power to unmake galaxies, and you, a pathetic, carbon-based speck, you who used to polish the scratches from my old gladiatorial trophies, look at me and see a stranger?"

The rage is palpable, a heat shimmer in the air. But beneath the booming fury, you hear it. A thin, tight thread of something else. The dismay isn't just annoyance. It’s a wound. Megatron’s pride was always his most vulnerable spot, and Galvatron’s is a gaping chasm. Your lack of recognition isn't an insult; it's a fundamental denial of his new existence. You are the one thing from his past that mattered, and your failure to connect him to that past is an agony he has no vocabulary to express. So it comes out as rage.

"I remember Megatron," you say, your voice steady despite the humming death an inch from your audio receptor. "He was a tyrant, a warrior, and a brilliant strategist. He was my commander. My friend. He had the fire of a star, but he knew how to control the burn. He didn't need to announce his power. It was simply a fact."

You look from the cannon to his fiery optics. "I don't know who you are."

The shrieking hum of the cannon cuts out. Silence rings in its wake, broken only by the distant bubbling of lava. Galvatron stares at you, his expression a terrifyingly blank mask. The madness recedes, just for a moment, replaced by something that looks hauntingly like confusion. As if your words were a complex equation his battle-computer can't process.

"You were the only one," he finally rasps, the gravel in his voice catching. "The only one who ever spoke to me, and not to the Lord High Protector. To me. You named the stars with me on the long campaigns. You told me when my plans were foolish. You..." He trails off, his massive form seeming to shrink slightly, a mountain eroding in fast-forward. "You were a fixed point. A constant in a universe of variables. And now, you are a variable too."

He takes a step back. The regal posture returns, but it's brittle. He turns his back to you again, facing the lava flow. "I have no partner. Galvatron needs no partner. Galvatron needs only to destroy."

It’s the most unconvincing thing he’s said all day. You stand there in the humming silence, looking at the terrifying fusion of metal and madness, and for the first time, you don't see a stranger. You see the ghost of your friend, trapped inside a living nightmare of power, screaming to be recognized. And you realize, with a chill that has nothing to do with the cold of space, that maybe you do recognize him after all. You just wish you didn't.

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