Twist

Chapter 30: Redemption

"Megatron, you know as well as I that the groundbridge here has been destroyed," Megatronus approached the warlord with a frown. "Why are we here?"

"You mean to tell me that between Soundwave and Ratchet, there is no hope of restoring it?" Megatron raised an eyebrow. "Is this not a better lead than sitting around, waiting for Ultra Magnus to cause trouble?"

"You said Starscream would use this to escape," Airachnid growled. "How is he going to use a broken groundbridge?"

Megatron chuckled. "I said you could use this, I never explicitly said Starscream would. If he is in cahoots with that twisted Autobot, he'll have asked Ultra Magnus."

"Everyone's contacts are scrambled when they pass through interdimensional rifts," Ratchet pointed out. "He couldn't have asked."

"That's clearly an Autobot problem," Megatron shrugged. "We Decepticons have more resilient coding, despite one-half of our forces being led by my dufus twin."

Megatronus glared.

Megatron strode toward the mountain, glancing back only once toward the others with a sly smile before climbing up to the hole in the rocks. A dark cavern could be seen below, looking collapsed, but intact. Something glittered in the darkness. Megatron stood at the edge of the hole before jumping down. His pedes hit the ground heavily, sending vibrations back up to the others. Optimus and Megatronus exchanged looks before following close behind, with their friends on their heels.

"How much do you trust him?" Megatronus asked quietly.

"As far as we have a common goal..." Optimus frowned into the darkness. "But the moment he gets what he wants, he will turn on us."

Megatronus sighed. "Fantastic."

Then they jumped.

The bottom of the hole revealed a surprisingly large cave filled with what appeared to be broken technology. Much of it had bent inwards or flown to the large structure in the center of the room, where a pile of various metal findings had gathered.

"What happened here?" Optimus asked, looking around with a frown. Ratchet said many events in their dimensions would be similar, but this place didn't ring any bells.

Megatron hummed. "My twin proved he was inferior to me when he lost a battle against a mentally ill Autobot who was severely injured."

Megatronus did his best to ignore that. "We traced a signal here and thought it was an energon mine. The Autobots detected our presence and ambushed Temptest and Starscream. He was lost. This is the groundbridge we went through to reach your dimension."

"So," Ratchet tapped his chin, "weird Optimus managed to direct the power from the relic through a groundbridge and you think it still has residual energy we could use to transport ourselves across the multiverse?"

"Essentially," Megatron and Megatronus responded before shooting annoyed glances at one another.

"That's a garbage theory," Soundwave told Megatron. "It would never work without a way to pinpoint their world."

Megatron pointed at the Autobots. "You mean like a bunch of bots from the world?"

Soundwave facepalmed. "Not unless we want to kill them."

Megatron shrugged. "I'm sure they don't need Bumblebee for anything important."

"Hey!" Arcee glared.

"You volunteer?" Megatron questioned.

"No one is being killed," Megatronus interjected. He looked over at the Prime for support, but Optimus was frowning at the ground and rubbing his chassis. "Optimus, are you okay?"