Inside the space-time tunnel, Garfield fought to maintain his balance, desperately avoiding the voracious vortexes that lined the passage like hungry mouths.
He'd barely traveled any distance when something slammed into him.
What followed was less like travel and more like the worst prostate exam in the multiverse, if the doctor were using sandpaper and a jackhammer.
Garfield tumbled helplessly, crashing against the tunnel walls as Thor, Loki, and Hela had in the Bifrost.
The temporal forces stripped away patches of his fur.
Only a frantic emergency transformation into his divine vestments saved him from being completely shredded.
And then~
The tunnel spat him out.
Or rather, it didn't.
✦••┈┈••✦••┈┈••✦
Ding. Ding. Ding.
On a barren planet somewhere in the universe, a massive robot swung a pickaxe in a deep mine shaft.
No vegetation or water. Only rock and metal stretching for endless kilometers.
My name is Megatron.
An ordinary miner on Cybertron. Day and night, I extract the mineral veins our world requires.
The work was quiet. Peaceful, even. He simply needed to meet his daily quota.
But something had changed on Cybertron. Everything had started with the death of the Five Faces of Darkness.
After that war ended, the veterans grew soft.
The once-great Transformer society had decayed into something unrecognizable, endless entertainment and casual violence replacing the ambition that had built their civilization.
Megatron's pickaxe struck the rock wall.
Ding.
Ding.
Wait.
That last strike had sounded... different.
A glint of unfamiliar metal peeked through the rock.
Megatron set down his pickaxe and approached. For silicon-based life, metal meant food, but this fragment radiated something beyond mere nutrition.
It smelled special. A tantalizing promise of evolution whispered from its surface.
Driven by instinct older than conscious thought, Megatron seized his pickaxe and attacked the rock wall with frantic energy.
When the patrol guard passed by hours later, he paused at the sight of Megatron working with unprecedented vigor.
Why's this miner suddenly so motivated?
Must be a glitch in his core programming. The guard shrugged and moved on.
Quitting time was near anyway.
Ten minutes of furious excavation later, Megatron freed the object from its stone prison.
A small piece of armor, incomplete, but clearly part of something larger.
And inside that armor?
A carbon-based creature.
Megatron turned the object carefully, bringing his optics level with the being's eyes.
Garfield blinked.
The last thing he remembered was the time-space turbulence swallowing him.
Now he was in complete darkness, held by something enormous.
A robot.
Boxy and solid. Looked honest, almost.
"Uh...? What are you looking at?"
"You are... not right." Megatron stared.
"You do not match any known life-form in my database capable of surviving vacuum or rock formations. This is unscientific."
Garfield studied the robot carefully, pushing past the disorientation.
Something about this mechanical being seemed familiar. But his body was damaged, recovering from the tunnel's punishment.
He'd need time to heal.
"Big man," Garfield asked weakly, "what's your name?"
"My name is Megatron. A miner from the Cybertronian Transformers species."
Megatron.
Cybertron… and a miner.
Garfield's mind, even addled by injury, began connecting dots that should never have been connected.
Oh no.
Wasn't I supposed to be going to the Star Wars galaxy?
Garfield stared at the honest, boxy robot before him. Transformers? And you're telling me your name is Megatron?
Old buddy... you look so... downtrodden right now.
Garfield sifted through his memories. He'd watched cartoons, two of them, actually.
There was a story about an honest miner who got bullied by guards, accidentally injured one in self-defense, and eventually...
Oh. OH.
That miner's name was Megatron.
Well, this is awkward.
Garfield fished some high-energy food from his pocket dimension, chewing quickly to restore his strength while conducting an internal diagnostic.
The results weren't pretty.
Internal organs, compromised.
Skeletal structure, multiple fractures.
Magical reserves, critically low.
The only bright spot? As a Devouring Beast, his physiology didn't follow normal rules.
Cats, mammals, carbon-based life in general none of that applied.
Give him enough energy, and he could heal faster than anything in the known universe.
Garfield tried to access the Cosmic Cube stored within his body, to use its energy for rapid regeneration.
Nothing happened.
He tried again. Nothing.
Panic flickered through him as he conducted a deeper scan.
His stomach the legendary organ that could consume almost anything was damaged.
Not internally, but the connection had been severed by the temporal turbulence.
He couldn't access its power.
Estimated recovery time… one month.
Wonderful.
Garfield sighed internally. For the next month, he was essentially a normal cat.
No devouring or Cosmic Cube shortcuts.
Which meant he needed something else entirely.
A qualified poop-scooper.
He looked up at Megatron, still studying him with that honest, curious expression.
The future tyrant of Cybertron was currently... a nice guy with a pickaxe.
Perfect.
"Megatron, right?" Garfield said, projecting as much dignity as a battered cat could muster.
"Thank you for pulling me from that rock. But I'm afraid I need more of your help. I'm injured, I need time to recover."
Megatron nodded without hesitation. "Okay. I will help you."
Really? This is the future genocidal warlord?
Garfield reached into his pocket dimension and withdrew a chunk of raw ore, vibranium, from his home universe.
He held it out to Megatron.
"A gift for your help. Don't refuse, I know your kind requires rare metals for evolution. This will serve you well."
Megatron hesitated.
Helping without expectation of reward was simply his way. But something deep within his spark pulsed urgently, screaming at him to take that metal.
It was necessary. Evolution itself whispered through the ore.
Garfield pushed it closer. "Take it, Megatron. You need it."
"...Thank you."
Megatron accepted the gift, a chunk nearly the size of his head, though to his ten-meter frame it seemed more like a piece of candy.
But raw ore was exactly what he needed at this stage of development.
The vibranium entered his intake.
Instantly, countless nanomechanical units within his body swarmed the ore, beginning the complex process of deconstruction and analysis.
Layer by layer, the vibranium was broken down, its molecular structure mapped by Megatron's spark.
And then… distribution.
The decomposed metal flowed through his systems, seeking out the components that needed it most.
Arms. Chassis. Spark casing. Each molecule integrating perfectly, upgrading, evolving.
Megatron's optics flickered as new data flooded his processor. Strength increasing. Durability improving.
And something else… something in his very spark was changing.
Evolution was underway.