This was a part of the vast mining comples/city that Ahastar had not yet seen (though that didn't surprise him; he'd mostly been in the areas where there were normally a lot of mecha moving around, and the near-constant stomping kept him from getting a very good look at his surroundings). The chamber was vast and entirely lacking in any sort of minig or processing equipment. The walls were of burnished metal, engraved with glyphs in the alien machines' own incomprehensible language, inlaid with intricate designs in metals of varying color as well as stone and even crystal. It was quite impressive, though the white raptor only felt a deepening sense of dread, wondering what they were going to do to him this time.

There were already mecha starting to gather, collecting around some sort of raised platform in the center. They glanced up as the crew leader Fracture moved through the slowly growing crowd, Ahastar held firmly in his fist, only his head and tail sticking out, only able to thrash his tail in protest. The big drill tank seemed to be humming to himself, if the sound he was making was anything like a normal organic life-form's hum. Fracture walked up the steps onto the platform, striding to the center and then crouching, slamming Ahastar into the metal hard enough for him to see stars and leave him stunned for a long moment. By the time his head cleared, all four limbs and most of his tail had been secured to the metal, belly-up and eagle-spread, in perfect trampling position. Fear filled blue eyes as the half-demon waited for the first stomp.

That stomp never came. Instead, Fracture sat back on his heels for a moment to regard the raptor's positioning critically, then grunted in satisfaction and stood back to his full height. He paused to cast one last wicked grin at the restrained raptor, then turned and walked away, leaving Ahastar to contemplate increasingly worse scenarios about his probable fate.

The wait lasted for hours and was utterly excruciating. Turning his head, Ahastar could see more and more mecha gathering, and he recognized many of them. Though he rarely got to see them from this particular viewpoint. The platform was level with the waists of the mid-sized mechs, meaning it was about thirty-five feet off the ground. In some cases it was the first time he'd seen those mechs from higher than ground level. They gathered around the platform, though not one of them ventured to step onto it. They maintained a slight distance, leaving a wide empty space around the platform. Conversation, sounding like an army of computers gone mad, rippled across the growing sea.

Whatever was going on here, clearly it was going to be some sort of show. And Ahastar was right in the middle of it. He swallowed thickly, eyes darting from mech to mech.

Then, suddenly, the overhead lights went out, plunging the room into darkness. Only the glow of the assembled mechas' optics sould be seen through the dark, and even those optics seemed to have been dimmed so as not to disturb the atmosphere. There was a beat of silence, and then a new sound rose to fill it. It sounded incredibly like hundreds of voices singing in harmony in a language the raptor could not understand, but there was something about it that made it seem like a chanted prayer in a temple. Harmonies wound around each other, breaking off into new harmonies and melodies, weaving a net of sound all around the half-demon, and for a moment he forgot his terror as he listened.

That terror returned with a vengeance not long after. From the ceiling high overhead was a glimmer of light, several lights slowly brightening and focusing onto the platform. Ahastar struggled as hard as he could, but the metal bands holding him pinned were immoveable. That didn't stop him from trying until a glimmer of movement caught his eye, and he turned his head to see a mech step out of the dimness beyond the lights, ascending the steps to the dais and pausing to stand at the very edge, head up and optics focused straight ahead.

Ahastar choked down a wail of utter terror. This was a mech he knew only too well. Railcutter, the trainmech, who had run him over several times in the rail tunnels below the mining complex, and who had spent what had felt like (and probably had been) days slowly and methodically trampling him into paste on a platform of transparent metal while a science team watched and took notes. Those massive pawlike pedes were ones the raptor was far too familiar with.

Railcutter stayed precisely where he was, neither glancing at nor acknowledging the raptor in any way. His normal emerald-green and silver armor had been replaced with highly polished, intricately decorated armor colored pristine white, trimmed and adorned with what could only be pure gold. It was different in style that his normal armor, though it still conformed to his base shape, sleek and smooth and gleaming. Intricate armor plates wrapped around his arms and legs, curling around his joints, gleaming gold tracing complex and almost delicate patterns across white surfaces. On his helm gleamed an intricate coronet of gold and platinum set with the biggest, purest diamonds Ahastar had ever seen. Some kind of sheer fabric, white with gold threaded through it, hung from his shoulders, connecting to his wrists and rippling over his back. Pure white light traced the edges of his plating, dripping from hands and fingers and his alt-mode kibble. It was so different from his normal appearance that Ahastar could not help just staring at him for a long minute.

The chanting trailed off, fading back into silence for another long minute. Then what could only be alien music replaced it, softly at first but growing in volume. The beat shivered through Ahastar's body, making him twitch uneasily in his restraints.

And then Railcutter moved.

Of all the things Ahastar had imagined these alien machines being able to do, dancing was not one of them. But that was exactly what the giant robot was doing. He stayed on the outer edges of the dais, moving to the music, far more gracefully than the raptor had thought he would be capable of. Railcutter was incredibly light on his feet as well, barely shaking the dais at all as he leaped and spun and glided. The light that adorned his massive form seemed to form shapes around him as he moved, as if he were creating things with his dancing.

For almost an hour the huge mech danced, circling slowly around the bound raptor, even leaping over him at one point, almost scaring the raptor right out of his scales. Ahastar had cringed in anticipation of hose huge pedes landing on him, but Railcutter had cleared him effortlessly, never once coming within several meters of him. Heart racing, Ahastar's eyes followed the giant mech, wondering just what was going on.

The trainmech finally drifted to a stop, almost exactly where he had begun, stepping back out of the way and turning to look across the platform. Ahastar followed his gaze, whimpering as a second mech appeared out of the shadows.

Racer was another trainmech, the first Ahastar had ever seen. He was Railcutter's twin brother. The black-armored train had never run Ahastar over, and the raptor was not entirely sure why (though the visible lack of wheels might have something to do with that), but he had certainly worked him over under massive padded pedes, grinding him into wet smears or kneading him into slime between short, blunt toes.

The black trainmech also wore different armor, though his was bronze and burnished the color of red amber. The crown he wore, around the curving horns that crested his intricate helm, was of black iron, jagged and spiked, adorned with blood-red rubies and garnets that glowed with sullen red fire. Red-gold clawed gauntlets covered his hands, and the fabric that rippled out behind him was that same red-gold, with gold threaded through.

Like his twin, Racer never acknowledged Ahastar in any way, behaving as if he wasn't even there. His dance was slightly different than Railcutter's; where the green mech's had been graceful and light, Racer's was more forceful and intimidating, but still there was an almost ceremonial edge to it.

That thought finally caused the proverbial lightbulb to flicker on over Ahastar's head. This was some kind of religious ceremony, with the twin trains playing the part of the major figures in their religion. Railcutter was playing the part of the Creator, and Racer the Destroyer. Good and evil, light and dark, creation and destruction. That would certainly explain their appearances, if they were wearing ceremonial regalia reserved entirely for this purpose.

Racer's dance ended as Railcutter's had, with the black mech standing where he had begun, facing his brother across the platform. Railcutter stepped forward, echoing his twin's pose, their gazes never leaving each other. Then they began to move again, this time in perfect unison, two suns revolving around a common center, every move perfectly copied, moving as one. Ahastar's eyes flickered from one to the other, his amazement at how graceful such huge creatures could be briefly overwhelming his fear.

Then the two trainmechs turned, facing each other, and stepped toward the center of the platform, and Ahastar had time to let out one high-pitched scream before two massive pedes, their rubber sole padding brand-new and pristine, descended upon him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yes, I actually am part of the trampling kinkdom. This is a scene upcoming from a massive RP that  Ahastar and I are working on. It's been stuck in my head for days (or maybe weeks...), and I just had to write it out. I showed it to Ahastar and he loved it, so I decided to post it here.

Racer and Railcutter are Cybertronians, a pair of split-spark twins. Racer is a high-speed mag-lev shinkansen (bullet train), while Railcutter is a Cybertronian steam engine (though he doesn't actually run on steam. he just looks like a steam engine).

Railcutter and Racer are mine. Ahastar the raptor belongs to Ahastar.

Edit: Because FA is being a bugger about it...