A Crude Awakening

[not_your_gun]

WHO: IDW!Megatron and Animated!Dirge
WHAT: Bringing the Malgian jet back to life.
WHERE: The Hollow Tunnels, Zone 6.
WHEN: Backdated to before Starscream's return
WARNINGS/NOTES:

Warnings for Dirge, as always.

Comments

[endless_avarice]

The fragment settled with a soft 'ching' into the empty chamber and from where it lay circuits began to relight, racing outwards until they reached the walls, closing them one by one until the orange cockpit and control strip were back in place.

Then Dirge's engine kick started, loud and grinding, revving a few times before settling back into a regular rhythm. His claws twitched, his vents cycled air, and finally his head was lifting, a red glow blooming behind the glass of the dark optics.

For a moment the clone thought he'd gone back in time. He was just being created again- feeling the energy of the all-spark animating his limbs, all the hunger and the yearning booting up in his processor, driving him to want things he had never even seen yet.

But it was not Starscream standing over him, mirroring his image. It was Magnum. And Dirge remembered exactly what he wanted.

"I'll kill you," he said.

[not_your_gun]

So this was how Starscreams were born.

Briefly, he wondered what he did in every other universe...what act drove him to initially use the mechs who served him as mere pawns, and it grated on him that even he hadn't been above it.

Of course he hadn't been.

Decepticons signed on to the cause to fight for the cause, and he was the remote through which their force was directed, controlled. If he so desired one's death for his purposes...then so be it.

His cannon flared to life, pointing at Dirge.

"I know. But not tonight. You're alive, once more."

[endless_avarice]

Dirge stared down the barrel of the cannon, knowing now that death could be permanent for him at the whim of this Megatron.... this Leader he had signed his life away to for a paycheck.

Still, the desire for revenge burned hot in him- a concept very familiar to a piece of Starscream. His creator had been in a constant state of wanting revenge, especially on his Megatron. So here he was, with his own revenge to have from his own Megatron. It was funny how fate shoved him down the same path.

"You took my life," he hissed, pushing himself into a sitting position. This wasn't about being killed. Dirge had been killed before. Magnum had reached inside him and taken the thing that gave him life. All that he was- torn from his body and given back to his creator. Death the same as birth

[not_your_gun]

"I could have chosen either of you to bring back. I chose you."

Megatron did not lower the cannon...not yet. Dirge was giving him that look, and he knew that look too well to trust the jet just yet.

"But yes. You are Air Commander, now, unchallenged."

He'd been unchallenged before Starscream's death, technically...but even if he'd had Starscream as a 'partner,' Starscream had still been lord of the skies. That...was the point of a Starscream. One did not come to be Megatron's second without considerable skill, and his jets outflew all others.

Theoretically.

But now, Dirge had the opportunity to take that title.

"If you desire it."

He stood, keeping the cannon pointed at the jet, knowing that death was not so easily forgotten as that.