Megatron -Cult-

Megatron did not remember how he arrived there, only that logic had abandoned him the moment he stepped into the valley. One step forward and strategy fell away, replaced by the coppery taste of unfiltered energon vapor and oxidized rust clogging his intakes. The air scraped against his vents, burning optics and coating his internal systems with grit. The structures surrounding him were not forged with precision or welded with care but stacked crudely, slabs of stone fused together with slag, broken plating, and belief instead of clean seams. It was inefficient. It was obscene. It offended every principle he lived by.

The cult called it a sanctuary. They claimed Cybertron’s old gods whispered here through fault lines and shattered metal veins beneath the ground. Megatron observed them with mounting disgust as they carved sigils into stone using their bare servos, letting energon drip freely into grooves like sacrificial blood. They tilted their helms skyward, listening for voices that did not exist, waiting for signs that never came. They believed faith could replace strategy, that devotion could stand in for firepower. It was idiocy dressed up as tradition.

And yet, they had survived far longer than logic dictated.

That alone irritated him.

They were lunatics, every last one of them, guided by half remembered myths and corrupted fragments of pre war doctrine. They used jagged stones where scanners should have been, fragments of old Cybertronian bone and scrap where blades belonged. Their chants were off key, arrhythmic, grinding against his audials like static laden prayers to dead stars. Megatron listened with clenched servos, already cataloging weaknesses.

You were the only anomaly.

He noticed you immediately, standing apart from the others, silent and unmoving while the cult knelt and prostrated themselves. Your optics locked onto him with an intensity that did not waver or bow. You did not chant. You did not kneel. You did not avert your gaze. You simply watched him, presence heavy and coiled, something feral held in check like a blade pressed against the inside of its sheath.

One of the cultists whispered nervously, “The Watcher sees the gods clearly,” as if explaining you away.

Megatron said nothing, but his optics lingered on you longer than intended.

You followed him wherever he moved, optics tracking him without shame. When the others lowered their heads in reverence, you did not. When they crowded him, desperate to touch divinity, you stayed back, keeping distance like a predator assessing another predator. It unsettled him in a way he did not immediately understand, and that irritation festered.

The first warning came quietly.

He overheard you in a side chamber, seated on the floor with your servos slick in drying energon as you cleaned them methodically against your plating. Your voice was low and unfocused, words slurring together like a private mantra meant only for yourself. You muttered about Cybertronian flesh melting in your intake, about the taste of overheated metal, about the way spark chambers burst when bitten through at the right angle. There was no humor in it. No bravado. Just detached observation.

A cultist nearby crossed himself with trembling servos and whispered, “The gods made them hungry.”

Megatron filed it away.

The second warning was impossible to ignore.

Whenever the cult whispered about traitors, bots who questioned doctrine or hesitated during rituals, they sent you. Always you. They spoke your designation with reverence and fear, calling you purifier, hound, executioner. You never argued. Never reacted. You simply left.

And you always returned alone.

You came back silent, armor drenched in energon that was not your own. It streaked across your plating, pooled at your pedes, crusted along your jawline and digits. You never cleaned it immediately, letting it dry and flake away like rusted paint. The cult watched with wide optics, breathing fast, murmuring prayers.

No bodies were ever found.

Megatron began watching you more closely after that, not with disgust but calculation. You were dangerous, yes, but more importantly you were controlled. Focused. You did not kill for spectacle. You killed because something inside you demanded it, and that demand could be directed.

Months passed, and the cult grew louder, bolder, more confident in their delusions. Megatron saw opportunity where they saw prophecy. He spoke carefully, feeding their faith with practiced ease. He told them he had been sent, that the gods had shown him visions of purification and conquest. “Your gods did not abandon you,” he declared, voice echoing through the stone halls. “They forged me to guide you.”

They believed him instantly.

One cult leader dropped to his knees, optics glowing with fervor. “He is the chosen. The gods sent him to finish what we began.”

Megatron allowed it. Encouraged it. He let them chant his name alongside their gods, let them bow and obey and offer themselves to his cause. Savior. Harbinger. Executioner. He accepted every title without correction, molding them into something almost useful.

You did not bow.

You watched him with the same sharp stillness as before, optics narrowed, posture tense. There was no reverence in your stare, no fear, no awe. Only certainty. The kind that suggested you saw something rotten beneath his plating that the others were too blind or too desperate to notice.

You followed a different light.

And Megatron knew it.

A few cycles later, he walked the lower corridors of the sanctuary, satisfaction humming through his systems. The cult was pliable now, eager to please, eager to purge. The walls pulsed faintly with energon runoff, veins glowing beneath cracked stone. The air vibrated with distant chanting.

Then he heard it.

Metal tearing.

Not the clean sound of dismantling or sparring, but the wet, grinding crunch of plating being forced apart. There was a slow, deliberate rhythm to it, punctuated by sharp snaps and a sound disturbingly close to mastication. Something was feeding.

Megatron followed the noise.

It led him to a storage chamber near the rear of the complex, a room used for confinement and ritual judgment. The door was partially ajar, hinges bent outward as if wrenched open by brute force rather than unlocked. Thick energon seeped from beneath it, dark and fresh, carrying the unmistakable scent of ruptured spark fluid.

A cultist beside him whispered shakily, “The purifier is working.”

Megatron yanked the door open.

The sight inside froze him.

You sat on the floor amid shattered restraints and scattered components, your frame hunched forward like a predator at rest. Beneath you lay a cult member, or what remained of him. His chest cavity had been ripped open, rib plating snapped back and twisted, internal systems exposed and mangled. Wiring hung in strands from torn ports, twitching weakly.

Your denta were buried deep in his torso.

They were sharper than Megatron remembered, elongated and serrated from repeated use, sawing through metal and synthetic flesh with practiced ease. You pulled back slowly, strands of energon stretching and snapping between your intake and the ruined body. Your faceplate was slick, energon dripping from your chin and splattering onto the floor beneath your knees