#Tarn however has no limits

[transingthoseformers]

So I'm vividly reminded of the "What if there was a character who wanted to be [faction] but was barred from joining [faction]" post, and tfp au Tarn is somewhat close to being this.

They wouldn't have let him join the Decepticons if he hadn't pleaded and begged enough. And, nobody will ever admit it, even the commanders are scared of him. Tarn has just been so loyal (well loyal up until this point) that they were willing to overlook the immense security risk his Voice was and the rancid vibes. In the TFP au, he came to the Decepticons preinstalled with the DJD, but in this au the DJD had existed before Tarn has, and they kinda just found him in the space woods like a coyote mistaken for a dog.

TFP au Tarn has a much different backstory and origin than what you'd expect. Damus was someone who originally was turned away from the Decepticons , whether it was for a lack of generalistic experience, bad luck, having failed some sort of entrance test (i severely doubt they'd have like a written test, that's not what i mean, I'm thinking some sort of small quest), or hell the Bad Vibes™️ that Soundwave had received but could never put a digit. (Nobody could've guessed Tarn had been Damus, hell nobody knows until the Tarn and Fallen fiasko when he blurts it in a monologue.)

He did not take this rejection. I cannot tell you for sure when Damus became a more recognizable shape, what he had done before fully becoming Tarn, but I can tell you how he was found.

The DJD was a project proposed by Shockwave, one that Megatron has always disliked. It ultimately functioned similar to the Wreckers in the Autobots— do the dirty work that not even Megatron wants to do, and he'll turn a blind eye to their methods. One of the conditions he agreed upon was that they stay away from the frontlines, as they are pretty much the clean up crew for those who have become disillusioned to the Cause. Originally, the ship's crew was the leader Kaon, Tesarus, Helex, Vos, and Prion (their medic, who looks a little familiar...)

They found Damus on a small moon circling a dead planet that had never developed complex life. He was thought to be a mercenary, but no he denied this. The DJD decided that hey this guy who wants to be a Decepticon should be a Decepticon! And dragged him with them. This is when he took upon the name Tarn (the symbolic meaning here in the tfp au is unknown as of yet) There is a possibility that his Voice had influenced this without their knowledge, as exactly nobody had guessed that as a possibility. Though, the DJD soon learned during the brutal disposal of a rogue exactly what Tarn is capable with this "gift". (Remember, in the TFP au outliers do exist but exactly nobody has really discovered this fact. Sometimes mecha pop up with inexplicable abilities and it always freaks everyone else the hell out) At first, they were struck with that instinctive oh-frag feeling, but this faded with the delight of them having a new method in their already rather unconventional repertoire.

Things were... special the next time the Peaceful Tyranny crossed paths with the Nemesis. Megatron was very suspicious of this Tarn, (actually in a very similar way as he was in canon of Predaking once the mech revealed his bipedal mod). But, eventually, he okayed the new addition as he wasn't going to question the DJD's methods. He didn't want to think too hard about what they do, only that they completed the job out of sight. Megatron couldn't afford to lose any more sleep than he already is over this.

Did Megatron call the DJD down to Earth? No, Tarn had tracked Pharma's signal and was delighted to find out his Lord is also on this blue and green planet. If I remember my timelines correctly, they arrived in the smack dab middle of the spicy battlefield dance arc. Meaning, the commanders already had so goddamn much to deal with that they agreed "fuck it, let them do whatever they're here to do, let them take care of the traitors wandering about so we don't have to". The DJD was explicitly told to not interfere with the war efforts, the autobots, or the ongoings of the Nemesis. (Probably in much longer polite and formal words than my synopsis of it)

For a long time, Tarn was considered in a similar manner as he was in canon. A dangerous weapon, but a currently manageable and loyal weapon. Some would say Tarn's loyalty to the Cause and Megatron rivals Soundwave's, others dare to admit that there has to be a catch. That nobody is that loyal without some sort of catch. Especially if that someone enjoys working with the fragging DJD, which among most Decepticons is practically a myth because of how infrequently the Peaceful Tyranny is sighted.

The events of Delphi are very similar as in the au, upon one divergence— nobody finds them. Every autobot except Pharma eventually succumbs to the Red Rust (or the DJD, in Ambulon's case) and Pharma has to find his way off planet. Eventually, he makes his way to Earth.

The rest of the DJD, as we know, was entirely content with these orders and did their own horrific murder thing. Tarn, though? Oh we knew he ultimately basically ignored this and turned his efforts to win his Lord with his winning personality (a lie), pure loyalty (a lie), and charming good looks (kind of a lie but kinda not)— and to find out where that autobot jet had went.

He started seeing the messages from Megatronus Prime a mere fortnight since he arrived on Earth. The Fallen had a reverse sort of reaction to Tarn, at first only seeing him as an easy to manipulate means to an end. After all, once the Fallen got out and destroyed Earth, what would this pathetic sycophant matter? But, as they started interacting more the Fallen ended up letting more and more of his guard down to this mortal. Tarn will not end up betraying Megatronus Prime, even as the reverse happens. This demigod encouraged the wrong mech.

Tarn will not visually see Pharma until further into the truce, pretty damn close in time with when he learns about Silverlight. And well... I've talked about what comes next.

[tf-loyalty]

Transformers: Loyalty

about the Decepticon Justice Division, formerly known as Legacy

the decepticon justice division was formed early on in the war. they were originally a group meant to rescue decepticons which have been caught by the autobots and held as prisoners of war. hence why the name, legacy. they were a much larger team back then, consisting of 20 members, who would get replaced once one of them perished in combat.

later on, they became megatron’s personal assassins and gained the name they are known by now, the decepticon justice division. they became a group that forced the troops back in line; everyone feared their wrath. their leader, tarn was rumored to have been the supposed outlier named damus, however no one was able to prove it. and those who got close to discovering the truth always disappeared without a trace…

the division was tasked with finding those who left the cause, and slaughtering them as brutally as they could. displaying a show of strength and then killing the traitor as they shook in fear.

as they became known as the djd, they limited themselves to five members, named after the first decepticon cities. the only member who doesn’t follow that rule is a medic on their team, named nickel. it’s said that the members changed a lot, but their leader, tarn has been with the division since it’s founding.

outside of combat, the djd have a very strange relationship. some would say they’re like a really messed up family.

later on in the war, the leader tarn and communications officer kaon were exposed to ghostly energon. said substance was a dangerous one, known to make mechs lose their minds and slowly perish. to this day, it is a mystery within the cause as to how the two survived exposure to this substance.

the djd survive to see the end of the war, and live on even in the days of “peace”, hunting down deception traitors and defectors.

and to finish off, a few fun facts about the division!

the djd have a special language they use in combat. to accommodate kaon’s blindness, they developed a form of communication that the blind mech can sense via his echolocation. they use taps on the ground or their own bodies to signalize and communicate.

every djd member knows chirolinguistics, and sometimes talk to each other that way.

tarn has OCD and will constantly pick at his face, making his scars worse

vos uses cybertronian sign language along with primal vernacular

kaon uses his electricity for echolocation

he also has heightened senses (hearing mainly)

most assume tessaurus is mute, as he rarely speaks. he is only talkative around the division’s members

helex is the joke maker of the team. her jokes always make the djd smile

there are three things wise men fear: a moonless night, a storm at sea, and nickel’s fury; or in short: nickel is the only bot (aside from megatron) who can put the djd in their place and still make themselves energon in the morning

every member carries around a phone with a prerecorded, lethal message from tarn

tarn doesn’t show it, but he cares for his teammates a lot.

he isn’t openly affectionate, he prefers giving praise and compliments rather than physical contact. the most affection you’ll get from him is a pat on the head or a small, very awkward hug

someone has to stay by vos’ side to make sure they sleep, as vos tends to forget about it when they get too caught up on working at their experiments.

(they literally become a gremlin that screeches in an ancient language while bouncing off walls if they don’t get enough sleep)

tarn often hums to himself, and while most find it terrifying, he always makes sure his teammates aren’t harmed by his outlier ability.

kaon uses the pet as a guide/service dog.

speaking of the pet, he’s only violent towards the traitors, defectors and autobots. he won’t hurt any member of the djd

vos and nickel are working on research to help restore kaon’s vision

[artsy-hobbitses]

I was wondering about all the current Outliers characters and their abilities that you currently have and what extent their abilities can go, their limits, and side effects if that's alright with you?

Those I control/play so far!

Trailbreaker: Psioplasmic bio-forcefield. Can range in size and molded at will, but if he's not careful, his emotions can change it as well. Uses it mainly to shield his team mates on the field defensively, but it can also be used in a more dangerous manner when he forms it into spikes (he's prone to this when angry and accidentally killed a man in his youth with it, so he's very Pepa Madrigal with his emotions). Downside is it saps a LOT of his energy and he's pretty much narcoleptic everytime he's back from a mission. Dead asleep for three to four days straight and actually needs to be fed intravenously sometimes because his body simply won't let him wake up even for food when he comes back in that state. The more he uses it/the wider ground it needs to cover, the more severe his situation becomes and his organs/muscles can break down from the stress. By the end of the war, he can create a forcefield with a radius of about 2km for five minutes before he starts throwing up blood, but his powers are massively boosted by virtue of one of the 10 Primes (Nexus) trapped in the Matrix choosing to work with him and Skids in tandem.

Blurr: Super speed, still working out the semantics for them

Tarn: Still working out this fucker

Skids: Still working him out!

Skywarp: Teleportation. He has Nightcrawler limitations for most part--he has to be able to see or at least clearly visualize where he needs to be, else he can fucking kill himself by phasing in unintended places (like the middle of a wall). Like Trailbreaker, the further distance he uses it over, the more it taxes on his body. He's able to safely teleport for something like 2-3km. He CAN push himself to 5km or more, but he risks molecular degeneration if repeated in a short span of time.

Soundwave: Super hearing and sound-based telepathy. They can only hear surface thoughts however, it's not possible for them to dig into repressed thoughts. Also their super hearing is a double-edged sword since they can get overwhelmed by it when there's too much stimuli. Initially in their earlier years, their inability to differentiate their thoughts and the thoughts of others was also detrimental as they thought they were going mental and even now, sometimes they can accidentally mistake someone's thoughts as their own if they aren't focusing.

Tailgate: Super strength and durability, still working on this cutie.

Thundercracker: Sonic scream. Though it's not always screaming--shouting and thundering away at his team mates or enemies have the same, dangerous effect. His voice, unmodulated and uncontrolled, can hit a high of 160 decibels, and like Trailbreaker, he has hurt people badly in his youth on accident because of his lack of control or understanding of his abilities (in this case, one of his two mums, who is permanently deaf because of him, though she doesn't blame him for what happened--he was anywhere between five to seven then--and still loves him very much). Still thinking about any side effects. There's a reason almost everyone wears earpieces on the field, and about 50% of that reason is him (It's their luck that he's generally a good-natured fellow who is actually VERY adversed to doing to others what he did to his mom... but push him and he may just make himself heard for the first and last time for you)

[mr-camhed]

Name: Hardcore

Age: 4.27 million years

Gender: male

Faction: Decepticon

Assigned Forces: Auxiliary Units

Role: Morale officer

Motto: "The enemies wishes to beat us with lies and more lies, they're hitching their trailer to a star. "

Personality: Hardcore is a bot filled with discontent to the world. The persecution and torment that The Autobot high council during The golden ages had brought to bear on him had left unchangeable wounds on his body and permanently scarred his mind. He held grudge against Cybertron in The golden ages, The corrupted Cybertronian Senate, and to The extent, The Autobots. He had injected all his resentment into his music, which he made to instill fear into Autobots, make them lose their will of fighting, and flee like petrorabbits in The presence of predacons. And through only that would he feel a little bit of solace and quell The pain of his hands and mind, how little it may be. He is also often paranoid about Autobots and even his own Decepticon Brothers in arms were conspiring against him, and thus often "persecute" against them. Although those would often be either brushed off or replied with a bollocking by his superiors, but they would sometimes wonders if it is actually happening.

Alternate mode: A gray R129 Mercedes SL 73 AMG Coupe with two tone rims

Appearance: Hardcore is around 5.56m tall, with a transformation scheme similar to a combination of Jazz and Bluestreak, only The front end of The car forms his feet and The back end becomes his chest. His head was that of a typical Empurata Victim but with a very rudimentary jaw beneath, and his hands are seemingly normal but visibly malfunctioned and slightly malformed. His Whole body is black and has many scars.

Weaponry: Hardcore has a surprisingly high endurance and quite high intelligence. He's highly talented in music but mentally twisted. He has a very high dower in composition, and is very good at The electric guitar he has been gifted by Soundwave. His music can simultaneously boost The morale of his Decepticon comrades and disintegrate Autobots' fighting spirit, making The Autobots increasingly fearful and less inclined to resume fighting; and even if The enemies somehow approach him despite the effect of The music, they will be enthusiastically welcomed by a strong sonic boom attack. His music can also be used to incite neutrals, other lifeforms and even weak willed Autobots into turning against his enemies.

Character Biography: Hardcore from Tarn is a forged one percenter who used to be a talented underground musician and a DJ for a Pirate radio station. However, during The Clampdown, he was framed by an aide and security for a famous Senator who was also a neighbor of him that has been complaining about his music for a long time, which caused him to be arrested and tortured in Senate's black Sites, before being sent into The Institute where he was subjected to a deliberately botched job of Empurata which they deliberately left him with a rudimentary jaw as a mark after puncturing his voice box, and melted both of his hands into a nub that scalded his nerve circuit inside alongside a mnemosurgery similar to shadowplay that was there to simply break his mind and tell him who's boss; before throwing The shivering husk of The musician into the slums of Kaon where they intended Hardcore to becomes an empty that would turn out dead soon and becomes recycled material.

However, he was instead recovered by Soundwave and Starscream who were scouting for a place for the next underground Gladiatorial combat away from The game rigging and gambling infested gentrified version strongarmed by The Senate, and Hardcore, who was recognized as the composer of some of Starscream's favorite music, became a member of the performers that performs for Megatron during The gladiatorial battles after Hook repaired his voice box and rebuilt his hands(although The limitation of materials and Hardcore's own seething anger means that It's not The same as his original voice and hands), and after The War broke out, he has became a morale officer for The Decepticons who provided boost in morale and entertainment for Decepticons across The universe in their war against The Autobots.

And after The end of The war, Hardcore once again became an underground musician and radio DJ Who still uses his music to incite others against The Autobots' rule.

Weakness: Hardcore 's hand is not fit for weapon handling or combat other than one involving The guitar , and he doesn't have any built in weaponry other than loudspeakers and amps, which means he would be vulnerable to those immune to or strong enough to withstand his music.

Commentary:

[junk-jester]

Transformers: Ashen Wings Information Page

For those curious, unaware or just stumbling randomly, welcome. For a good bit now, I've been thinking about writing my own Transformers AU, where I use the figures I collect as the main way to tell its story.

Having been inspired by this post I found completely at random, I'm now going to compile everything I've written down in one place for future ease of reference.

This'll be a long post, too, so I'm putting all this info under a read more cut so anyone who doesn't want to scroll for an hour or so can go right on by.

[Section 1: List of Characters]

The cast of Ashen Wings is split up into three primary factions; Autobots, Decepticons and Terrorcons.

The Autobots are comprised of:

-Legacy Override

-Legacy Evolution Commander Armada Optimus Prime

-Earthspark Twitch

-Legacy Wreck N' Rule Impactor & Spindle

-Legacy Bulkhead

-Studio Series ROTB Bumblebee

-Legacy Arcee

-Legacy Evolution Animated Prowl

-ROTB Beast Alliance Targetmaster Rhinox

-Studio Series ROTB Cheetor

-Studio Series ROTB Airazor

-Legacy Evolution Nova Prime

-Legacy Evolution Junkion Scraphook

-Legacy Evolution Junkion Crashbar

-Legacy Evolution Junkion TrashMaster

-and Legacy United Windblade

The Decepticons are made up of:

-Legacy Evolution Tarn

-Studio Series Gamer Edition WFC Megatron

-Studio Series BBM Megatron

-Legacy Evolution Skyquake

-Legacy KnockOut

-Legacy United Cybertron Starscream

-Kingdom Waspinator

-Generations FOC Shockwave

-Prime RiD Soundwave

-ROTB Beast Alliance Targetmaster Skullcruncher

-The Legacy United Rock Lords (Magneous, Bouldercrash and Shard)

[Section 2: General Worldbuilding]

-and Legacy Jhiaxus

And the Terrorcons are made up of:

-Studio Series ROTB Scourge

-Studio Series ROTB Battletrap

-Studio Series ROTB Nightbird

-Studio Series ROTB Freezer

-Kingdom Paleotrex

-Kingdom Ractonite

-Kingdom Wingfinger

-and Cybertron Sideways

[Section 3: Important Plot Points]

-In the ancient past, Cybertron was a rather tribal society, where they worshipped two deities; Prima, Goddess of Light, Day, Order and Life, and Unicron, God of Darkness, Night, Chaos and Death.

-Ancient Cybertronians believed the two gods, brother and sister, where locked in an endless war, their planet caught in the middle as the two tumbled around each other in the sky above, each and every sunrise and sunset signaling Prima's small victories and defeats in conjunction with her brother.

-One day, this balance was interrupted when the Ancient Cybertronians witnessed their first Solar Eclipse, where the planet's twin moons blotted out the sun. Fearing for Prima's safety, they created a series of super weapons known as The 13 to destroy the moons and bring Prima's light back.

-The plan worked and the twin moons were destroyed, but at the cost that Cybertron was tidally locked. As one half froze and the other burned, the Ancient Cybertronians pleaded to their Goddess for help.

-Prima seemingly obliged, and The 13 would transform before the people's optics, becoming immensely powerful warriors now known as The 13 Primes. The 13 Primes would then undo the damage, making the planet spin once more, before 12 of their members suddenly vanished without a trace.

-The last Prime left behind, Alpha Trion, sought to grant wisdom to his kin and created The Legacy of The Primes, a contingency plan that sought to pass his powers onto future generations of bots so that his wisdom should never leave their side.

-In the modern day, the line has continued unquestioned, with Nova Prime-- a well-respected and publicly adored hero figure-- being the latest to carry Alpha Trion's mantle.

-However, as the generations have passed, Alpha Trion's wisdom has been increasingly forgotten or omitted and those that bare the Prime title have not sought to teach his ways to their kin, resulting in the formation of the Functionist Council, which seeks to limit and control Cybertronian society by prescribing roles and jobs to bots based on their natural Alternate Modes. Fast cars become racers adored by the public, Jets are enrolled in Air Force Academies to defend Cybertron from alien threats, Tanks are forced down into Cybertron's underbellies, mining for resources in hazardous environments so that the politicians can build golden cities higher and higher.

The story begins as you all may know it, with the Great War on Cybertron.

-Tarn, Override and their remaining Decepticons and Autobots would work together to form a resistance against Scourge and the Terrorcon-controlled Cybertron, but no progress in taking back the planet could be made up until the real Megatron would return from his soul searching.

-Standard Aligned Continuity depiction of Pre-War Cybertron, with a Miner named D-16 (later rebranded "Megatron" by his admirers) fighting for the equal rights of all Cybertronians from the Gladiatorial Pits of Kaon.

-Megatron allies with Orion Pax, a librarian at the Iacon Hall of Records, and Ratbat, a Political Senator working on the Functionist High Council.

-The three meet, but while Ratbat speaks of violent revolution, Megatron and Orion want more peaceful means to reform the system, preventing the incitement of chaos.

-Ratbat, left vindicated by the duo's refusal, bombs and assassinates the Council, gives himself fake injuries, plants evidence and blames Megatron for the attack.

-Megatron is shortly arrested, but he knows Ratbat is the real mastermind. His rage swells and he causes a mass riot, rallying other prisoners (such as Soundwave and Starscream) to his cause and escaping, saying that if Ratbat wanted a true violent revolution, then that's exactly what he was going to get.

-Ratbat is soon murdered by this group of prison rioters, dubbed Decepticons by a news media outlet, but the chaos wouldn't end with him and the Decepticons would keep attacking everything in sight, despite Megatron's orders to stand down.

-As chaos consumed Cybertron and the remnants of the Functionist Military were unable to hold them back, Orion was approached by the ailing Nova Prime, who had sensed his time was coming to an end and a new successor was to be chosen. Naming him Optimus Prime, Nova would pass along the Matrix of Light-- Alpha Trion's dormant Weapon Form-- and everything he knew or had ever been taught. Optimus, with this renewed sense of purpose, would confront Megatron alone.

-Megatron was prepared to fight Optimus, calling him a betrayer to everything they stood for, but Optimus corrected him, telling Megatron that he had lost sight of their goals, and if he wanted to truly make things right, he should truly consider long and hard what should be done next now. Megatron, heeding Optimus words, would fly off into space to begin a long process of soul searching among the stars.

-Back on Cybertron, without their leader, the Decepticons were left in disarray and most were re-arrested as Optimus sought to get things under control.

-Those remaining Decepticons who avoided imprisonment would make a bot named Tarn-- who Megatron considered to be an adopted son-- be their new leader in Megatron's absence. Tarn tried to lead the Decepticons, but found too much pressure on his shoulders, causing him to leave their ranks and flee into space as well. This would land Tarn on Earth, who hid out on the tropical islands of Hawaii.

-Shockwave and Jhiaxus, two bots who had been arrested by the Functionist Council for pursuing careers in science instead of the military as ace fliers, would then end up hiring a team of skilled Bounty Hunters-- the Terrorcons-- to retrieve Tarn. In turn, Optimus would send a small team of his own-- the Autobots-- to do the same, led by his own adopted daughter figure, a famous champion racer named Override.

-Upon getting to Earth, the two factions would scuffle a bit as they searched for Tarn. Quickly realizing that his team is outnumbered, Scourge, leader of the Terrorcons, would have his allies dig up some dinosaur skeletons and flood them with a nanotech virus, creating the Fossilizers Paleotrex, Ractonite and Wingfinger, as well as their combined mode, Gravesite.

-Eventually, the Autobots would find Tarn first and escort him back to Cybertron. The Terrorcons, enraged at losing a major payday, would reveal their true colors as cultists who worship Unicron and were mutated or enhanced by his dark powers, hence why they could revive the dead. They would then begin to take over Cybertron, using more of Unicron's powers to brutally injure Optimus and create a false clone of Megatron, weaving a conspiracy that Megatron had actually been dead this whole time, murdered in cold blood by the cruel and unfeeling Optimus.

-During his time in space, Megatron would happen upon The Chemical Lenses, the dormant Weapon Form of Alchemist Prime, a master of manipulation over matter and energy, able to transform any one element into another.

-However, the Chemical Lenses were infected by Space Barnacles, and in his attempts to clean them off, Megatron himself was infected. Alchemist's ghost, noticing Megatron's plight, saved them both from the Space Barnacles. Megatron apologized for his failure, but Alchemist denied the apology, saying he did what he could and that's what matters.

-Alchemist would then bestow upon Megatron a special power, but without telling him how to use it, saying only Prima herself could show him, and only when the time was right.

-With this new unknown power in hand, Megatron would return to Cybertron, only to see what the Terrorcons had done to the planet. Enraged by their chaos and discord, Megatron would singlehandedly carve a path of death through the Terrorcon ranks, killing his clone, Nightbird and Battletrap before then moving on to Scourge himself.

-Scourge was saved at the last minute by Sideways, but not before Megatron had unleashed the power granted to him by Alchemist Prime. Antimatter leaked from his eyes like tears as he reduced Gravesite to atoms and dust.

-With the Terrorcons fleeing and scattered, Megatron would then use his power to repair and upgrade Optimus, giving him a Super Mode.

-Optimus and Megatron would then work together to rebuild what the Terrorcons had destroyed and unite Cybertron under one banner. Should the Terrorcons ever return, they'd be ready.

[Section 4: Side Stories]

Beyond what the main plot tells, various side stories also take place at various points in the timeline.

During Tarn's stay on Earth, he would witness the battles between Override's Autobots and Scourge's Terrorcons from afar, where it would quickly become apparent that he had fallen in love with her.

Tarn would initially be terrified of this fact, but after being taken back to Cybertron and leading the rebellion against the Terrorcons with her, his love would be actualized, and he would ask her to be his Conjunx Endura by the time of the real Megatron's return.

Before the onset of the Great War, Starscream was a prominent Military General working for the Functionist Council, but was court marshalled and imprisoned when he refused to fire on civilians. When Megatron escaped and the Decepticon Riots ensued, Starscream was at the forefront of the chaos, guiding fellow Seekers in bombing several buildings. However, his longtime Conjunx Endura, Windblade, had been inside one by mere chance and was injured by debris. Windblade would break up with Starscream and swear revenge for his seeming betrayal, causing them both to grow cold and distant, though they would cross swords several times at several points in time. Windblade would eventually find peace after the Terrorcons occupation of Cybertron was removed by training with Prowl in the art of Metallikato, but Starscream hasn't had similar luck. He now roams the galaxy as a vagabond, trying to find any possible way he could apologize to his lost love.

At some point in time, Tarn is visited by the ghost of his future self, taking the form of a Samurai named Bludgeon. Bludgeon tells Tarn that he hails from an alternate future where Megatron fails and is slain by Scourge, and he has become haunted by the action, unable to pass on. Bludgeon demands Tarn not make the same mistakes he did, to prevent that future from taking place, and Tarn agrees, though without clear instruction. Regardless, Bludgeon vanishes into the afterlife, leaving his sword and skull mask behind. Tarn has since begun taking up both, training day in and day out, waiting patiently for Scourge and Sideways' inevitable return.

[Final Section: Misc. Details & Fun Facts]

-Megatron's Antimatter powers gifted to him by Alchemist Prime mix the jagged spines of WFC Dark Energon with the clouds of energy emitting from his eyes of their IDW depiction, making them extremely dangerous and unpredictable.

-Early drafts of the story had Tarn and Override be Megatron and Optimus' biological kids, but it was changed so they're adopted instead so that the timeline makes more sense.

-There is no Ashen Wings version of the DJD or Damus/Glitch. Tarn has always just been Tarn and, likewise, was never corrupted from being Optimus' friend into a worshipper of Megatron.

--There was plans initially for an Ashen Wings version of the DJD, but they would've had different code names and group title, but without Hasbro making any Legacy figures of them, they can't be included.

In conclusion, that should be everything of note about Ashen Wings. If anyone has any more questions, I'm happy to answer. This AU's plot is also always updating as I expand my collection, so this post will no doubt be updated in time.

-The plot of there being a conspiracy regarding Megatron's death and the creation of a clone wasn't the initial plan, but things sort of evolved this way when I wanted Studio Series Bumblebee Movie Concept Art Megatron, but had to justify its existence in conjunction with Studio Series Gamer Edition Megatron when I had just gotten that before BBM Megs was announced.

For now, however, this is where I'll leave everything off.

[bumblebeem]

This post is giving me thoughts too long for the tags…

I would go as far as to say what people aren’t liking here is Shockwave displaying an emotion (hatred) whereas traditionally he’s always been emotionally detached (a being of pure logic). But Shockwave has always perverted the natural order with his science. Let’s face it - he has never moved with the intention to nobly diversify the Cybertronian race lmao.

I think what people read as acceptance of all from Shockwave is actually cruel indifference. He is the embodiment of “can, but never stops to ask if he should”. The emotional limitations typical of his character wouldn’t normally allow for xenophobia and hatred but there’s a reason he uses the Decepticons to fund and supply for his science and not the Autobots. Whilst the Autobots traditionally seek to protect life in all of its forms, the Decepticons have historically across the franchise viewed anything non-Cybertronian as lesser. Any bots who reject their cause get lumped into the same category. I mean, just look at the way Tarn dealt with defectors...

Just because Shockwave isn’t vocally xenophobic, that doesn’t mean he isn’t benefitting from its presence in the Decepticon attitude. He uses it to his advantage, to justify cruel and unethical experimentations on their own kind, and any non-Cybertronian lifeforms that might get mixed up in his schemes.

What EarthSpark is giving us here is a Shockwave with emotion, however. Anger, betrayal, hatred; those were his motivations this time, not some master plan where the Terrans are an unforeseen variable that he has no feeling towards.

y'know I expected the racism, like the "you are not purebred Cybertronians and therefore are abominations" thing to be said by a Cybertronian at some point

but I didn't think it would come from SHOCKWAVE

they nerfed his tits and made him xenophobic 😔

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #32 - Nobody’s Ever Actually Dead in Comic Books

Our band of merry guys-who-weren’t-on-the-Lost-Light-in-issue-#1 approach the shattered husk of the Lost Light, in a gruesome scene that is only slightly marred by the graphic design.

Font doesn’t really suggest danger, does it? Here, for comparison, is something I slapped together in fifteen minutes (including recreation of background) using a font I got off a free font site.

Now, one could say that my version is rather derivative, flat, and arguably cliche, but you know what else it is? Appropriate for the fucking mood of having found a destroyed, hemorrhaging ship after everyone you knew disappeared.

I’m available, IDW! Hit me up.

Theorizing that this is the ship that the Coffin Rodimus came from- remember that? It was a few issues ago- the gang flies in for a closer look. The ship blood is actually something called quantum foam, which allows for quantum space travel to happen. It’s not supposed to be outside of the quantum quills, but the ship’s pretty junked up, so it is.

Because the ship is so very full of holes, the gang can set down for repairs pretty easy. They land in Swerve’s, finding it in less-than-pristine condition. They also find evidence of Crosscut having gotten creative, as a poster for the play he was working on is hung up in the room. Considering he was still writing it when he disappeared, this might seem a bit odd. But then you remember that this is a ship from the future, and it stops being so odd.

Because this is a future ship, with evidence that Crosscut did some stuff, it stands to reason that, at some point, everyone is going to come back from being disappeared.

Just to die.

Which is a bummer, but one crisis at a time.

Megatron disembarks the Rod Pod, with Ravage following, and everyone is just a touch put off by the duo. Everyone but Nautica, who proceeds to commit a microaggression.

Nautica, that’s Soundwave’s father you’re petting like a common animal.

Ravage, angered by this over-familiarity, swats at her. Skids questions letting an active Decepticon roam around, but Megatron brushes off these concerns, saying that finding any still-living crew members is more important. With that, the search begins.

The gang splits up to look for clues, despite Riptide thinking this is a horrible idea. They’re on the clock for this one- the quantum foam is liable to explode if it touches anything, and there’s an awful lot of the stuff floating around right now.

Nightbeat and Nautica leave the rest of the group to their own work, seeing as Nautica has the most appropriate alt-mode for traversing the gaps in the ship.

Man, that’s pretty cool. Wish Nautica hadn’t been regulated to being “girl best friend” for her character arcs, I would have loved to see her do some neat stuff for her own development. Guess that’s what happens when you get introduced as main cast late, and have to compete with all the faves who had dozens of issues to be established and who also don’t have to deal with the whole “token girl character” thing.

The rest of the gang- Megatron, Ravage, Riptide, Skids, and Getaway- start looking in the area they’re already in. Seems a little lopsided, but whatever.

Ravage finds someone almost immediately, identifying Ultra Magnus through smell alone. Only, it isn’t just Ultra Magnus.

The Magnus armor lays not terribly far away, having had its hands cut off to prevent the recall signal from being activated before being gut-murdered.

Gut-murdered wiTH A FUSION CANNON, MEGATRON

Of course, Megatron was forced to destroy his fusion canon after it was decided he would be joining the Lost Light, but you can buy these things off the black market like it’s nothing. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Brainstorm had a few stashed in his lab.

As it currently stands, nobody can trust the guy who has a storied past of killing Autobots, on a future ship where the only folks who could stop him are dead. Megatron, at least, has the good sense to not argue this fact, and suggests that the boys lock both Ravage and himself up until they suss out exactly what happened.

Meanwhile, over with Nautica and Nightbeat, we run through all the weird shit that’s happened in the last day or so.

Nautica, you’ve been on this ship for months now. How did you miss the fact that the only couple within 800 miles got annihilated by way of Phase Sixer? I feel like that attack might have come up at some point.

Since they’re on the subject of spouses, Nightbeat asks Nautica if she’s married, or if she has friends. Though noting that such a direct line of questioning might get him slapped with someone else, Nautica reveals that she is single, though she does have a best friend. Nightbeat is also single, probably because he pulls shit like this.

While this conversation is going on, Nautica uses her Sonic Screwdriver wrench to open a door with the literal push of a button. Brainstorm tricked out her wrench so hard it turned into a magic wand, which is good, because they’re going to need all the help they can get now that space is literally warping around them thanks to the quantum foam.

Nautica kicks something on the elevator, and that something turns out to be Brainstorm’s mysterious briefcase. Too bad Swerve is gone, he was so invested in what it contained. Luckily, Nightbeat is just as interested.

Back over on the other side of the ship, it seems as though Megatron kept his word about not resisting, as both he and Ravage have been locked in a cabinet. Wonder how that’s going for them.

Oh, better than I expected.

Ravage is fucking pissed that Megatron joined the Autobots, thereby turning his back on everyone who supported his cause during the last four million years. Despite this grievous betrayal though, the Decepticons haven’t stopped moving. Turns out, Galvatron’s in charge now.

But only if Autobot Megatron isn’t some sort of ploy.

It’s at this point that we learn just why Ravage is here to begin with- to see if Megatron’s truly given up the Decepticons, and if he has, to murder him. But first he’d like to know why this is happening.

Megatron views himself as a monster, having perpetuated a war that ended the lives of billions, destroyed the Cybertronian way of life, ostracized his race from the rest of the universe, and killing just to have something to do. He doesn’t like feeling this way about himself, so he decided to walk away from that life by joining the other team.

Don’t think it’s quite that easy to do, but okay.

Ravage isn’t so sure that this change of heart is going to stick, still convinced that Megatron will snap back to his old self with just a bit more time. Problem is, Megatron may not have a ton of that resource left.

Didn’t they build that body in like an hour so you wouldn’t die? Yeah, no wonder it feels as ill-fitting as a twenty-dollar suit. Thing’s probably made out of pig iron and duct tape.

The lights come on before further self-reflection can be done, and the duo realize that they’ve had guests this whole time.

Someone put the kettle on.

Obviously some fucked up shit happened on this ship. Megatron isn’t so sure that it’s him who did these dirty deeds, however, as he reaches into Ratchet’s mouth and pulls out his brain. Which feels like something that doesn’t really absolve one of guilt, but okay.

Also, ew.

Back with Nautica and Nightbeat, things are getting weird.

Now, this sequence might seem confusing at first blush, but this is because the laws of reality are collapsing around them. Going by clues in the background, we can find the proper, linear progression of time, and thus is conversation. This is what is actually happening:

With the mystery of Brainstorm’s briefcase eluding us once again, we move on to see more graphic aftermaths of violence. Poor Tailgate has been nailed to the wall with a chunk of a metal beam that’s almost as big as he is. The mood lighting for this scene is gorgeous, but I’ve hit my limit for exposing y’all to gore for this issue, so you’ll just have to trust me on this one. Then they find something even more interesting.

Who’s ready for Under Cold Blue Stars… 2!

Back over on the opposite side of the ship, Riptide’s found something nasty. It’s a bunch of dead bodies!

Including, uh, Pipes.

Who already died a while ago.

Hm.

All the bodies in this room are in their alts, and it looks like they’ve all been shot and drilled into, for some reason. Skids brings up that he had a friend who could identify the placement of any robot’s brain module just by knowing what they turned into. Then he reaches into a corpse to see what the drill-hole’s all about. It makes him sick, though maybe not for the reason you might think. He gets on the phone with Nightbeat, who’s called to tell them that they’ve found Overlord.

Still locked in his weird body harness.

And decapitated.

Megatron is on the other line, calling because he’s figured out the same thing Skids has. Someone paid a visit to this ship. Someone nasty.

The gang regroups, and Nautica gets the basics on the DJD, because I guess nobody’s mentioned them even in passing in the last six months, either.

God, what do they even talk about on this ship? Certainly not their feelings.

The reason that one room was filled with alt-modes was because of Tarn’s addiction to transforming; t-cogs are easier to remove when they’ve been used recently.

We get a quick 4/5ths-page gore-fest, then it’s back to making it all about Megatron.

Maybe you should have thought about that before you FUCKING DEFECTED, YOU POOL NOODLE.

Nightbeat’s beginning to put two and two together. There’s an Overlord in the basement. That shouldn’t be, because Overlord got exploded by Chromedome when he mercy-killed Rewind. Something is off about the past of this ship.

Before he can establish his MTMTE everybody-lives-but-then-dies AU though, the quantum foam fucks with the ship. These sons of guns need to get the hell out of here, pronto.

Oh god, what now?

Ravage smells someone inside the Magnus armor, someone who isn’t a part of the usual nesting doll lineup. Megatron reaches into the Crackerjack box and pulls out one hell of a prize.

HE LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES

Chromedome would be so thrilled, if he still existed.

[itoldsunset]

semi-translating/summarizing some things p’boss said on the hardest brief podcast. putting it under the cut because it ended up being wayyy longer than expected. also, my thai knowledge is that of a little kid who left her country very young so i probably missed some words/references, sorry!

(i got lazy and skipped the last part where they talked about the props and the colors (red = oh-aew, blue = teh, purple = tarn) but i feel like enough folks on here have done the color/visual analysis so we should be good):

he had this story he wanted to tell about two childhood friends and also knew he wanted to cast pp and billkin, but to make it work they had to pull from pp and billkin’s personalities to make sure that the characters they ended up creating would mesh with who pp and billkin are as performers; in writing the script, they sometimes asked pp and billkin to talk about their experiences as teenagers and adapted it to the series, so for example the storyline where teh and oh-aew meet each other again at afterschool chinese class and start out not liking each other, comes from pp and billkin’s real life when they first met and didn’t like each other

the interviewer asked p’boss to talk about how the itsay team has balanced representation in terms of gender and sexual orientation, and p’boss said it was important to have a team that understands the human experience and can draw from life experiences from multiple perspectives, which led to diversity in gender, sexual orientation, and age

when asked whether itsay is a Y series (BL), p’boss said his intention is to tell a story about the relationship between two boys, so it depends on how you define what counts as BL, LGBTQ, etc.

the interviewer and p’boss had this conversation about what characterizes something as BL, and the interviewer said after asking around it seemed like BL is about relationships between boys but more from a fantasy lens and tends to be different from gay couples in real life, and focuses on scenes between the two male leads, scenes that make you “pinch your pillow” (op: like scenes that make you squeal), but not so much on other moments outside of that; p’boss’s response (approximate translation): “i’m not sure myself, but from what i know, BL series seem to be about relationships between boys, but from the perspectives of girls, since that tends to be the target audience. so it tends to be what makes girls happy, what entertains them, that ends up being the content of BL.”

p’boss on lgbtq series: “i think it looks deeply at the real lives of people who are lgbt, it might be more realistic. it might be like, this is a real thing, but when you tell it in a series it becomes dark, but it’s real. in terms of itsay, in the beginning i didn’t know how to classify it, but when a lot of people started calling it lgbt, i thought, okay. [...] it’s just the story i wanted to tell, and i wanted to tell it with as much humanity as possible. i don’t want to limit viewers, i want as many people to see this as possible, so we can call it whatever they want as long as they watch it and it makes them happy.”

this is his first series focusing on lgbtq characters, but in hormones he wrote goi and dao’s characters (op: i didn’t know this?!)

with itsay, p’boss said it was important to him to have slower pacing to explore the intricacies of the emotions in each scene (different types of anger, different ways of sulking, different types of happy, different types of crying), making it somewhat different from my ambulance where things had to move more quickly to keep up with the speed of a tv drama

the interviewer asked “how does having two male leads change how you work?” and p’boss said there’s nothing different in the way you build chemistry between the two characters because you would just pull from their personalities, but the difference is in the conflict of the story which involves confusion and questioning about sexual orientation which a straight couple wouldn’t go through

p’boss: “when we think about how teh is the kind of person who doesn’t say what he’s thinking, or how oh-aew is the kind of person who’s upfront, anyone can play those roles--women, men, gay people, trans people can all have these roles.”

the interviewer said “itsay seems to be expanding the scope of lgbtq narratives by presenting it as easier for the characters to come out and say they love someone of the same sex. for example, especially compared to love of siam where the kiss scene between mario and pchy was considered something shocking, or in hormones, with the relationship between march and tou (phu and thee) where the characters spent a lot of time fighting with themselves about who they were attracted to. but in itsay, oh-aew was totally straightforward in saying he liked bas. do you think that’s because it’s easier and more open today?” p’boss: “i think the content changes depending on the generations, and oh-aew is really of today’s generation. it’s not that there are no longer kids who are confused about their sexual orientation or afraid to come out, even if ten or twenty years pass there will probably still be some kids who experience that. but there are people who are open and happy about how they live their lives. oh-aew is the type of lgbtq character that’s like, ‘i’m gay, and i’m proud to be who i am.’ [...] and it’s very positive that he sees himself as equal to straight people, because when we’re born, we can love anyone. if you’re a man, you can love another man and that’s a normal thing. that’s oh-aew’s attitude: i’m lgbtq, i’m gay, i’m proud, my parents accept me, and i can tell anyone confidently who i can love. i think a lot of people in this generation already see this as something normal, and we really need to make it something that’s equal. oh-aew represents that equality.”

p’boss on teh: “teh is a character who seems to come from older societal expectations where he’s a man, and he has to love women. but there are people who do still think this way. for teh, it’s hard for him to accept that he might like boys, but when he finds out oh-aew likes boys, he’s totally fine with it and sees it as normal. i feel like society needs to progress to this point, and beyond it, because it all has to be seen as normal. a lot of people when they talk about gay people they say there has to be a top and a bottom, but in reality anything can work, love can happen however. one day i could date someone who’s a trans woman, that’s possible, because it’s about feelings. or a woman who has always loved men could one day date a woman, that’s possible too. there’s a lot of freedom, and i want the characters to show that.”

they talked about how in the scene where teh pretends to hit on oh-aew in front of all their friends, the friends are shocked not that teh is attracted to guys, but they’re shocked that teh likes someone in the friend group. and that goes to show that it’s normal for someone to like someone of the same sex, whereas 20 years ago maybe the characters would have reacted in confusion or shock.

p’boss talking about what was challenging about making this series: “in terms of writing the script, we had to think about how to tell the story in a way that shows the characters’ emotions at all times. for example in episode 2, we explored the restlessness that teh feels when he’s confused about he feels jealous or possessive of his friend. when we say it like that, it’s relatable to people who know what it’s like to feel possessive of their best friend, but how to execute that on the screen is a different matter.”

why phuket? p’boss: “when i decided to tell a story about two boys, i wanted the atmosphere to be romantic. even if the story isn’t romantic, like two boys who are best friends eating together, but i wanted the visuals to be romantic that it looks like it could be a romance film. it intrigues the viewers and adds a certain sweetness to it. i wanted a good environment, so i searched in a lot of different provinces. at first i went to ayutthaya, mae hong son, chiang mai, chiang rai, songkhla. but when i talked to the team, one person wanted to go to the mountains, another wanted to go to the cape, another wanted to go to the beach. even if there’s a beach there has to be a city. we wanted everything, and phuket has it all. old town has a city feel, but there’s also the beach and mountains, so we decided to go to down to phuket while we were writing the script, to confirm whether it would actually work. i’m from hatyai, so i’m from the south, but i rarely ever went to phuket so i wasn’t sure if it would work.”

p’boss said filming the underwater kiss was difficult because there needed to be sunlight in order to capture everything in the way they wanted, but when they got to the island, there was no sun and it was about to rain. so they looked up the color of luck/success for that day and it was purple (op: i don’t have context for this so i can’t explain further lol), so they told everyone to wear a purple shirt. the day they went to film the scene, they all wore purple shirts, but when they got to the site it looked like it was about to rain, so p’yong took off his shirt and hung it on the boat, and as they were filming, every time they said “action” the sun would come out and every time they said “cut” the sun would go away, and p’boss said it was magical and that’s how it came out to be the scene we saw.

[heliopauseentertainments]

Another dumb meta, here we go, this time linguistic rather than based on being trained to punch people as a teenager.

Megan's accent/dialect is entirely affected.

Bear with me on this one. It's not the most organized.

A comment is made in the comics by Nightbeat during Post Hoc about how after some of Megan's work got out that the government was using the Tarnian variety of speech as a marker of suspicion.

However, throughout the series, unlike Ironhide (though it is unclear where Ironhide is from), we see no typographic indicators of marked accent in Megatron's speech.

I am admittedly making the following assumptions:

- Tarn is a place whose local dialect is seen societally as "marked." Otherwise it would be difficult to scrutinize for suspicion.

- The only person with significant amounts of dialogue we know to be from Tarn has no obvious speech markers to indicate this. We assume he is speaking an unmarked variety.

Therefore: Megatron has made the conscious choice to modify his speech to take on a prestige dialect/accent.

Even in the earliest times we see him, he does not have any typographical indicators of marked speech, so if his speech is affected, it happened incredibly early on.

This was probably done either to make himself less of a target or to otherwise be better perceived by classist listeners (analogous to how many Southern varieties of American English are perceived as "stupid" by bigots) or some other reason where taking on the prestige dialect would afford an advantage.

By the time he would have been in a position where no one would have been able to use his native dialect against him, it would have been an ingrained behavior set and his native dialect would only occur in limited situations that we haven't run into.

Caveat: nominally the reason that Tarnian accents were scrutinized during the Clampdown is due to Megatron, but that could be due to him simply being from there, not necessarily that he has marked speech.

[shikai-the-storyteller]

Mae Catt’s Cyberverse Q&A

Here’s a neater version of some key Q&A responses from Mae Catt’s Cyberverse stream. 

Please note: not everything is verbatim, and also note that Mae Catt said “Don’t take things I say as the end-all be-all.” She’s a big supporter of fanfic writers!

This Q&A session contains spoilers for Season 3 of Cyberverse. For a (somewhat) more comprehensive transcript, please refer to this post.

Q: Megop rights?

“Oh absolutely, duh.”

Q: What does Optimus do when he’s not giving speeches / being a leader when they were all hanging out on the ARK?

I think he reads, he seems like a heavy reader. It’d be cute if he read really bad Earth romance novels. He seems like a guy who needs a break from everything.

Q: Does Optimus have hobbies?

Not to borrow from Rung, but doesn’t it seem like Optimus would make model ships? Very quiet, very focused detail-oriented hobby. *pauses* Oh duh, he also plays basketball.

Q: How did the Decepticons learn to stream? 

Because they’re deceptive! Megatron knew he should dedicate some time to winning the hearts and minds of humans. Starscreams’ funeral was not the first time they streamed. Optimus would use the official media channels (like the news), not a streaming service. Megatron would try to speak more directly to the people.

Q: Is Optimus the type of streamer who would take 10 minutes to figure out how to un-mute his microphone?

Optimus is a dad. He has no idea what’s going on with streaming. Optimus would say embarrassing things while Bee and Hot Rod were in the middle of streaming something.

Q: Is Megatron dead?

In discussions we wanted to kill him. We wanted to do a reverse Optimus death. However, in the final product, I kinda enjoy the ambiguity rather than the final decision. Can’t remember if we were decisive about that in the script.

Q: Did the Titan mind Decepticons living in them?

The Titans want to be cities. They want citizens. They want to be lived in, that brings them joy.

Q: Does Megatron do anything for fun or is he too angry?

I want to say he’s too angry, he has fun beating people down but I don’t think he’s had fun for a long time.

Q: How would you feel about a female Optimus Prime? 

[GAY LAUGHTER] 

The question is: do you turn Optimus Prime into a woman, or do you take characters like Elita One and uplift her? I would want to lean more into giving Elita One more oomph, I do love how Optimus doubts himself and if he’s worthy of being a Prime.

(Mae Catt talked a lot about representation and later mentioned how there's more pressure to write the girl characters well, especially because of the need for better representation. They wanted more girls in the show, and they planned to have Jazz be a girl).

Q: Elita prime when?

All the time, in my heart!

Q: Did you plan to have ___ character in the show?

Almost every character was discussed at least once. 

She really regrets that they didn’t get to have Beast Machine Obsidian or Rumble and Frenzy in the show, and says she would’ve loved a MTMTE-style Ultra Magnus / Minimus and Transmutate. She didn’t know what Obsidian’s personality would be, it was just a “Look how cool he is!” sort of thing.

(Note: We have Mae Catt to thank for Whirl getting into Cyberverse)

Q: What was your favorite episode?

“I Am the AllSpark” because of the Megatron and Starscream dialogue (which she wrote). Also S2 04 Soundwave and Shockwave.

I enjoyed writing Starscream most, Clobber and Hot Rod became a joy, S2 E4 was my first episode, and it was fun getting into Hot Rod’s voice. It was hard doing Optimus’ voice, I’d always pass it off to someone to look at it.

Q: Did you ever plan to have Hot Rod become Rodimus?

Rodimus was never considered for the show because Optimus dying has been covered to death, but we were adamant about portraying Hot Rod as someone who wanted to be a leader. Hot Rod is someone who is learning to be a leader.

(On that note, when someone asked if she thought Bee would ever become Prime, Mae Catt said:)

I don’t think Bee would be a Prime. Windblade and Hot Rod would be a better Prime. He wouldn’t want to be a Prime. He’s the #2 to Primes!

Q: Did Megatron always plan to return to Cybertron?

Megatron’s priorities changed when he saw his doppelganger. Realizing he was a horrible tyrant, that scared him enough to return and not kill Optimus and make peace no matter what.

Q: Which death hurt you the most?

Starscream. (Slipstream’s hurt too).

We didn’t want to kill people off willy-nilly for shock value, but in certain instances it made sense. Like, the audience will fall in love with Slipstream because she’s becoming good, so she has to die. (She apologized for that sounding harsh). We killed Prowl because it was Shadow Striker doing the killing and he’s a self-sacrificing lieutenant. I almost wanted Starscream to emerge from the Judge’s head untouched, but I’m ultimately glad that idea got shot down.

(She circles back to this comment later, so I’m making note of that here since it wasn’t a direct response to a question)

When I was desperately trying to save Starscream’s life even though I brutally murdered Slipstream, I wanted Starscream to have amnesia and have a redeption arc. I wanted him to have a Windblade shard and have it be kind of like Castaway, where the only person he talked to was that (and the shard only had 5 phrases it could say). Eventually Bee would befriend him and he’d wind up with the Autobots.

I wanted to write Starscream kind of like an abuse victim who expects the worst of the Autobots, but I wanted him to warm up slowly to them. I wanted to have a Starscream and Optimus episode where Starscream messes up on something and Optimus is like “you did your best and that’s what counts”, a response which is totally new to Starscream. But obviously we didn’t have time for that.

Regarding redemption arcs (a continuation from the previous question, and a huge highlight from the stream):

Re: the potential for Starscream’s redemption arc “A redemption arc needs to be facilitated by a character acknowledging that what they did was wrong. He would have had a laundry list of excuses for it, even if there was all that evidence to the contrary, but the character needs to acknowledge that reasons don’t matter because people got hurt [by their actions]. [The character] needs to intend to do better. Let them try and let them fail, they don’t need to do a 180, it’s hard work to be a better person.”

NOTE: Mae Catt also made a few more comments re: the idea of a Starscream redemption arc on her Tumblr page.

Q: Did Megatron really kill Starscream?

The Starscream beatdown was super severe and they were like “holy frick they’re really going for it” when they saw the storyboards. According to Maecatt, Megatron didn’t kill Starscream when he slammed him down (which is a bit confusing since the show definitely made it seem like Starscream died). 

Q: Did Drift die? Why was he a double-agent?

According to us, Drift did not make it, but I fully endorse whatever you want. We needed a double-agent, someone who would (seemingly) kill Hot Rod. (She says they went with Drift because of his history in the comics).

(Later on in the stream)

Maybe Drift is alive, maybe he’s rethinking his decision and he’ll come back later. Drift would’ve been helpful in S3 for sure, maybe he’d come back with Repugnis or something.

Q: Why are you so mean to Percy? 

He's so mature and pragmatic that he can take it, and is willing to take one for the team bc he understands that it's what he needs to do. (In response to someone’s comment about his personality) Yes, he’s calmly feral.

Q: Is Skullcruncher Percy's bouncer now that he's running Maccadam's? 

Oh totally.

(She later mentions that Percy has permanently taken over Maccadam’s. Also: Skullcruncher is a lady! She misses Mac, but Percy takes good care of her).

Q: If Tarn is the perfect Decepticon who's the perfect Autobot? 

A firetruck alt mode, and an Autobot insignia as a face. Nat (her fiance) and I talked about it a lot. Optimus SHOULD be a fire truck, it makes the relationship between him and Ratchet a little more fun since Ratchet is an ambulance, and Optimus has an ax. It just makes sense! 

(She agreed that the perfect Autobot would be Thunderclash after the chat said that).

On that note, Mae Catt said they used Tarn for the show because: “OBVIOUSLY (the perfect decepticon) should look like this guy. A faceless mindless Decepticon that only serves Megatron”.

Q:  What sort of documents DID Optimus work on in the archives? 

Probably historical archives and working on stuff about all the Primes. Something like the French / American revolution equivalent, which informed his speech writing for Megatron and his own ethics.

Q: Did you always plan to make Optimus socially awkward? 

We “found” the social awkwardness for Optimus. Optimus was depicted as a father figure in S1 (implying it’s because S1 is from Bee’s perspective), S2 / S3 we were able to explore more and found the limits [writing him] and found it was hard to maintain that level of heroic dialogue. Optimus would feel awkward about it too. Randolph did an impression of Optimus’ speech for the Party Down episode. “[Optimus] can’t not be in war-mode.”

Q: Were Optimus and Megatron ever friends, or did they just work together on the speech stuff? 

Oh hell yes, I think [the story] is always enhanced when they’re friends and when Optimus really believes in what Megatron was working on. Optimus’ rejection of Megatron is what pushes him over the edge, his best friend rejecting him pushes him into a place where he becomes a tyrannical person.

Q: Does Maccadam know we love him? 

Mae Catt: *puts hand over hear heart and looks off into the distance dramatically* Yes.

Q:  What’s the best selfie Arcee’s ever taken? 

I like the one with the giraffe. Or maybe a selfie with some humans. I like the idea of Arcee having a bunch of human friends. 

Q: What do the Transformers think of the Florida Man? 

They can’t really tell the difference between humans, they don’t really get it. It just sorta looks like all the normal stuff they see on Earth (or something). 

Q: Who’s the Florida Man of the Transformers? 

Rack ‘n Ruin. But he’s too nice. Hmmm.

Q: What was most important to you personally to put out in each episode? Like humor/characterization/arcs 

I wanted to make sure I didn’t write dialogue that was condescending to kids, wanted to be true about the character. Dialogue needs to be true to the characters, and gay. (Laughs)

Q: Do Transformers know what memes are?

They know what they ARE, but they don’t get it. We wanted Hot Rod to be super into Earth culture (winning races and driving off before humans could realize no one was in the car), but we never had time to really get into that.

Q: What music does Soundwave like?

We had a cut joke from S2 E5 [where Megatron and Optimus are popping through portals all around the world trying to find the All Spark] . Soundwave pops into Brazil where there’s a music festival and he crashes the concert and hang out. He likes EDM the most? 

His favorite song is Despacito. He thinks its so sad.

Q: Were you surprised that Jake Tillman was in his 20s listening to his Optimus voice the first time?

She apparently listened to his vines a lot when he was in his teens so meeting up again like that was a cool coincidence. 

Q: What other dimensions or places did you want to be in the show?

I would’ve liked to have the other Transformers series show up (TFP, TFA, G1, Shattered Glass) but we don’t have those assets or budget. 

“This will quickly become unclear to audiences who aren’t (you people).” They couldn’t have all these references when some of their audience wouldn’t get it. 

Q: What about ____ ship?

Mae Catt says she doesn’t want to yuck anybody’s yums. For example, someone asked about Arcee/Grimlock, and while she said she sees them more as friends, she didn’t say they can’t be in a relationship. (Mae Catt also said she doesn’t ship Bee with anyone because she sees him as a little brother).

As she said several times in the stream, “Don’t take things I say as the end-all be-all”!

That being said, she did say she likes Dead End / Perceptor and Windblade / Slipstream.

Q: Why are there no humans in the show?

From the show’s conception, there were no plans to include any humans. They didn’t want humans distracting from the Transformers.

Q: Why did the Scientist collect Soundwaves?

He collects Soundwave because Soundwave is COOL! Wouldn’t you collect a single father of 5 who carries them around in his chest?

Why does anyone collect what they collect? “That’s a really angry dad who’s got five children he carries around in him and he plays music. Gotta have that!”

(Later on, she circles back to this question)

All the Other Universe Soundwaves the Scientist collected also had their own Laserbeaks. I wonder if the scientist would’ve taken them out. He might’ve just gotten rid of them.

(And of course, here are the boyfriend questions from the stream:)

Q: Is Dead End a good boyfriend?

Dead End is a work in progress, but maybe Percy is patient enough to get him there

(Mae Catt says she really loves the Deadceptor ship. She knew people would ship it, but she didn’t ship it herself until she saw the fanart for it).

Q: Is Astrotrain a good boyfriend?

No, no...he’s not a good person, really.

Q: Is Percy a good boyfriend?

Absolutely--WAIT HOLD ON. He’s very blunt, he doesn’t mince words, if you can handle his bluntness then you’re good. He is what he is and you have to deal with him.

Q: Is Soundwave a good boyfriend?

Soundwave is not a good boyfriend. He’s a good casual romance but he’s not a good boyfriend. Soundwave would be a terrible listener. He hears a lot but he’d tune you out.

Other information tidbits:

- If Thunderclash was in the show he and Jetfire would HATE each other. Thunderclash would be a rival reality star (maybe) to Media Fire.

- Mae Catt said “A lot of intelligent life is inherently mechanical” in space, explaining why so much of the non-Cybertronian life we saw in the show were robots.

- Knock Out was considered for the show, but every Transformer under the sun was discussed at some point in the writer’s room. (Ex: “Rumble and Frenzy are always considered in my heart, but there wasn’t enough time or space or assets to do so”).

- “The brand team had grown up on the toys as we had grown up on the ‘toons, so we just wanted to make the best thing imaginable.”

- They decided Optimus would be in the Other Universe’s Matrix and have a plinth because they wanted to show he was dead. “Logical backflips because he needed to be among the 13 to talk to Windblade.” 

- Dead End’s eyes are white.

- The team wanted Jazz to be a lady (!!!!!!!)  

- These characters have their own lives that we don’t see. Lots of stuff happening between episodes that we don’t always necessarily see.

- Developing Sky-Byte’s character was simultaneous with Jetfire’s character. “We knew we wanted Sky-Byte to be a poet, and we wanted him and Megatron to be chummy”.

- Percy did permanently take over Mac’s bar.  

- Her favorite VA is Jeremy Levy, he’s a really cool guy.

- She thinks Starscream and Cheetor could become (not necessarily friends, but connected?) because of their connection to the All Spark. Mentions how Starscream acknowledge Cheetor as the “Guardian of the Allspark”.

- Mae Catt describes Starscream as an “Awful gremlin” several times.

- Astrotrain and the Insecticons are from Megatron X’s universe.

- She thinks Cliffjumper and Bee wouldn’t get along, solely because of the IDW2 comic stuff. (They had a cut joke about someone telling Bee he should paint himself red and Bee saying, “But then everyone will think I’m Cliffjumper!”).

- Cyberverse got 26 episodes for season 3 because they had the 4-part episode movies.

- Megatron cares about his troops, but not in a way that we would notice that care. 

- AcidStorm is genderfluid. 

-  Cold Construction doesn’t exist in this show. When asked why all the Seekers look the same then, Mae Catt says “Maybe there’s one jet mode all the seekers really like”.

- She loves the idea of Wild Wheel robbing Astrotrain in train-mode, totally Wild West-style.

- One of the things she’s proudest of was turning Lugnut into a gal (and having so much body diversity and gender-neutral designs for a lot of characters). They wanted to include many more girls in Cyberverse (Nickel and Lightbright among them). She also mentioned that  Shadow Striker is taller than Optimus or is his height.

- She describes Cosmos as “R2D2, but a Transformer!”

- Maccadam looking like a buff Rung was just a strange coincidence.

- Blurr really was the fastest.

- Mae Catt says we absolutely SHOULD write fanfic. Fanfiction made her into the writer she is today. She wrote non-stop Matrix fanfic from the age of 12-20 years old. It helped her learn a lot about writing.

- She uses “They” pronouns for Rack ‘n Ruin when referring to both of them, but says that individually they both use “he”.

- She’s really sad that Skywarp didn’t get a speaking line.

- Mae Catt won’t say whether Ratchet finished medical school or not. (She laughed when someone commented "I don’t believe that man has ever been to medical school”). She also says she wants “I choose to believe Ratchet has never been to medical school” on a T-shirt.

- When asked why Rack ‘n Ruin were captains of the Ark in one universe, she says they’re probably the Prime in that one weird universe (lmao).

- She loves the idea that Transformers have siblings / families.

- In a world where they had an unlimited budget, it’d be fun if Cybertronians were constantly shape-shifting and changing their forms. Example: she’d like having Transformers who “grew a beard” and decided to “shave it”.

- She doesn’t understand cycles or astrocycles, she doesn’t understand the weird Transformers time stuff. (mood)

- She loved Beast Wars Inferno, she loved that Inferno called Megatron a Queen. It was played as a joke because the 90s weren’t very socially conscious, but she liked that Megatron never corrected him or beat him down.

- Shockwave altered his spark to have maximum bad vibes to destroy the All Spark.

- She said it’s hard talking about writing a show because you’re designing the experience and you have to make sometimes what sounds like cold and pragmatic decisions (eg: "we need a cold and spunky female”) which sucks, but they need to balance out the show. She says she’d never do that just for the sake of doing it, but it’s part of something that they do need to be aware of while working on a show. “It starts from a weirdly cold pragmatic place, but we try and put truth in it”.

- They didn’t want to have Unicron in the show since he’s the default “big bad”, but if he was in the show, Mae Catt says “If you put the proverbial budget-gun to my head, I’d keep Unicron in planet-mode because it’s more mysterious, but I want both alt modes”.

- Her favorite Megatron is Beast Wars Megatron.

- She doesn’t like Sky Lnxy’s design, it’s creepy. “He talks in the G1 episodes and the voice makes it worse.” She can’t get over his face.

- “I’d love to see more jets [who aren’t our usual gang] and find out all jets are kinda snobby, which explains why Starscream’s the way he is”.

- Everyone on the Autobot side are friends with each other.

Thanks for your time Mae Catt! We’re lucky to have you. Thank you for all your hard work on this amazing show.

[dildo-swaggins-t-baggins]

What you wrote was HEARTBREAKING! Can we please have a third part? Where the crew manages to track Rodimus down and convince him that they DO want him back (and not just because they want to make Thunderclash happy, but because they really DO regret being so harsh)? And could we find out who REALLY wrote the email, if it WASN'T Ratchet?

Alright I swear we’re getting to that part, I SWEAR IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN! But I just got another ask and I’m down for angst, so this is going to be a two part answer? I’m going to give you the first half, and the other ask the second half. So it’s not done yet!

He padded away the rest of the cleaning wash with a fluffy towel, hanging it just outside the rack before running to the mirror. “Another day, and we’re not dead yet.” He mumbled, stepping back and hearing the distinct pings of his struts snapping back into place. Winching as the pain returned and his peds tingled. 

    Thunderclash, you’re overdue for a check up!

    He muted the messages, knowing that Velocity would blow a gasket if she knew how fast his spark was deteriorating. Thunderclash forced a smile, looking into his tried optics, leaving his quarters, he never moved into the captain’s quarters, didn’t feel right cleaning up the burn marks. Just another empty hab.

    But that was the least of his worries, the crew was heavily divided, with Getaway getting off with light charges, Megatron once more taking up the co-captain position. Some supported Getaway, while others preferred the two co-captains, one thing was certain, morale was low. Tensions were high and fights were breaking out.

    Thunderclash paused, sparing a glance at the medbay, what was left of his spark sank. Ratchet waited, his frame stood still, his optics shifting left and right, intake drawn in tightly. This was becoming normal, Thunderclash was sure that Ratchet had a thin layer of dust on him. The medic waited for only one mech Drift, and Drift...Drift was a mess. There were rumors of the white swordsmen, he was a ghost on the lower decks, he walked without a sound, sharpened his blades to the point that they could cut the ship open. When Thunderclash finally caught a glance at the once TIC, Drift’s tires were bald, his frame was littered with dents and cuts, but what scared Thunderclash the most was that Drift was mute. Drift didn’t talk to anyone anymore, only showed up every now and then for Ratchet to patch him up and disappeared. 

    He offered Ratchet a smile, the medic gave him a small but sad smile back. He often tried to picture what it was like for Drift and Ratchet.

    When he finally stepped on the bridge he was greeted with Ultra Magnus’ stern face, always guarded, then there was Megatron who took up the hobby of the pacer test. “Megatron, I’ll take over.” He said reading the report.

    The silver mech froze, twisting the metal railing under his servos. “Very well.” He stepped off, most likely going to write more poems. That was good, very good, at least he had an outlet. Thunderclash made a mental note to make sure no one ever read those poems. It wasn’t a pretty mental image of Getaway reading those poems over the intercom. 

    Thunderclash slumped in the chair and groaned, he can feel it in his frame, the stress, pressure, pushing down on him, compressing him more and more. Maybe the next meeting at Swerve’s would be more progressive than the last few?

    Somehow he squeezed into the packed bar, pushing himself to the back, waving to a few mechs but disappeared in the sea of frames. Of all the mechs to start this and somehow keep it a secret, it was the loud mouth bar owner, Swerve. The mini red mech climbed up on the bar, gesturing towards Cyclonus, who promptly whistled and quieted down the whole bar. Everyone turned to Swerve, who cleared his intake. “Alright so I’m going to get to the point, we know what we’re here for, you know, find Rodimus. An almost impossible task, like we’re in the haystack and Rodimus isn’t a needle he-”

    “Swerve, get on with it.” Megatron grumbled, tossing back whatever was in his cube.

    “Alright, so, Brainstorm, any updates?”

    The scientist clapped his servos together. “Yes, so you know that the Rod-pod has a tracking device, for reasons, but we have to be in range. However I’ve made a few modifications and now we can track it with ease, but the scanner is still limited.” He beamed.

    Thunderclash vented, pleased that this whole group of mechs wanted one thing, and that was to track down Rodimus and haul his aft back into the captain’s chair. 

    “The fights are getting worse, I think Getaway knows we’re up to something.”

    “So what, frag him, we’re half the ship.”

    It was foolish to think that they weren’t been spied on, any one of the crew could be working for Getaway. He knew that, Ultra Magnus knew that, even Megatron knew that, so it really shouldn’t have been a surprise when the ship did decide to blow up. He felt it rock under him, waking him from his recharge, Thunderclash bolted towards the bridge and found Megatron and Ultra Magnus shouting orders as warning signs filled the bridge with an angry red hue. “What just happened?”

    “Hull rupture, and a big one, someone blew us up.” Megatron snarled. 

    Thunderclash left his tanks drop, watching as the ship started to spiral out of control, knowing exactly what was going to happen next. He grabbed Megatron, an Ultra Magnus. “Leave, now, everyone get out!” He shoved them through the doors, shouting at the other members and pushing the mech at the helm aside. He firmly grabbed the controls, hearing the ship creak under him. “Rodimus, if you’re out there, you’re going to kill me.” He grumbled, heaving the steering up as clouds passed them. He laughed. “Well if this doesn’t kill me first.”  just then he heard the defining sound of the ship howling, only to briefly glance up to see nothing more than solid, compact rock. “Frag.”

        His systems somehow binged online, his helm spun and his processor was filled with error messages. Slowly his systems came back online, his optics were first, he blinked away the thick layer of dirt and started to name his surroundings. Dirt, burning metal, rocks, energon, lots of energon. Then a ped slapped down, dust rising around it, he flinched and groaned, more errors popping up in his hub. His audio system came on next, and he stilled at the voice.

    “I’m checking it out, yes there’s survivors, lots of them, wearing the Autobot badges, mhm.” He hissed, his voice was thick, sketchy, like someone shot him in the throat? “Tarn, that’s enough, and that’s an order.” He snapped, his peds stopping. The mech groaned, his peds turned towards Thunderclash, and he leaned down, grabbing hold of one of Thunderclash’s helm fins. Painfully he pulled Thunderclash’s helm up, he hissed and winched, but forced his optics to focus, knowing very well he wasn’t dead yet and he still had work to do.

Red optics, fangs and black paint and flames, that was unexpected, then there was the very VERY prominent badge that shined on his chest, purple, pointy, angular, a threat and a promise. “I told you not to blow up my ship.” He snarled, those fangs flashing once more.

Thunderclash really wished the crash killed him, anything to spare him from this sight, the rage in those optics, the claws tearing away at his fin. Then there was the pain in his chassis, it felt like his spark was trying to eat itself, tearing away and away. Somehow his vocalizer was mostly intact. “Rodimus?”

Rodimus smirked. “That’s lord Rodimus to you.”

[dailycharacteroption]

Spirit Walker (Mesmerist Archetype)

 Occult magic dives into a lot of poorly-understood mysteries, and the secrets of death are no exception to this. However, usually death is the purview of the spiritualist or medium, with perhaps a minor aspect for some psychics and occultists, while the mesmerist as a rule works with living minds that still experience the world in the same way. The most that the majority of mesmerists can do is infuse a target with the psychic energy to get around their normally mindless or altered consciousness, but doing so has a chance of failure.

Not so for the ones called spirit walkers, who master the art of bending the undead to their will. In a way, this makes them very similar to your typical necromancer, raising an army of the dead, but like all characters, there lies the seeds for more complex individuals. Perhaps they only seek to protect themselves? Perhaps their culture sees the dead as a useful source of labor in need of corralling? Perhaps they have an entirely different view of death than most, seeing their ability to control undead as a way to suppress their violent instincts to establish communication? Or perhaps being able to manipulate the dead is just a way to make them easier to lay to rest. All those, as well as the typical evil and many more are possible.

Interestingly enough, this archetype also contains elements of the Edgar Allen Poe story “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.” In which he explored the possibilities of an altered state of mind in regards to death.

 As part of their mastery over a branch of mesmerism, these telepaths can learn spells that interact with the dead, hiding them from their sight, bending their wills, freezing them in place, and even speaking with volatile haunts.

They also quickly learn the art of psychic inception in order to target undead with their various mental effects, but cannot use this on other mindless foes unless they also take the trick properly. Moreover, their mastery grows greater, making them more likely to succeed, eventually allowing them to alter undead minds without any hassle at all.

One of their most uncanny abilities, however, allows them to force the mind of someone who died while under the effects of their mind-bending stare to continue to persist in that body, able to be controlled by the mesmerist for a short period or the body becomes too damaged to continue. At first this is limited to humanoid targets, but eventually that limitation fades.

Much like necromancers or evil clerics, these mesmerists learn to channel a pulse of power to bring undead under their sway, with the same limitations.

However, the most powerful of these mentalists can completely dominate an undead creature the same way another mesmerist might to a living counterpart, though more powerful undead can partially resist, only temporarily being bound.

If you want a dash of necromancer in your mesmerist, this might be the archetype for you. Just know that they don’t get a lot of undead-supporting spells, so you’ll be relying on using the psychic inception to affect them one at a time with buffs. You lose mental potency, so probably avoid spells like color spray and others that affect based on hit dice that would otherwise benefit from that ability. Beyond that, I’d recommend a selection of buffs and debuffs to combine with their ability to affect living and dead alike, so you can buff allies or undead minions alike, regardless of how temporary they are.

 Given the occult nature of their magic, spirit walkers can be just as, if not more unsettling than the average necromancer, though their unique position of being able to touch the minds of the undead directly does mean they offer a unique perspective on the whole necromancy business. Some may be more empathetic with their undead servants, while others may be all the more callous.

  Hailing from the desert to the south, Eshena the summerborn rhyphorian partakes in her culture’s tradition of mummification, preserving the dead using the desert heat and dehydrating salts. For the most part this is purely ritualistic, but when in need of reinforcements, she also serves as a death commander, leading mummified zombies into battle by force of will in defense of her people.

 The lair of Rkyr-Anrog is rife with bog mummies and other undead, the results of many a foolish adventurer and unfortunate bystander approaching the tarn linnorm’s lair. There is one who does approach safely, however, a hooded figure the locals call a witch who occasionally commands one of the restless dead to come with her, and they obey, though to what purpose none can say.

 Wearing pale masks, the Death Speakers work to put the dead to rest without resorting to violence or holy destruction, things they claim leave scars on the soul. As such, they study the occult power to speak to the dead, and when necessary, command them to stand down or fight for them. There is the worry, however, of impersonators or those who corrupt their teachings.

[amosbrittany]

Shattered chapter 2

Disclaimer : I don’t own Transformers Animated or any characters for that matter.

Notes : I haven’t done fanfiction, let alone TF based, in ages. And never for TFA, So I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing but what the hell, I’m going for it. lol I took quite a few liberties, pulling bits from various continuities to build this sucker.

Warnings : I have a tendency to put characters through hell. A bit of Bumblebee/Blitzwing this chapter. Eventual Optimus/Sentinel, Megatron/Ultra Magnus, Jazz/Prowl and Ratchet/Pharma.

Summary : The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but Sentinel’s latest stunt might just kill them all…or worse.

Getting Decepticons to divulge anything of worth was a chore in of itself, but trying to get them to talk after a solar cycle's toil in the Nucleon Mines was downright impossible.

After what happened at the outpost on the Fringes, the team stationed there had been recovered and samples of the mystery substance had made its way to the Ministry of Science for study. Landfill and Broadside had also been full of the malevolent purple stuff and just as insane and violent. It had taken some work, but they had taken them down and their bodies too were taken to the Ministry. It was unclear what they were dealing with. Leftover notes from past teams left them little to go by. However, Optimus felt there was some merit in Pharma's observation concerning the Decepticons and their aversion to the asteroid. They knew something and he needed to find out what before he sent anyone else back out there.

The team had tried the upper crust of Megatron's troops, expecting them to have valuable information. He was certain they did, yet they refused cooperation. The only one who didn't wax on about their leader's glory or Autobot scum this, we will tell you nothing that was Blitzwing, who seemed somewhat interested in talking. It was uncertain if he could meet the triple-changer's demands though. He wanted a pardon in some form, anything to get out of the mines really. The labor aside, he didn't seem to care much for the attention he was garnering from some of the guards. He also mentioned their penchant for making prisoners fight with one another with their rations on the line. They were all details Optimus found quite unsettling. Even if he couldn't have the triple-changer relocated, he made a vow to look further into the allegations. Cyclonus had quite a bit to say himself, but a great deal of it was cryptic and eerie sounding nonsense with death being a very prominent part of it all.

He had considered speaking with Megatron  himself, but the Prime decided against it. It was better to let the tyrant languish in solitary where he was, rather than him anything to work against them somehow. It wouldn't be surprising given his wicked intelligence and manipulative nature.

Awaiting word from Alpha Trion on whether Blitzwing's request would be acceptable in any way, they moved on to question the grunts. For the most part, all they had to offer was that there were orders to avoid many of the asteroids that littered the ring of the Fringes, suggesting the one they had set the base on was one of many. Yet the why, that was still a mystery. Their superiors hadn't felt it necessary to tell them more than what was needed : if you value your spark, you won’t touch down on one.

"Well, that was a waste of time, bossbot." Bumblebee huffed as they waited at the entrance to the mines for word from the current Magnus. "And the only ones we can get anything out of are the screwiest ones of the lot."

"Blitzwing can be coherent." Optimus paused, a moment of uncertainty flickering on his faceplate. "When he wants to be."

"Kinda funny he thinks the guards are out for his aft." Bulkhead snorted.

The Prime didn't quite agree. Decepticons like Blitzwing and the Seekers weren't unappealing even by their standards as Autobots. They were just significantly larger. The only thing that made the triple-changer unattractive was that borderline demonic face he showed from time to time. Otherwise, his dominant personality had a comely face, his voice silvery which turned raucous when his fiery side flared up and his frame shapely for a large war-mech. It wasn't a surprise he had some unwanted attention, he was sure the Seekers had their fair share as well. "Whether they are or not, no one deserves that. He's a prisoner, entirely at their mercy and he has rights. Even if we can't get him relocated, I'm going to be looking into the matter."

<Optimus Prime.> The sagely voice of Alpha Trion sounded over the comm-link.

<Yes, sir?>

<In regards to Blitzwing's...request. I will permit a brief respite from the mines for consideration of defection and reform. Should he accept, he will be pardoned and placed under a team's command with limitations. Should he refuse, he will return to working the mines. That is all.>

The elder was brief and his tone clipped as he gave his answer, disconnecting soon after leaving Optimus no room to question or argue. He supposed it was better than what he actually expected, although he had a feeling Blitzwing would not be fond of the idea of defecting. It was hard to blame him. All those who defected from the Decepticon ranks were placed on the list of the Decepticon Justice Division and eventually hunted down for their treasonous turn. With Megatron locked up, he had no idea if that would be the case, but no Con would take the chance. If for whatever reason he wound up under Sentinel's command, that was hardly much better than throwing him into the slag pits. They might as well ship him off and drop him right at Tarn's doorstep for all the good it would do the triple-changer. 'Maybe I can determine who he gets assigned to at the very least...I was planning on getting Bee his own team for the Earth assignment...'

The mid-solar shift was at its end and the graveyard shift were filing their way into the mines as the others filed out. Normally the Cons looked somewhat dejected on their way back to Trypticon, but it seemed their questionings had riled the group up. Lugnut was bellowing accolades for his master as they marched and Strika carried herself proudly. Bringing up the rear was the triple-changer they had their sights set on and his dark visage looked back at them excitedly, as if hoping for some promising news. "We'll take Blitzwing from here for some final questions." Optimus stepped up, stopping him and the guard herding him and the Cons along at the rear. Strika and Lugnut turned.

"Do not tell zhem anyzhing, Blitzwing. Zhat is an order!" Strika snarled menacingly.

Lugnut howled at him as well. "DO NOT TURN ON THE MASTER! HE WILL RISE FROM THE ASHES AND LEAD US TO VICTORY! DEATH TO THE AUTOBOTS! ALL HAIL LORD MEGATON!!"

Blitzwing's visage reddened as he let out an annoyed growl. "Jou shut jour intake for five fragging cycles OR I VILL SMASH JOUR SKID PLATES IN, JOU-!" A fierce giggle split the air. "-One eyed, one track, flying purple proton eater! EHEEHEEHEE!"

Much to the Prime's shock, the three attempted to lunge at each other, the two juggernauts against the berserker. Clearly tensions had escalated within the faction since their incarceration, seemingly to the point even the higher ranks were brimming with dissent. That was somewhat promising. While Optimus and Bulkhead took the Con's arms and Bumblebee pushed on his abdomen as guards wrestled the other two down, they kept the three apart as they directed him to the interrogation cells. Once out of sight of the others and the guards, Blitzwing settled down, grudgingly walking with them in silence. They stepped into the room, the SIC across the metal table from him while Bulkhead and Bumblebee flanked the Decepticon in case he attempted something. Blitzwing folded his hands together, wrists bound in stasis cuffs for added measure, regarding Optimus calmly. "Vell...?"

"Well." Optimus cleared his vocalizer, wary of how the offer would be taken. "Alpha Trion is willing to give you something of a break from the mines for information on the asteroids of the Fringes. But that's pretty much it. It's either you denounce the Decepticons and join us, or you stay where you are. The most I can influence would probably be who you get stuck with and of course, investigating your claims of harassment."

Blitzwing frowned, briefly appearing close to losing his temper for a klik before he seemed to rein it in. His gaze shifted down, eyeing the table with a cold intensity. Optimus had a feeling he was weighing the consequences and the perks, maybe even considering escape under the pretense of joining them. That was certainly a possibility, but of course the question there was always, what would he do then? The Decepticons that mattered were all under lock and key, those that remained were splinter groups scattered across the edges of the universe. "I..." Blitzwing began, his gaze never leaving the table. "I vill have to give zhat some consideration. I know jou understand zhat."

That wasn't very surprising so he nodded. "Okay. I do. I understand. Now the asteroids...?"

"...Zhey have a peculiar substance in zhem zhat vorks like, eh oh, zhe nucleon? Or Nuke? But vorse. Our scientists have vorked vizh it for some time, a long time ago. But it's very volatile. It's like energon but wrong. Zhe tests showed it made jou stronger, faster, more powerful but aggressive too. Zhey usually vent feral und died from zhe exposure to zhe stuff. Und never let it near a carcass. Zhat’s even vorse." Blitzwing explained casually. What he told them sounded exactly like what happened to Huffer, who had attacked Sentinel and Pharma in some frenzied state after being exposed. "Zhey decided it did more harm zhen good for zhe var effort zo ve avoid it. Ve alvays found it funny you Autobots built over zhe stuff like idiots."

"You're the idiot." Bumblebee poked his arm with his stinger.

"No, jou are!" The Con giggled at him.

"Any idea where this stuff came from?" Optimus pressed.

"Cyclonus alvays zaid it came from zhe 'heart of darkness und zhe root of all evil'. Und I vould take vhat he says a little serious if I vas jou. He's seen zhings. Odd zhingz. Ve even vonder vhere he came from at times...As for vhere, he said zhe asteroids came from a great battle in zhe Vok territories zhat hurled the asteroids far und vide. Vhat zhat battle vas, he never really zaid. Only it vas something ancient and terrible." The Decepticon’s face flipped again and he gave him a giddy, fanged smile. "Und zhat's all I know about zhat!"

It was certainly more than they knew before, so Optimus was grateful for the Decepticon's cooperation. What they had learned though troubled him deeply. If it was something that repelled even the Cons when clearly using it against them would be advantageous, then they were going to have to figure out what to do about the base in question and whether they could set about destroying the asteroids harboring the foul stuff. "Let's get you back to your cell then. You'll have the next deca-cycle to consider Alpha Trion's offer."

Blitzwing's jagged maw turned down in a frown, clearly not pleased with the idea. He wasn't sure if the triple-changer had expected much else. They led him from the interrogation rooms back to his cell where to his surprise, Sentinel was waiting for them. "I was wondering where the delinquent prisoner went but they told me you were questioning him?" Sentinel eyed Blitzwing warily.

Although some part of him wanted to be happy to see him, his old friend always led to unpleasant things in one form or another. "What are you doing here?" Optimus frowned.

"Guard duty till they refill my roster. Apparently they're not keen on letting that infernal outpost go, despite the weird scrap that just went down. Relocate it for Primus’s sake at least...And before you ask, Pharma is keeping the old coot on Omega Supreme company." Grabbing Blitzwing's elbow roughly, he practically shoved the Decepticon into his cell, ignoring the vicious growl thrown at him in response. Sentinel smirked condescendingly at him. "So what did ugly here tell you?"

"Better lookin' than you." Bumblebee remarked offhandedly.

"What was that?" Sentinel glowered.

The minibot whistled idly, stepping away and moving towards the cell doors like the Decepticon was more interesting. Optimus sighed. "Apparently the stuff is bad news and we should look into relocating the space bridge."

"Really? Gee, I just told you that even! But then again Oil Slick told me some interesting stuff about it too, some stuff Blitzbutt here probably made sure to conveniently leave out." He glanced at the triple-changer smugly, having done his own idle questioning while they had been talking.

"Like what...?" The SIC frowned.

"That the stuff can raise the dead and everything. Sounds crazy, but Huffer didn't exactly go down easy. Maybe if we used the stuff on Ultra Magnus, he'd perk right up." Sentinel smirked. He was feeling inspired after talking with the scientist. The reports on the injured Magnus were not looking promising and if he found a way to save him, he was sure Ultra Magnus would be so grateful he'd surely regain his old position if not get off Fringe duty. But Optimus was looking too alarmed for his taste.

"Are you crazy? You can't use that stuff on Ultra Magnus! Look what it did to your team! Under no circumstances is that stuff going anywhere near him."

"Ah, because you're now next in line and you don't want him to recover?"

Optimus pinched between his optics. He should have seen that taunt coming. "Unlike you, Sentinel, I'm not that interested in being Magnus. But whatever this stuff is, it's dangerous and nothing good is going to come of it. Even the Decepticons don't want to touch the stuff, that should tell you a lot."

"It tells me they know it best and what happened to the others was when they were alive and well. The science whiz over there claims it's more beneficial for the dead and dying."

"Remember what happened last time you trusted a Con?"

"And you want to trust this one?"

Blitzwing watched the exchange curiously, feeling a little worried at the former Magnus's train of thought. Megatron had tried, millions of stellar cycles ago, to take advantage of the dark stuff when it came to the dead and dying in order to maintain their ranks. It had proven nothing but a scourge. And bombs with the stuff had been banned as well. It ate at and corrupted what it touched, hence why their leader forbade its use directly on Cybertron itself. He always had a feeling if Megatron had grown desperate enough, he would resort to it. Surely the Autobots wouldn't be that stupid.

He turned his crimson optics down to Bumblebee, admiring the minibot for a moment to distract himself from the grim memories. Unlike Optimus and Bulkhead, it looked like the little one had gotten a new paint job. Black was a more prominent color than the yellow now with deeper golden yellow accents. Silver elite guard emblems adorned his arm guards.  It was a good look for him actually.

Looking at his own paint job, Blitzwing grimaced. Several stellar cycles in the mines had robbed the beige of its metallic luster, dulled the purple and muddied the black on his plates. His tank treads were scuffed to the Pit and back, his wings chipped. A hot oil bath, thorough buffering and a repaint sounded downright heavenly. There were odd cracks in his plating, particularly along his legs where long solar cycles of hard labor had put a strain on him. His left ankle struts pained him constantly and there was a swell on the right where he'd been struck by one of the guards in vicious retaliation for biting him with his Random face. It was likely he had to have some joints repaired if not replaced, but that wouldn't happen until they gave out on him completely.

Bumblebee looked up, watching the triple-changer examine himself. He waved a hand at him and as soon as he had his attention...He proceeded to make a series of comical faces at him. Blitzwing made an unintelligible noise of delight before he started to mime them back at the minibot gleefully, forgetting the arguing Primes for the moment.

Weary of his argument with Sentinel, Optimus called on his team to come along. He wanted to get word to Perceptor on what had been shared with them and ensure Ratchet kept a close eye on Ultra Magnus in case his old friend decided to do something ridiculously foolish. "Come on, Bumblebee, you can make faces at Blitzwing later."

"Yeah. Later, Blitzbrain." The minibot waved nonchalantly before stalling momentarily, caught off guard by the forlorn look on the black visage. He shook it off, hurrying to catch up to the others and convincing himself he was seeing things.

~+~

Oil Slick watched as the Primes argued over the little gem he had handed the one who was once Magnus. Of course, said gem had caused its fair share of misery and strife among the Decepticons back in the day, but it was his hope that it would cast a terrible pall over the Autobots in turn.

"...You know not what you set in motion." Cyclonus rumbled ominously.

"Please." The scientist drawled. "I know exactly what I'm doing."

"A sunrise dark shall cast pall upon the empire. Time will rust. He shall stand alone while not alone. Adorned the titan will be in black metal. The stars shall scream. The symbol of the Uncreator shall be clear. And his gaze shall unravel the legacy of Primus. Thus shall the adversary rise. A black star. Unstopped and unstoppable."

"...'a perpetual conflict will culminate upon a world forged from chaos. And the weak shall perish in the shadow of a rising darkness'." Shockwave joined in, reciting another of the prophecies of Primus along with Cyclonus. "Yes, yes, we know, Cyclonus. But those are only terrible tales to scare protoforms. Oil Slick's course is logical...Sow chaos among the Autobots and with any luck, it will give Blitzwing the opportunity he needs to free us."

"How?" Strika pressed against the cell wall to hear them better.

"It is a logical conclusion that they are offering him the chance to join their ranks and 'reform'. But Blitzwing is no fool, he will not risk the wrath of Lord Megatron let alone Tarn by truly joining them."

"You do realize zhis is Blitzwing ve are talking about..."

Shockwave tapped his claws together, watching the triple-changer from his cell. "I am well aware he can act the fool...But, he is not foolish. I dare to venture he would have made a more admirable second over Starscream before the...procedure."

Blitzwing tilted his head from one side to the other. He could tell they were talking about him, the way they leered his way now and then. They were pinning their hopes on him, which was quite the gamble on their part. If an arrogant blowhard like Sentinel Prime could sleaze his way all the way to Magnus, the triple changer was sure he could rise high enough in their ranks to access Trypticon and do just as his fellows hoped. Still, he had to wonder if it would be worthwhile in the end. They had been fighting the good fight for fourteen million years, the same song and dance again and again. There was nothing but consistent losses. Their empire had lost several planets in their limited territory and countless mechs and femmes had perished for the cause.  As a scholar once said, to do the same thing over and over expecting different results was madness.

Hell, without Megatron for those fifty stellar cycles, they had accomplished next to nothing. Besides calling on Lockdown to hunt the Autobots responsible for their lord's demise, Blitzwing himself had been preoccupied with taking care of his charges on New Kaon before he and Lugnut had set out to find the Allspark.

Even with his return, they had come close to seizing the Allspark, only to be handed their most crushing defeat yet. Instead of focusing on Earth, it would have been more lucrative to take Omega Supreme back to Charr, dispose of Starscream, have Strika's team retrieve the protoforms, produce them en masse, and launch a proper invasion of Cybertron while the leadership was crippled. Or at least, given the details imparted to him by Shockwave of their final assault, would have been the way Blitzwing approached the situation. Megatron's vindictive streak had demanded he go after the Autobots and the Sumdacs for the slights he suffered for those fifty stellar cycles. An understandable feeling, but one that had cost them in the end.

Now the prominent figures of the Decepticons were locked away in Trypticon, toiling away in the nearby nucleon mines. They were now no better than the slaves they had once risen from. It was a mercy the gladiatorial arenas were no longer functioning, although the Trypticon pit fights were no better. Blitzwing had no desire to be a slave again, which was why he was seriously considering the offer from the Autobots. It wouldn't be ideal, but damn it, anything was better than this!

He shuffled around in his small cell to settle comfortably on the bench provided. It was woefully cramped, his wings occasionally scraping against said bench or the wall. Blitzwing huffed, dropping his head back against the wall. He offlined his optics as he mulled over the choice looming ahead of him, but the sound of a bot approaching his cell brought him back to the present. He lifted his head, glowering at the person opening his cell.

Bumblebee, looking cocky as ever, was waltzing in like he owned the place. "I forgot these cells were...Well, they're not small for me but your big aft takes up all the space."

Blitzwing giggled. "Come over und I'll show you how big my aft is! I'll sit on jou, Bumblebench!"

"Didn't know you were into sitting on people, but I could tickle your ports if you insist."

"Oh-! Vait..." There was a brief moment of confusion on the black visage before his features lit up with flushed surprise and he descended into a fit of giggles. "I didn't realize zhis vas a conjugal visit, jou naughty little bot!"

Snorting, Bumblebee hoisted himself up on the bench next to the Con. He could tell the other Cons across the way were watching them intently but he tried to pay it no mind. He was here to pester the triple changer. "Just think...You take the offer and you won't have to be stuck in a tiny room like this."

"..." Blitzwing looked down at him. Oh, was that what this was...?

"When ya get out, we could let ya spend a whole day at Sunny's body works shop. She does hot oil baths, deep plate buffering, get you a nice new coat of paint...The beige and purple ain't bad, but blue and white would look pretty sweet on you. Get some awesome high grade at Maccadam's-"

"So vhat, jou here to try und tempt me, little bug?" He huffed with annoyance.

Bumblebee grimaced, as if he were caught with his servo in the energon goodie jar. "Well..."

"I am vell avare of vhat I'm missing, bug. New Kaon does not exactly have much in zhe vay of luxury, nor do ve have zhe time to indulge in it." What there was to be had in New Kaon was simple in nature, they made do with what they could. It was hardly as decadent as how the Autobots lived.

"You indulge in anything ever?"

His plates bristled a little, hearing a touch of accusation in the minibot's tone. But it had been some time since he took much time to himself let alone truly enjoy some of the more sophisticated pleasures in life. The troops had been a handful in Megatron's absence and even when he had been around, the best Blitzwing had to brag about was the oil they consumed on Earth. But despite how the Constructicons praised it, he'd had better and Megatron kept the best samples of it for himself for obvious reasons. It paid to be at the top of the fuel chain after all. "Back home I vould make hot Mudder's Milk und zome chocolate covered vheel-nuts vhich I enjoyed vhile lounging in a hot solvent bath every Glutsol. but zhat vas a long time ago."

"Mmm, on one hand that sounds boring, but then again, sounds pretty swanky too."

"Vhat do you indulge in zhen?"

The minibot grinned, counting off on his digits. "Racing, video games, dancing, music, awesome movies, hanging with my pals, junk food, soooooo much junk food. I really miss Sari, but it'll be fine cause bossbot says they're gonna make a city on Earth and he's thinking I could be stationed there if I want. Then we can hang out all the time!"

"Vhat could possibly be zhe appeal of 'hanging' vizh a tiny organic like zhat?" Although the humans had been curious creatures, he wasn't overly fond of organics in general, especially after the experiments Blackarachnia put him through.  

"Just cause. But she's awesome too!"

"Zhose are not very zatisfying answers."

"Then don't ask dumb questions!"

"Zhere are no dumb questions!"

"Yes there are!"

Blitzwing bared his teeth menacingly at the minibot who hardly took it seriously. With a growl, the Decepticon crossed his arms, frowning at him. "I don't have jour answer und I probably von't anytime soon! Let me enjoy zhis break in peace!"

"For now anyway...I'll be back in a couple solar cycles to bug ya again." As he hopped down to take his leave, Bumblebee winked at him. The triple changer scowled, his faceplate warming a little. "See ya, Blitzbrain!"

On his feet as soon as the cell was closed back up, he watched after the departing bot. His face spun and his mouth spread wide in a jagged grin, clapping his hands energetically. "Oh joy! I can't vait! Maybe next time I'll sit on jou!"

[trywonderx]

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[snarkeater]

The perfect song

While with a captive, Tarn feels bitterly towards what he’s sure is his unseen audience.

Kaon loves to listen.

Tarn doesn’t need to see him to know he’s there, standing or sitting just outside the interrogation room door, absently tugging on his digits one at a time, helm angled downwards – pouring all of his focus on Tarn’s voice.  Not on the sound of it, but on the feel of it, specifically; after traveling through a solid medium, it loses its effectiveness and the neutered (as it were) experience – he was mystified to learn the first time he caught Kaon at it – is an exquisite delight to take in.

Apparently.

From Tarn’s perspective, it’s definitely a peculiar juxtaposition – watching his mark’s face contort with fear and alarm as he works out just the right tone to tweak the unfortunate fellow’s spark, all the while knowing that, barely five meters away, that same sound is tugging at another mech’s spark in an entirely different manner.  Coming at it from that angle, one could argue it almost doubles the task at hand, really…

Curious, Tarn spares a glance past his ‘guest’ and towards the door.  It’s a futile gesture; there are no windows, of course, and the door is firmly shut, so there’s nothing to see beyond – but still.  The sight of it – of Kaon, lurking out there – is such a familiar one that even through steel Tarn is convinced he can see it even now.

Hidden beneath his mask, a rueful smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth.  It’s in Tarn’s nature to judge, and so, despite being able to see the irony in it, he does just that:

Filthy little habit, Tarn judges.  It can’t be helped.

Placed somewhere in the nether realm between morbid and charming – like so much, Tarn muses, of what characterizes the attitude his team seems to have around their work – he can however only condemn Kaon’s behavior to a limited degree.  After all, it’s not disruptive or damaging in any way, and it’s discreet for the most part, it’s just that it’s…let’s say…

Unique.

At the root of his discomfort with it, Tarn’s privately postulated on the few occasions when he’s taken the time to think on it, is how indirect it is – how secretive.  Even after it’s been called out.  And something about that rubs Tarn the wrong way.

Because nothing, you see, nothing about Tarn – in his estimation, anyway – is indirect.

Tarn’s motives, his tastes, his views, his actions – none of those things are hidden.  As a leader, transparency is key in establishing and maintaining trust between he and his team, and as secretive behaviors – no matter how small, how personal, or how inconsequential overall – directly undermine that goal, there’s simply no room for them.  As grim a burden as that might appear to be, it’s not a bad thing by any means – it keeps Tarn honest, gives him clear direction, and forces him to critically inspect his choices.

Something, Tarn would prefer to think, that any self-respecting mech – whether in a position of authority or not – should want for himself.

And yet, frustratingly, as he resumes his work and wonders if Kaon really is listening outside, it isn’t contempt Tarn feels, or pride in himself.  No; while there is a sizeable amount of genuine disdain mixed into it that’s confusing the whole of the sentiment, the thing Tarn feels keenest of all is the sting of jealousy.

Unlike him, Kaon has the luxury of secrecy; like any of the others on the team save for Tarn, Kaon can show of himself however much or however little he pleases.  He can have faults.  Provided they’re not egregious he can even make mistakes, or have esoteric opinions. No one is looking to him for anything save for what he’s been hired to do.

Everything else is a footnote.

Even the…stranger things.

Does Kaon know, Tarn wonders bitterly, singing his dire song into his mark’s audials and letting the most salient tones linger longer than necessary, that he’s perturbed?  Does he know that there are things about him that are disgusting, and that he’s put in plain sight for all to see?  Does he think about any of those things – about any of those flaws – when he’s alone?  Do they bother him at all?

Holding the bound mech down even though it’s unnecessary – the chair he’s in has restraints and they’ve been fastened tightly for over twenty minutes – Tarn unwittingly leans in, digging his claws into his prisoner’s shoulder and chest plating.  The metal yields, bending and tearing, and the mech makes a sound, but Tarn doesn’t hear it.

He’s concentrating – on his voice, and…

If Kaon wants so badly to hear him sing, Tarn entertains darkly, the bite of jealousy briefly setting him off on an angry flight of fancy, why hide?  Why not come in, and take part?  Why does he choose to skulk about like a coward and get partial satisfaction when being in the live audience can get him the full experience…?

Kaon’s assisted a number of these sessions before, but always in his alt mode; something about that configuration’s prevented any harm from coming to him in those instances, and they’ve agreed between them that it’s prudent for him to stay outside when untransformed.  But, if Kaon ever chose to be up-front about it and come in for once instead of hanging around outside the entire time, Tarn’s sure that – if he really tried – he could come up with something to make it worth Kaon’s while…

It would probably hurt – or more, who knows – but it would definitely teach him a lesson.

The venomous thought boils black inside him, and into the roiling pit Tarn desperately hurls the jealousy and anything else he can find that isn’t pride, willing it all to be consumed in that fantasy and gone from him.

Wouldn’t that be grand?

A song – flawed and insidious and yet such a delight…

The perfect song for Kaon.

In his fervor, Tarn’s voice goes a place it shouldn’t, and the errant note pushes his mishandled prisoner just over the edge.  The mech’s spark winks out and, still chasing the glowing embers of a rapidly-dwindling flame, Tarn has only the faintest notion that it’s happened.

The perfect song, Tarn’s mind echoes as the flash storm slowly clears, leaving a thick fog of awkward confusion and vague guilt behind.  In its wake, Tarn is faced with the reality that he’s let his personal feelings – his struggles – come between he and his work once again: slumped in the interrogation chair before him, his mark is dead.  A useless husk.

A waste.

Feeling unnaturally drained, Tarn stares down at the mech’s empty optics for a few klicks, his claws still embedded in its chest and shoulder.  It’s done – he won’t get anything out of this one any more.  In retrospect, there wasn’t much of a margin for error…

He should’ve been more careful.

A wave of something nameless and uncomfortable rises up inside him and, instantly, Tarn lifts a hand to turn the dead bot’s face – and its empty, accusatory optics – away.

He doesn’t want those right now.

Feeling ill, Tarn hauls himself up, draws away from the chair, and promptly takes his leave.

Outside in the cool hall, Tarn is strangely relieved to find Kaon nowhere in sight.

[thanksjro]

Last Stand of the Wreckers, Issue #5: I Sure Hope You Didn’t Go and Get Attached to Any of These Characters…

We ended on a cliffhanger last issue, so let’s see what the lads are up to now.

Hm. That’s not great.

Overlord’s just ripped Guzzle in half for the fun of it. If you’re wondering why everyone’s outside now, it’s because he exploded the torture chamber so hard when he came in, it no longer exists. Kup doesn’t appreciate having one half of the Big Gulp duo torn in two, so he goes in for the attack. This doesn’t work out very well for him, as he has his head crushed between Guzzle’s upper and lower halves. This whole situation is a non-issue for Overlord, and barely distracts him from his goal of having Megatron show up to kick his ass. Impactor tries to have a big hero moment by shooting Overlord in the eye with his harpoon hand-attachment. Again, very little effect on Overlord; it doesn’t even seem to register on the same level as getting a little soap in your eye.

Back over with Ironfist and the Big Conundrum, Verity’s arguing that killing Impactor will kill the Wreckers- as a team, not in the literal sense. However, time’s running out, and Perceptor really doesn’t seem to be bothered by the idea of not having Impactor around.

She gets smaller every issue, I swear.

Verity makes her case to Ironfist, trying to play off of his fanboy status; the Wreckers are a symbol of hope, one that Ironfist himself created with his datalogs as Fisitron. Killing Impactor to make things easier for themselves destroys the illusion of a cohesive unit who can always be counted on when the chips are down. Too bad ol’ Ironfist knows Things™, and it’s actually Perceptor who’s swayed by her argument, which is interesting, given that he was about to vote Impactor into an early grave a minute ago.

Perceptor wasn’t always the cool, efficient sniper we see him to be in Last Stand of the Wreckers. He used to be a regular old science nerd, and a relatively talkative one at that. He wasn’t really built for a four million year war.

Then all that talking got him shot and he was left for dead.

He made some changes after that, both in body and personality.

Could his own experience with being forsaken by his peers for his flaws perhaps be influencing him here? Or am I, a reader and giant dork, just trying to justify a very quick backtracking on the narrative’s part, most likely due to page number limitations?

So they decide to fight. Then Pyro suggests they run. The “they” in this case doesn’t include himself. You remember how Optimus Prime’s big character quirk in every continuity is self-sacrifice? Yeah, we’re hitting on THAT portion of Pyro’s hero worship. It’s not exactly what he was hoping for in death, but it’s what’s got to be done at this point.

The others run off, and Pyro shoots the control to the door, bracing for one hell of a fight.

Holy shit, I forgot they had Fort Max with them! That scared the crap outta me.

There’s one last look at our hero before we go, and it…

Well, it sure is something.

Yikes. That’s a series wrap on Pyro!

Now it’s time for us to learn about what really happened on Pova. Turns out the files Ironfist had access to weren’t exactly virginal.

First things first, it was raining, and Impactor is kind of a dick. I mean, we already kind of knew that from what we’ve seen of the guy in the present day story, but this little scene really takes the cake. Springer had to basically beg him to stay with him; none of that “I’m not leaving you behind” nonsense. And the whole “shoot Springer through the midsection” idea? That was all Impactor. Springer doesn’t have a way to dampen the pain the way Impactor suggests, and doesn’t even get a moment to brace himself as he’s blasted more or less in half.

When Springer regains consciousness, he’s treated to the sight of Impactor and Prowl having a little chat. It turns out there’s a problem, and that problem’s name is bureaucracy. Pova is a protected planet, declared off-limits by the Neutrality Agreement, so any Cybertronian war business is pretty much null and void there. The fact that the Wreckers are there at all could have disastrous repercussions if the Decepticons catch wind of this and tell the Povians. They’ll have to let Squadron X go.

But it looks like Prowl forgot that Impactor’s a bad boy who doesn’t play by your daddy’s rules.

He walks into where they’re holding Squadron X, chained together into a circle on their knees, with their arms pinned behind their backs, locks the door behind himself, and executes every last one of them as Springer bangs on the door trying to get him to stop. This, obviously, puts a bit of a damper on everyone’s mood.

Even Whirl’s bummed out, and you just know that guy loves a good ‘Con-killing spree.

I guess the moral of the story here is Impactor kinda sucks.

Speaking of Impactor, Overlord’s currently stomping him to death as he holds Springer by the face. It’s honestly almost tender, the delicate placement of his fingers. It also reminds you that Overlord is literally twice the size of Springer, who, as a triple-changer, should already be on the tall side. Overlord is a big dude.

Springer’s still doing okay, because he knows that even if he doesn’t make it, the rest of his team will, and they’ll save the day and get all those Autobot prisoners off Garrus-9.

Ha. Haha. Oh, Springer, you naïve fool. You forgot that this was hell, didn’t you? Overlord already took care of the Autobot prisoners.

Someone really took their gun to that hanging guy on the left and said “fuck this dude in particular.”

Then the calvary arrives! With guns! And art tangents!

Surely things are looking up now!

Ironfist throws Springer a gun that’s about as big as he is- where did he get that?- and Springer proceeds to light Overlord the fuck up.

You don’t get the B-word pass at IDW unless you’ve already had your series truncated and the entire universe is about to get ended for a reboot. That’s just how it goes.

Of course, even the big boy gun isn’t enough to do much to Overlord outside of annoy him, and Springer gets his face ripped off for his troubles.

Now it’s just Ironfist and Verity left, and Overlord is very much looking forward to doing very bad things to both of them. Ironfist has a gambit though! That gun Springer had was actually firing deterrence chips into Overlord’s body, and now he’s just chock-full of the things. And since Ironfist has all of Aequitas in his head now- including the detonation codes- he can do this:

He blew Overlord’s lips clean off! The evil truly is defeated.

However, using this newfound power has costs- Ironfist is knocked clean out by a sudden pain in his head, eyes flaring and fizzing as he hits the ground, leaving Verity alone with Overlord’s flaming, animated endoskeleton.

Yeah no, he’s still not dead, and he’s still not fucking over Megatron, lamenting on how he just isn’t sure how he’ll fight him, now that he’s little more than robot bones. Verity has to be the one to break it to the guy that Megatron’s dead, and Overlord takes it about as well as he can.

I’m sorry Overlord, but at what friggin’ point were you promised ANYTHING from Megatron “Peace Through Tyranny” of Tarn? You were threatened, but that’s a little different than a vow to get revenge. Hell, that’s not even on the same level as as pinky-promise. What a baby.

Impactor ends the pity party by shooting Overlord with his alt-mode’s weaponry and then does a little something for Springer… by not ending Overlord. Nope, looks like the death of Springer finally let him see the error of his ways, and they’re going to bring Overlord in to stand trial, because while the guy deserves to die, Impactor doesn’t deserve to kill him. Maybe if more Transformers took this little idea to heart, they wouldn’t still be at war four million years and counting.

Impactor goes to radio for a ride, and Ironfist wakes up. It looks like everything’s going to be okay now.

Or not.

Yep, those weird brain-seeking bullets Ironfist had loaded into all the guns he brought on the trip were perfected after a disastrous prototype testing accident. THE accident, if you will. Prowl knew about this, and used it to his advantage, throwing Ironfist on the mission, with the intent that he’d be used to unlock Aequitas. Topspin, of course, caused the plan to change a bit, but it all worked out in the end.

Also, Springer isn’t dead. He’s pretty messed up, but he’s not dead. They’ve got Ratchet on it, it’ll be fine.

And thus we arrive at the debriefing, between Prowl and Ultra Magnus. Magnus is questioning just why Prowl had this mission sanctioned in the first place, if he was so very against the Aequitas trials while they were happening. The answer is simple: propaganda. If the Decepticons were to find out that the trials involved nothing but Autobot war crimes, and lots of ‘em, it would be the ultimate blow to the Autobot forces.

Ultra Magnus thinks that they should go public with the information, but Prowl disagrees. The only copy of Aequitas is left with Prowl, and while Ultra Magnus would like to trust that he wouldn’t destroy this info, the end result is left a mystery.

But you’ll have to read the sequel series to see just how that all turns out.

If Ironfist is dead, just who is writing up this narrative framing device for the issue? Why, it’s none other than Verity Carlo, using the power of the internet. I guess she has access to the Cybertronian internet now. Wonder who hooked her up with that. Probably not Ultra Magnus. Maybe Percy did her a solid as a thanks for surgically removing Overlord’s will to live.

Whether you want it to or not, I suppose.

This miniseries is a little dark, ain’t it?

Verity went to all the trouble to leave Earth and hide in the escape pods so she wouldn’t be abandoned, only to end up right where she started, with a heaping spoonful of PTSD to pair off with all the disappointment and lack of friends in her life. She watched a lot of people die on Garrus-9, and she’s in no way battle-hardened like one could argue the other surviving Wreckers are. All she has at this point is a blog she inherited from a nerd who accidentally committed a slow-burn suicide. I hope Perceptor will keep in touch with her, at least, seeing as he’s the only one who was also there and isn’t dead.

That’s the end of the miniseries proper, but not the entirety of the story. Up next, we’ll be looking at all the fun little extras Last Stand of the Wreckers came with.