A Gladiator’s Name
Below, witness one of the famed Megatronous’ gladitorial battles. Expect energon and expect the cheers of thousands.
When the “enemy’s” sword slashed Megatronous’ chest, a hush fell over the crowd. It wasn’t like him to bleed. The energon was nothing new to him, but for them, it was his fall from god-hood. He wasn’t supposed to bleed. If he bled, he wasn’t worth idolism. Megatronous staggered back, a servo clamping over the wound. Jaw clenched and fists closed, he lunged. The crowd roared.
The “enemy” gladiator stuck in the arena was caught off guard. She took a left hook to the jaw and when she stumbled, dropping her sword, Megatronous kicked her knees in. The popped and cracked, the sound of a pick-axe on untapped rock. Her scream echoed through the stadium, and the crowd swallowed it as if they starved. The “enemy” fell on her ass and fumbled for her sword, but it was too far and Megatronous too close. He fell over her like a cosmic storm, pede crushing her throat as he ground his heel down. Her servos scrambled and scratched his leg and he relented. Relief was a brief glimmer on the femme’s malformed faceplates. Megatronous towered over her, bemused as she struggled to get up. Adrenaline flooded his systems, the fierce beat of his spark distracting from the gash crossing his chassis. Elated and buzzing, he dropped an elbow on the other’s back and she crumbled, barely able to kneel.
It was pathetic, but the fight was over. Was the second she lost her ground and her sword. Megatronous knew the look of stubborn defiance in her optics, even as her frame trembled: furiously awaiting execution. The crowd was frantic when he retrieved her sword from the dust. They knew what was coming. Every senator, every mech and femme with their greedily stuffed pockets, and every coddled sparkling. Megatronous felt it, roiling in his spark and sending electricity to the tips of his fingers. His fingers clasped on the cheap, uncultured leather handle.
Her helm did not detach with the first powerful stroke. It dropped, cheek against chest, and dangled by severed energon lines and fat tendons of muscle. The crowd’s helm rolled, like an ancient, virulent beast. Megatronous stabbed the bloody sword into the dirt and threw up his arms. He strut in circles around the corpse as femmes threw him crystal flowers and charms and mechs hooted his name. When he opened his mouth, the stadium fell silent, everyone eager to hear him. What, they craved, would their champion say?
Megatronous loved it, the enraptured, lustful, gaping mouths with their lolling tongues and screamed confessions. It made him forget the body, still spilling energon, and the wide, glaring optics of the dead.
He threw a fist in the air and roared, “Where are your gods? I bleed and I kill for you! Do they?” He turned and strode out of the stadium.
Even when the doors to the arena closed, big steel slabs, he could hear their chant. It shook the colosseum and echoed like a growl through the underground tunnels. His name, on the tongues of his enemies, his worshipers.
