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"Is this a joke?" Megatronus muttered, and Striker vented a snort.
"What, you haven't heard of him?" Striker glanced up from where he was cleaning his flail. Not too much, though. Primus knew that the audience liked seeing shed energon.
"I knew it was an out of class match, but.... I could break him with one hand!" The dark mech was tall, and his shoulders were wide, but his thorax was narrow, his limbs spindly. He was armored but looked more like one of the mine overseers than anything, one of the weak ones who gave the orders but needed larger frames to enforce obedience. Megatronus shook his helm. "It's absurd. What's next, minibots versus metrotitans?"
Striker shrugged. "He agreed. You agreed."
Ah, yes, we're all here because we AGREED to be, aren't we? Megatronus' lips quirked wryly as he looked out at the pit floor. The announcer was still going on about Megatronus' opponent, about his speed and cunning. Megatronus had heard much the same before he'd agreed to the match. He'd never seen this Soundwave before in the metal, though.
The mech's full facemask gave nothing away, and he was merely waiting, not reacting to or attempting to play to the crowd. The crowd itself seemed much more excited about the match than Megatronus was. It wasn't a deathmatch, but with a pairing this uneven, a miner against...what was that frame even built for?...they were no doubt expecting some mayhem. Deaths happened in the arena, after all, even if they weren't planned.
Or paid for.
Something about the audience's eagerness to see violence made uneasiness roil in Megatronus' spark. It had been doing that more and more, lately. Megatronus wasn't sure how to feel about that, or what it even meant. It wasn't that he was opposed to violence, really. He HAD agreed to this, and he enjoyed the fight, the rush of victory, and certainly the shanix that he earned. No, it was something more complicated...something about paying others to do dangerous and sometimes deadly things that you wouldn't do yourself. Something about paying others to put themselves at a disadvantage for your amusement, and about those others doing it just because they needed the money.
Megatronus' optics were drawn up into the crowd, easily finding the recorders interspersed between the slumming midcastes and the bellowing industrials. Yes, there was definitely something wrong about that, too. About condemning gladiatorial matches as illegal but then sending your drones to record them so that you could watch others bleed and die for your amusement in the comfort of your own Tower.
Striker subspaced his flail, oblivious to Megatronus' musings. "Besides, he's fast. And some kind of military reject, so he's got some training, at least. He wipes the floor with anyone in his size class." Striker grinned, wide and nasty. "He might give you some trouble for, like, five kliks. Until you get ahold of him."
"This is still ridiculous," Megatronus muttered, but when the announcer shouted his designation, he walked out onto the floor. He even dispensed with most of his usual pre-fight taunting. It seemed like it would be cruel, given how one-sided the match was likely to be. Instead, the two of them merely nodded to each other, unsubspacing their weapons and waiting for the signal to begin the match.
When it came, one of them did nearly lose within five kliks, but it was not Soundwave.
Megatronus had never seen a mech move so fast.
He'd certainly never dealt with someone who apparently knew his armor's weak points and was determined to jab blades into them one right after the other.
Before he'd more than shifted his weight, Megatronus' frame was already giving him damage warnings, energon trickling down his thoracic plating. He raised his hammer, but it took too much windup, too obviously telegraphed his movements. Soundwave ducked under the first swing and would have stabbed him in an extended joint if Megatronus had not jerked away at the last moment.
"All right, then," Megatronus gritted out, tossing the hammer away with a clang and crouching down, hands at the ready.
Catching and subduing Soundwave took some doing. The crowd enjoyed the bout immensely, though Megatronus only learned that later. At the time he was more concerned with finding a way to get a grip on and pin his opponent without having a dagger shoved into any of his major components.
In the end, though, it was Megatronus who was declared the winner. The victory felt anything but complete, however. "I underestimated you," Megatronus said, as the medic saw to his punctured conduits and Soundwave waited his turn, cradling his ruined left arm.
Soundwave tilted his helm in acknowledgement. He looked down just as a small quadruped minicon circled around his feet and sat at his side. Megatronus reset his optics at it, but Soundwave merely reached down with his good arm to touch the minicon's helm. Was it a pet? Megatronus didn't know enough about minicons to ask.
Instead he grinned. "I will not be so foolish next time."
Soundwave considered him, his glyphs arch. "Megatronus, confident can repeat victory?"
"Without the element of surprise in your favor? Definitely."
Soundwave vented in what sounded like derision. "Megatronus, assumes that all of Soundwave's capabilities were on display. Megatronus, mistaken."
"Oh, really?" Megatronus found his smile widening. He wasn't entirely sure why, but he liked this mech. He was utterly DIFFERENT than anyone that Megatronus had ever known. And obviously not to be underestimated in any respect. "You'd be amenable to a rematch, then?"
"Affirmative."
"And would you be amenable to getting a drink after we're done here?"
"Negative," Soundwave replied, glyphs deadpan.
The minicon huffed and flicked its tail before yawning and lying down at Soundwave's feet.
"Ah, well," Megatronus sighed, leaning back and to the side to give the medic access to the slashed lines dripping energon down his plating. "Worth a try."
Soundwave's noncommittal sound was, nonetheless, amused, which Megatronus counted as a small victory. It seemed to be the night for them.