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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on May 6, 2008 20:03:06 GMT
One possible fate of Ratchet in the Marvel universe (requires no prior knowledge of fan-fiction):
FUSION
The distant future:
“Give it a good twist. Look, you’re holding it the wrong way.”
“Quit shoving… Oh, for crying out loud! I’ve gone and dropped it.”
“Let me have a go. Ow! It’s hot!”
“Don’t pick it up by that end! The trick is not to drop it.”
Megatron covered his optics as Thrust and Scavenger continued to argue over how best to effect an entry to the Hydran refugee colony ship. Forcing the technology-rich vessel out of hyperspace had been the easy part, but the craft’s slippery hull refused to latch onto the Decepticons’ boarding chute, and the use of thermal cutting lasers seemed to be presenting further difficulties in taking possession of their prize. He could have sworn he heard giggling coming from inside the alien cruiser.
“You imbeciles have one second to stand aside or be obliterated,” Megatron whispered with barely contained fury. As his two lackeys scrambled to get out of the way he raised his fusion cannon and let rip with a torrent of energy that tore open the hull like it was tissue paper. The subtle approach was, as ever, overrated.
Something was wrong. Megatron had expected a rush of air as the aliens’ breathable atmosphere amusingly sucked them all out into space, but there was nothing. The ship’s interior seemed to be a vacuum. That meant that either the vessel was unmanned, or-
No sooner had the smoke cleared than a heavy barrage of weapons fire burst forth from the breach, hitting Dirge and sending him spiralling off into the void. Lasers methodically swept the Decepticons’ position, systematically rendering Bonecrusher and Scavenger non-functional before they could raise their guns. A stream of metal-destabilising glass-gas coated Megatron’s fusion cannon.
“Boss,” began Thrust. “Do you think this could be an-”
“Autobot trap?” finished Windcharger, propelling himself out of the hole with a tremendous velocity born of his repulsive magnetic field, and colliding with Megatron, sending the two of them tumbling off into space. “Could be!”
“Don’t worry, boss!” called Thrust, taking careful aim. “I’ll-” But he had no chance to fire, as Brawn clamped himself firmly onto the Decepticon’s back and slammed him head-first into the twisted wreckage of the hull, before turning his attention to the trembling Mixmaster.
Ramjet, Hook and Long Haul fired into the ship, hoping to take out Cliffjumper and any other Autobots hiding inside. Some of their laser fire was reflected back at them, the reason for this becoming clear as Trailbreaker emerged alongside his small red friend, both of them protected by a near-impenetrable one-way force-field. They proceeded to despatch the enemy at their leisure with a combination of wrist-rockets, twin blasters and glass-gas.
Windcharger, meanwhile, had separated himself from the Decepticon Leader and propelled him helplessly into infinity with one magnetic arm, while simultaneously reaching out with the other to pull himself back to the ship. Seeing this, Scrapper transformed to his flight mode and sped off to retrieve his commander, realising there was nothing he could do to save his fallen comrades, whose deactivated bodies were already being gathered up by Brawn, Cliffjumper and Trailbreaker, to be placed in stasis and shuttled back to Autobot Headquarters. He signalled Astrotrain to come and pick them up. The operation had been an utter disaster. How had the Autobots known they would attack this particular convoy? It was impossible… unless they had a traitor in their midst.
On Earth, in a hidden underground complex carved out millions of years previously by an ancient and long-forgotten alien civilisation, Ratchet turned to his base commander, Prowl, and reported that the mission had been a complete success. Eight Decepticons and one warship captured – not a bad day’s work for a lone surgeon.
Cybertron, more than four million years previously:
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know, let me check. He’s certainly a big fellow. Ah, here we are. Megotran. Oh no, that’s not right. Megatron. What a strange designation. I wonder what it means?”
“Never mind that now. What’s wrong with him?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here. We’ve tried all the best surgeons from here to Tarn, but no-one has been able to help him. You’re his last hope, Ratchet. You’re the best there is.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” smiled Iacon’s Chief Medical Officer. “Now, Hoist, tell me everything you know about this poor fellow.”
Ratchet had never seen anything like it. The Autobot’s insides were a mess. It was as if someone had taken Megatron apart piece by nanoscopic piece and then put him back together again in a manner contrary to all standard medical procedures. The Matrix Energy sustaining the living metal that was his body seemed to be out of flux with the rest of Cybertron. And that was nothing compared to what the surgeon found when, in desperation, he removed the mechanoid’s cerebral circuitry to transplant it into a new body. The Matrix Energy left his old shell as predicted and swarmed around the brain module, ready for its new host, but insisted on keeping its distance. It was almost as if it was afraid to get too close to whatever was inside Megatron’s mind.
Multiple scans of the tiny brain module made Ratchet take a step back in shock. It couldn’t be… but it was! Megatron’s cerebral circuits contained an artificial singularity, a tiny black hole or wormhole presumably connecting him to some unknown point in space-time. How it had got there and what was preventing it from decaying were a mystery, the nanobots responsible for its stability and Megatron’s general condition being as they were at this time invisible to Ratchet’s sensors.
At this point many scientists would have transferred the stricken robot’s circuits to a laboratory for technological analysis, but Ratchet’s priority was his patient’s well-being. Whatever or whoever had been playing merry hell with this Autobot’s insides, immediate action was required if his life was to be saved.
Ratchet refused to let anyone enter his medical bay for three solar cycles straight. He finally emerged, exhausted but triumphant, supporting the groggy but very much living Autobot known as Megatron. Neither of them spoke of what they had learnt. Megatron had no wish to be dissected further, and Ratchet respected doctor-patient confidentiality.
“Thank you,” said Megatron.
“You’re welcome,” replied Ratchet. “It looks as if you’ll live to fight another day after all.”
It was only intended as a figure of speech.
Megatron was worried. Three defeats in as many weeks, all at the hands of the Autobot battle unit under the command of Chief Military Strategist Prowl, and all indicating that they had an informant within the Decepticons’ ranks.
Trouble was, Megatron was the only Decepticon who had known about all three missions before they went down. His remaining troops, still licking their wounds, had not yet cottoned on to this fact, but in time someone would put two and two together. It confirmed Megatron’s worst suspicions – suspicions that had been growing for some time now.
Ever since he had returned from being Galvatron, this group of Autobots had possessed a tactical advantage over him, and only he knew now what it was. He himself was the security risk, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
If only he could get his hands on his tormentor!
If only he could locate-
Ratchet reclined on a test-bed in the Autobots’ underground lair, optics closed, monitoring Megatron’s movements.
“He’s worried,” he told Prowl, standing alongside him. “I think he’s onto us. But he doesn’t know what to do about it.”
At the head of the table, Gears and Inferno prodded around inside Ratchet’s half-open brain casing. “Any luck?” Prowl prompted them.
“Don’t ask me,” replied Inferno. “I haven’t a clue what we’re doing. I wish Ratchet were able to take a look at this himself.”
“Don’t worry,” Gears reassured the doctor. “If anything goes wrong, you’ll be the first to know.”
“How comforting,” winced Ratchet.
Gears turned to his base commander.
“We’re making some progress,” he reported. “The mind-link established between Ratchet and Megatron back in 1989 which lay dormant in the years leading up to the latter’s change into Galvatron is now only partially active. We can see him, but he can’t see us.”
“That’s excellent news.”
“But part of Ratchet’s mind is still sealed off. There are memories we can’t access – not just the ones Inferno told us about pertaining to the forgotten war on prehistoric Earth, but also ones for the period in which Ratchet and Megatron were trapped in interdimensional space. Although it proved a convenient explanation at the time, there’s no way the explosion in Megatron’s fortress base that propelled them through the Space Bridge portal could have fused them together so perfectly, minds included. Explosions don’t do that. Explosions blow things to pieces.”
“So you’re saying some intelligent force took Ratchet and Megatron and performed a surgical procedure on them while they floated in interdimensional space?” summed up Prowl.
“I’m sure of it. But who they were, and why they did it, I have no idea.”
Ratchet gave a bitter laugh. “No wonder Megatron is so screwed up. First the nanobots experiment on him, sticking an artificial wormhole in his brain and giving him the ability to connect his internal circuits to an antimatter black hole in a distant sector of the Galaxy, and then millions of years later he goes through that Straxus business and someone else plucking him out of interdimensional space and connecting his brain to that of an Autobot. It kind of makes you feel sorry for the guy.”
Gears and Inferno looked at each other.
“Nah,” they shook their heads in unison.
The year 1985:
“Your agonising end should provide me with some small amusement – at least for a little while…”
It was not the first time Ratchet and Megatron had met as enemies, but it was the first time they had met in the absence of others since the surgeon saved the would-be conqueror’s life all those years ago. Ratchet knew enough, however, not to rely on services rendered in the past for a merciful reprieve. This was war!
But before Megatron could carry out his threat, the purple image of Shockwave formed on the main communications screen and ordered him to prepare the head of Optimus Prime for transport. In a fit of rage at his dishonourable predicament, the deposed leader smashed the monitor the moment the transmission ended.
“I- I can help you, Megatron,” stammered the terrified doctor, finally realising the state of play with regard to the Decepticon leadership and seeing a possible way out of his deadly situation.
“Help me what? Grind Autobots to powder?”
“No. Help you defeat Shockwave!”
Megatron slammed him up against the wall with phenomenal force. “Your jest will not save you from your doom!”
“It’s true,” Ratchet insisted. “I know how he was defeated before, by the Dinobots!” This was a lie, but Megatron’s optics glazed over as he considered the possibility. He was buying it.
They made a deal – Ratchet would defeat Shockwave and restore Megatron to his rightful position as leader, and in return Megatron would let him have the Ark. They sealed the bargain by mixing their fuel, the life-blood of the Transformer race, the essence of two very different mechanoids merged into one.
Ratchet took one of the Ark’s fleet of white shuttlecraft and sought out the Dinobots, who had lain buried in Antarctica for the last four million years. He then met Megatron as arranged on a high cliff-top. He knew all too well that the other robot would not uphold his side of the bargain, and so pretended to have fulfilled his own to see what would happen. The Decepticon’s treachery was revealed as he moved swiftly to execute the Autobot surgeon – only this time he found that his victim was not alone.
The Dinobots emerged from places of concealment in the snow and battled Megatron, but they turned out to be no match for him. Ratchet realised he had to act like a warrior as well as think like one, and charged the Decepticon, hoping desperately to take them both over the edge. He failed.
“Ha ha ha!” laughed Megatron. “You were willing to carry us both over this cliff to our doom, Autobot – very admirable! You are a fool, but it is still an honour for me to now destroy a warrior as brave as-”
And with that, the cliff edge crumbled beneath his feet and Megatron fell, vanishing out of sight far below into a deep snow drift. The Ark belonged once more to the Autobots.
“Buzzsaw, Frenzy, Ravage, Rumble, Bombshell, Kickback, Shrapnel, Scrapper – report to the launch bay immediately for a new assignment.”
Megatron decided he had to bring things to a head. The present situation was unacceptable. If he couldn’t stop Ratchet from reading his thoughts and discovering his plans, it was time to put into action a plan that the Autobots would be powerless to stop, regardless of whether they knew about it or not. It was time to play his trump card. As Galvatron, the bulk of his antimatter powers had been inaccessible to him, but now they had returned and he was finally able to conclude an operation begun centuries earlier.
In the Autobots’ underground lair, Brawn and Cliffjumper made their way over to the main briefing dome. Prowl’s summons had been urgent. They could already see Trailbreaker entering ahead of them.
“Where’s Windcharger?” wondered Brawn.
Cliffjumper looked sad. “Windcharger, I’m afraid, will never walk this path with us again.”
Brawn stopped and put a hand on his friend’s arm. “Why? What’s happened?”
Cliffjumper was silent for a moment, then:
“He’s installed roller-skates.”
Brawn sighed. “I warned him. I told him hover-boards were in this year, but he never listens. He said it was ‘retro’.”
When all were assembled, Prowl stood up to address them. He looked grave. True, Prowl nearly always looked grave, but this time he appeared six feet under.
“In the early Twenty-first Century, shortly before he became Galvatron and lost his nanobot-derived superpowers, Megatron discovered the location of the black hole to which his internal circuits had been inextricably linked millions of years previously. Up until that point, he had only been able to access its antimatter remotely, drawing energy to him through an artificial wormhole in his cerebral cortex, but with direct access he became able to unleash a far more deadly weapon, for this black hole acts as the prison for an unknown number of antimatter creatures trapped there by forces unknown when the universe was still young and both matter and antimatter existed freely. Megatron now intends to return to the aptly named Chaos Point and release them all. The devastation they could cause in the matter universe would be immense. We have no choice but to try to stop him before he sets in motion a chain of events that could wipe out life in our Galaxy.”
As the meeting broke up, Prowl approached Ratchet.
“You look tired,” he observed.
“Maintaining the mental link takes a lot out of me,” the surgeon confessed.
“I want you to stay here and look after the base,” Prowl decided. “You’re too valuable to us to risk in this battle.”
“No can do, Prowl. This mission is critical. You may need me to tell you what Megatron is up to when you arrive at the black hole, and I can’t do that if I’m stuck on a ball of rock thousands of light-years away.”
Prowl considered for a moment, weighing his friend’s life against the needs of the moment. He could not deny Ratchet’s logic – there was too much at stake today to keep any assets in reserve.
“All right, but you’re to stay out of harm’s way when we engage the enemy.”
“You won’t even know I’m there,” the doctor promised.
The year 1989:
Megatron was back! And he had not forgotten his indignities suffered at the hands of Ratchet.
This time revenge took a particularly strange form. Rather than dismembering him, Megatron abducted the Autobots’ Chief Medical Officer from the Ark and brought him to his fortress base on the planet Cybertron, where he told him that unless he did the Decepticon’s bidding he would trigger a massive explosion on the Autobot starship, ending the lives of all the patients lying inoperative in Ratchet’s medical bay.
But it was not to be Megatron’s finest hour. Suffice it to say that after Ratchet had returned Starscream to operational status as instructed, Megatron left him alone in a room with three deactivated Autobots – Bumblebee/Goldbug, Grimlock and Jazz – and three life-restoring Pretender shells. Duh! Within hours, Ratchet once more faced Megatron with heavy backup, and as a little insurance he used the Decepticon’s Space Bridge portal to summon the explosives back from the Ark to his enemy’s fortress base. This did not make Megatron a happy bunny.
The Decepticon Leader wisely decided to make good his escape, and headed for the portal. Ratchet leapt to stop him. The bomb was about to detonate, and he wanted Megatron at ground-zero when it did.
Sifting through the rubble, Bumblebee, Grimlock and Jazz found no trace of either of them. Nor did the pair emerge from the other side of the Space Bridge portal onto the Ark.
It appeared that Ratchet had succeeded this time in correcting the mistake he had made back on Cybertron before the war began, and in ending both their lives.
As Optimus Prime mourned the loss of his closest friend and one-time teacher, Megatron and Ratchet floated in interdimensional space, trapped between realities when the portal was destroyed. There they would remain for all eternity, locked in their age-old struggle.
Or not. In that state of nothingness, something came to them. It took the two Transformers and made them one, linking them in body and mind, then finally, many months later, returned them to their fellow robots on board the Ark.
Many urged Optimus Prime to put the monstrosity out of its misery, to end its life or return it from whence it came, but the Autobot Leader believed his friend could be saved, and with considerable effort their bodies were separated. Their bodies – but not their minds.
Awakening in 1991 on a Decepticon-controlled Ark heading for Earth, and realising that he and Megatron were now one, Ratchet made a third attempt to end the savage circle and caused Starscream to ignite the tanks of Nucleon responsible for their revival. The starship spiralled out of control and crashed. But thanks to that same Nucleon and perhaps cruel fate, the Autobot was cheated yet again. Both he and Megatron lived, and the war continued.
As the Autobots’ enormous black twin-domed assault shuttles sped through hyperspace towards the Crab Nebula and the antimatter black hole at Chaos Point, Gears continued his analysis of Ratchet’s circuits.
“Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing,” he said admiringly as technical schematics flashed up on the screen. “But their motives remain shrouded in mystery. I’ve always said the universe was sick and twisted. Now it seems that even in interdimensional space there are beings who get their kicks from doing experiments on sentient mechanoids.”
Prowl and Trailbreaker proceeded to discuss strategy.
“In the vicinity of a black hole time slows down,” pointed out the master of force-fields. “This is to our advantage. When Megatron arrives and enters the gravitational field, his head-start on us will disappear. We should find ourselves there in plenty of time to stop him.”
“Very well,” nodded Prowl approvingly. “We’ll hit them hard and fast – dock and board the Decepticons’ warship, make our way to the main generators and detonate them, ending the threat of Megatron forever.”
“It looks good on paper,” mumbled Gears pessimistically. “But nothing like this ever goes according to plan.”
This time the Decepticons were ready for them. Getting to the engine core was not going to be easy.
“Where’s Megatron?” yelled Prowl as the Autobots took cover behind a bulkhead to avoid being blown to pieces by mortar fire from Buzzsaw and Bombshell. They were on board the enemy cruiser, but now that both sides were affected by the time dilation of the black hole their advantage was gone and the clock was ticking.
“Ticking?” Brawn looked around, puzzled. “Splinter grenade!” The Autobots dived for cover as Shrapnel’s shell exploded, and were only saved from being shredded by metal splinters thanks to Windcharger’s quick reflexes in activating a repulsive magnetic field.
“I hate those things,” grimaced Prowl. “Time to power up the old force-field barrier, I think, Trailbreaker.”
Ratchet’s voice came over Prowl’s internal communicator. “It’s a diversion! Megatron’s heading for the docking bay. He’s going to leave the ship and enter the event horizon!”
“Brawn, you’re with me,” decided Prowl. “We’ll hold him long enough for the rest of you to do what needs to be done.”
Megatron flew into the air as Prowl’s old Action-Master Turbo Cycle rammed squarely into his back. The Autobots’ Chief Military Strategist leapt off and the vehicle converted to its gun emplacement mode and began pelting the Decepticon Leader with heavy firepower.
Megatron covered his face with his left arm while taking aim with his right and using his fusion cannon to blast the Autobot machine out of existence. Before he could move on to eliminate the Turbo Cycle’s owner, however, Brawn tackled him from the side and brought them both crashing to the deck. Megatron’s primary weapon became dislodged from his arm and skidded out of reach.
Brawn pummelled the Decepticon with a quick one-two and then sprang away as Prowl somersaulted over them, landed on one knee and fired a burst from his acid-pellet rifle into the tyrant’s body armour. If they could just keep him off-balance for a few minutes longer…
“Fools!” screamed Megatron as Brawn knocked him flying with an iron girder, directly into the path of Prowl’s shoulder-mounted wire-guided missiles. “This is my domain. Here I am the master!” With that he concentrated, and antimatter began to swirl around him, causing minor explosions whenever it came into contact with the ship but doing no harm whatsoever to Megatron himself.
“Fall back!” cried Prowl as the Decepticon began lobbing antimatter at them with abandon. “It’s too late! He’s already established contact!” Through the open bay doors the two Autobots could see writhing tendrils of dark antimatter reaching out of the black hole in answer to their master’s summons. The matter from the companion star which normally spiralled in to annihilate with antimatter beyond the event horizon now exploded right beneath them, and the ship shook with the force of the eruption.
From his vantage point on the bridge of the lead Autobot assault shuttle, Ratchet watched Megatron leave his ship and descend towards the black hole and the horrors that lay beyond it. Antimatter cleared the way before him, creating a passage of gravitational calm as he entered his seat of cosmic power.
Ratchet knew what he had to do. Taking an emergency hand-held rocket he opened the airlock and leapt into space, following Megatron down into the jaws of oblivion.
The closing weeks of the year 2005:
Ironhide, still conscious, crawled forward and clutched desperately at Megatron’s leg.
“Such heroic nonsense,” sneered the Decepticon Leader. He aimed his fusion cannon at the security officer’s head and fired.
It had all gone horribly wrong for the Autobots. Their strategists knew that a Decepticon attack on Autobot City: Earth was imminent, and desired to bolster their command structure on Earth in preparation for the onslaught. But, with warp gate disruption fields in operation, Prowl and Ratchet had to travel the old-fashioned way. In order not to arouse the enemy’s suspicions they allowed Laserbeak to infiltrate Moonbase One and overhear Optimus Prime assign Ironhide a solo shuttle mission to Earth. Surely the Decepticons would never attack a ship with an empty hold on its way to pick up energy supplies!
They had no way of knowing that a shuttle on a cargo run was precisely what Megatron needed to launch his surprise assault, and encountering such high-ranking officers on board was a bonus for the Decepticon Leader. Though expecting to find Ironhide alone, he had with him sufficient troops to lay siege to a city, more than enough to handle the crew of four. As Skywarp and Thundercracker assumed pilot positions and Starscream made some ill-informed observations, Ironhide launched a desperate attempt to destroy Megatron and paid the ultimate price.
Soundwave stopped Mixmaster as he moved to melt down Brawn and Prowl with Devastator’s solar energy rifle. “Put these two in the cargo hold,” he instructed. “There may be much to be gained from dissecting the strategist’s logic processor and the demolition robot’s alloy-reinforcing nanotechnology.”
“Surely we can terminate this one!” pleaded Blitzwing, standing over Ratchet’s disabled body. Soundwave nodded. The joyous Constructicons moved to observe the agonising execution, only to find Megatron interpose his massive form between his troops and their intended victim.
“No. Put him with the others. He too may prove useful when the city has fallen. Hook may be injured in the battle, and then who would tend to our wounded?”
“I’d have thought you of all people would want to see Ratchet dead,” sneered Starscream. “After all the times this surgeon has defeated y-” He never finished his sentence, as Megatron punched him so hard that he flew across the shuttle and embedded himself in the far wall.
“Does anyone else have any views they’d like to share?” he asked. The silence was deafening. “Good. You will have plenty of opportunity to terminate Autobots when we reach our destination. In the meantime, the pilot’s remains are yours to do with as you see fit.”
In fact, the Decepticons lost possession of the shuttle during the battle for the city, and the other Autobots were able to retrieve and eventually restore Brawn, Prowl and Ratchet to active duty.
Ratchet never told anyone how he too had remained conscious long enough to hear the Decepticons’ conversation. Unlike Ironhide he had decided against a suicidal attempt on Megatron’s person – not because he wasn’t into that sort of thing, but because he preferred to sacrifice himself when he actually stood a good chance of taking the enemy with him. If he had known why Megatron had spared his life that day, he might well have acted differently.
“HELLO? WHAT? NO, I’M IN A BATTLE! I SAID I’M IN A BATTLE! NO, IT’S RUBBISH! THESE AUTOBOTS ARE REAL WIMPS… WHAT? WHAT? NO, PUT SOME OINTMENT ON IT! LOOK, I’LL HAVE TO CALL YOU BACK LATER! WHAT? YEAH… YEAH… CIAOWWWW!!!”
This last came when Cliffjumper sprayed Bombshell’s arm with glass-gas and shattered it with a flying kick. Cliffjumper hated mobile phones.
The battle was going as well as could be expected, but it was going well too slowly. The valiant Gears had been knocked out by a powerful strike from Kickback in his giant grasshopper configuration, and while Inferno’s heat-resistant body was able to withstand Ravage’s fire-breath so as to enable him to rescue Windcharger from the black cat’s clutches, the Decepticon saboteur’s ability to negate Windcharger’s magnetic fields had allowed him to take out the Autobots’ most powerful fighting asset. Trailbreaker’s force-field had held off Shrapnel’s electric assaults long enough for him to put the Insecticon down with a well-placed wrist-rocket, and Cliffjumper had managed to glass-gas Scrapper and thus remove him from the fight, but at this rate it would be some time before any of them made it to the ship’s main generator.
As Inferno was knocked off his feet by Rumble, and Cliffjumper transformed to hovercar mode to escape a diving attack by Buzzsaw, the small Autobot warrior acknowledged that it might already be too late.
In the surreal environment of the antimatter realm, Megatron mustered his forces. Shapes without form pulsated before him – ancient engines of destruction ready, willing and able to devastate any planet allied against the Decepticons, antimatter demons trapped here by Primus and his kind close to the dawn of time. Thanks to the gifts of the nanobots, Megatron had the key to their prison. It was within his power to unleash them all on the matter universe. The thrill of anticipation of what he was about to do was intoxicating.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” came a voice from his nightmares. Megatron spun. Floating some way behind him was his arch-nemesis, an Autobot who had inflicted defeats on him far more humiliating than anything the Primes could dish out, for he was but a humble doctor.
“Ratchet!”
“Miss me?”
Megatron looked seriously worried. His plan had been to capture the Autobot surgeon and put him somewhere safe where he could do no-one any harm, least of all himself. And yet here he was, walking into the lion’s den, where the touch of a single antimatter tendril could disintegrate him in an instant.
“Relax!” Ratchet told him. “Don’t you think that if your survival really depended on mine I would have already killed myself by now?”
Could it be true? Were Megatron’s fears unfounded? Ratchet’s record in the self-sacrifice department did lend credence to his words. But this was wonderful news!
“In that case you’ve signed your own death warrant by coming here, Autobot!” gloated the triumphant Decepticon. “Annihilate him!”
The antimatter moved in towards the Autobot surgeon, then hesitated.
“What are you waiting for? I am your master! Destroy him now!”
Ratchet waved a cautioning finger at him. “Uh-uh, Megatron, old playmate. We share minds, remember. Your cerebrum contains an artificial wormhole and nanobots which can control antimatter, and now so does mine.”
The lethal tentacles changed course and converged on the Decepticon Leader.
“No! I am Megatron! I am power incarnate. This is my realm, and my will reigns supreme!” He raised his arms and retaliated with all his strength. And so the final battle was joined.
A stream of acid pellets knocked Kickback’s machine-gun out of his grasp before he could draw a bead on Inferno.
“Autobots, disengage!” ordered Prowl. “Abort the mission!” Entering alongside him, Brawn felled Rumble with a right hook and slung Gears and Windcharger over his broad shoulders.
Elsewhere on board, Frenzy was punching in codes that would raise the Decepticon warship to a higher, safer orbit. The explosions in the accretion disc of the black hole were increasing in frequency and intensity. The Autobots only just made it back to their assault shuttles in time to follow suit and avoid being incinerated.
“The black hole’s decaying,” reported Trailbreaker, hurriedly taking up position at a science console. “The wormhole to the antimatter universe has emerged from the event horizon.”
“Where’s Ratchet?” wondered Cliffjumper.
On the viewscreen, the dying wormhole spat out a lone figure and then vanished forever in a burst of antimatter annihilation.
“Zoom in!” instructed Prowl.
It was Megatron.
Megatron roared his fury as his dark minions fell back into the singularity, their power lost to him for all time. The forces unleashed by the struggle for supremacy had been too much for the delicate balance of the ancient prison.
But at least he had taken his revenge. He turned in space to face the Autobot vessels and waved his trophy at them – the barely recognisable skeletal remains of Chief Medical Officer Ratchet, shattered and scorched beyond all hope of reanimation. With a ferocity born of deep hatred, Megatron hurled the blackened frame into the infinite gravity well. The circle had been broken – Ratchet was dead.
Prowl buried his head in his hands.
“The black hole continues to decay,” prompted Trailbreaker. “Massive energy discharge from the accretion disc in thirty seconds. Orders?”
Cliffjumper put a hand on Prowl’s shoulder. “He destroyed Megatron’s power base and saved the Galaxy from the threat of invasion by antimatter hordes,” he told his commander gently.
Still Prowl would not speak. Inferno moved to the pilot console. “I’m setting a course to enter hyperspace. Brawn’s doing the same on his shuttle. We’re going home.”
As the Decepticon warship also jumped to hyperspace, heading back to base, Megatron entered the cargo bay where the bulk of the fighting had taken place.
“You’re hurt,” he observed upon seeing Bombshell.
“I’m sorry, Commander,” begged the one-armed Insecticon. “It wasn’t my fault. I was distracted. It won’t happen again, I sw-”
But Megatron wasn’t listening. Instead, he crouched down beside the wounded mechanoid, gathered up the remains of his shattered limb and set to work repairing the damage with a surgical dexterity that none of them had been aware he possessed.
“You break it, I’ll remake it,” he murmured.
EPILOGUE
Nexus Zero, stronghold of the Vok.
“The doorway between the matter and antimatter universes has at last been sealed. The danger has passed.”
“However, this union of two Transformer life-forces into one being has proven even more powerful than Project: Tigerhawk.”
“His destiny is uncertain. We cannot control him directly. The two souls that have merged here are unlike those of the Maximals – they appear inclined to choose opposing paths.”
“Which side will emerge dominant cannot be predicted. We will have to observe him further.”
THE END
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