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turborun97 · 2 years ago

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Universe 2008 Mini-Con Bios (Part 1)

Some bios I made for the Universe 2008 Mini-Cons, who never got any characterization (besides Stockade sorta in Beast Wars: Uprising). Starting with the 10-Pack Mini-Cons since they’re the only ones I own.

Battle Support Team

Sky Shadow: Sky Shadow is the leader of the Battle Support Team but finds himself ill-suited for the role. Back when he was part of a team with Crosshairs and Treadshot, Sky Shadow was content to let others lead while he took to the skies and bombed enemies from above without being seen. But the Mini-Con Civil War changed everything and Sky Shadow now finds himself leading a band of Mini-Cons that are just trying to stay alive in a world that is unfamiliar to them. While he does his best to keep everyone in line, sometimes he will let his guard down and allow others (namely Overcharge) to exploit him for their own means. The others recognize this and do what they can in helping him build up his confidence, even if they do sometimes get impatient with him from time to time.

Overcharge: Nobody really likes or even trusts Overcharge. Whenever he does something for someone, it’s almost always with the expectation that he will get something in return, usually in the form of monetary compensation. This infuriates his teammates to no end, who only tolerate his presence because of his keen sense of direction and knowledge of obscure paths and back roads that no one else knows, which comes in handy when the Decepticons are on their tail. Originally part of a Mini-Con trio, Overcharge joined the Battle Support Team after losing his teammates, and because Sky Shadow felt sympathetic for him, showing a soft part that the other members silently resent their leader for.

Ransack: Despite his fearsome appearance, Ransack is actually quite kind once you get to know him. While he is quite thorough when it comes to smashing things, he always stops to make sure that it is something that actually needs smashing rather than jumping the gun and doing it anyway. It is thanks to this foresight that he is able to restrain his friend Stockade from doing just that, something which his mentor Windrazor is grateful for. In a past life, Ransack had been the type of destroy things without much thought, but after seeing how both the Great War and the Mini-Con Civil War has affected people, he has come to realize that total destruction rarely accomplishes anything and that is far more productive to build rather than to break down.

Stockade: Stockade likes to think with her head, but not in the way most people view the term. Impatient and reckless, her first instinct when presented with an obstacle is to charge headfirst into it and worry about the consequences later—or, better yet, let others deal with the consequences. The only one who is able to hold her back is her good friend Ransack, who is always trying to convince her that not everything needs to be knocked down. Still, when some heavy muscle is actually needed, Stockade is the first to be called upon, and as frustrated as her teammates might get with her impetuous nature, even they have to admit that she gets the job done.

Windrazor: Windrazor is old, perhaps one of the oldest Mini-Cons to have ever lived. Once an advisor to the Council of Sages, Windrazor withdrew himself from society when civil war broke out, feeling that his advice had not been heeded. Taking his mentees Ransack and Stockade with him into exile, Windrazor eventually returned to join the Battle Support Team and give advice to their leader Sky Shadow. While nearly everyone else on the team believes that he would be better suited for leadership, Windrazor insists that his time of being a leader has come to an end and that it is time for others to lead for once. After all, it was the stubbornness and stagnation of the Council of Sages that had led to disarray in the first place, and he would be remiss to allow history to repeat itself again.

Ground Surveillance Team

Crosshairs: Crosshairs may have a keen military mind and an excellent strategist, but his people skills make him a terrible leader. He is constantly berating and verbally abusing those serving under his command, treating them like worthless pieces of scrap. He also has poor communication skills, always expecting everyone to know exactly what he is thinking and carrying out his plans exactly as he has foreseen them. Naturally, this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where his lack of communication causes his team to mess things up, which causes him to berate them and then not speak to them out of spite, repeating the cycle again. The only reason the others put up with him is because they have no one else to go to and because Crosshairs seems to be the only one who knows what’s going on and where they’re going.

Longview: Longview is easily distracted. Soaring in the skies in her eagle alternate mode, she often finds her mind drifting off as she stares at the wonderful scenery around her. This infuriates her leader (and sole flying partner) Crosshairs to no end, and he constantly has to threaten her with repercussions to get her head back in the game. When she is centered and focused, Longview is a ruthless fighter, diving at Autobot foes and attacking them with her talons. While this might make her great fighter, her absent-mindedness causes her to fail in her primary function as aerial reconnaissance; the only reason Crosshairs keeps her in that role is because no one else on the team is suited for it and he has yet to find a Mini-Con willing to join him to take her place.

Scavenger: Scavenger’s function is his name, as redundant as it may sound. Still, it’s a function he carries out well, perhaps better than anyone else on the team carries out theirs. His keen olfactory sensors make him ideal for seeking out energon and other resources, and he has no qualms with picking things off of deactivated bots if he has to. Perhaps his greatest drawback is his ego; he is always bragging to anyone with functioning audio receptors just how good he is at his job and that Crosshairs could not have found a better bot than him to do the job. To say this annoys his teammates would be an understatement, but there is little they can do about it. If they complain, then Scavenger might find reason to withhold energon from them, and Crosshairs certainly isn’t going to listen to them over his most trusted follower.

Snow Cat: Snow Cat hates people. The only reason she is with the Ground Surveillance Team is because she still needs energon as much as any other ‘bot, and because she has run out of places to keep a low profile. She can’t stand her teammates’ personalities and the only orders she listens to are the ones that involve her clawing out Autobots’ optics. The only Mini-Con’s presence she can tolerate even slightly is Longview’s, and that’s only because Longview spends most of her time in the sky, away from Snow Cat, and is too distracted by other things to bother Snow Cat with pointless conversation.

Treadshot: Treadshot loves shooting things—a bit too much, actually. Twitchy and apprehensive, he is the physical manifestation of the phrase “jump the gun.” As soon as something or someone enters his line of sight without warning, he whips out his gun and starts shooting at it. Even when it’s a fellow teammate he’s shooting at, Treadshot doesn’t care and will proceed to brag about how good of a shot he is straight to the faceplate of the Mini-Con he just shot at. While the others would be more than happy to get rid of him, if only for their own personal safety, Crosshairs keeps him around because he would rather have a loose cannon he can control rather than have Treadshot end up with someone who could use the hyperactive tank against him.

#transformers #maccadam #mini-cons #character profiles #universe 2008 #sky shadow #overcharge #ransack #stockade #windrazor #crosshairs #longview #scavenger #snow cat #treadshot

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gothic-aesthetic-gal · 26 days ago

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Old Scars (Part 11)

Ledger!joker x reader

Fem!reader is kidnapped by the joker and his henchmen while just trying to get a moment's reprieve from her boring, soul-destroying job ✨️

Tw: I mean, we all saw TDK, right? I'd say this is on the same level/rating. Kidnapping, violence, mentions of minor characters (not J) being misogynist/threatening SA, reference to past traumatic injury. Beyond this i'm not sure, i'll update these when I write more.

Part 11 -

We continued to lay low and time crawled by. Our movements were largely nocturnal, only venturing out of the Parkview Asylum complex at nightfall to a corner store for essential supplies. As J's injuries were healing he became more and more agitated, pacing up and down like a caged tiger, often muttering to himself. I could tell he wasn't accustomed to having to wait things out, but he was deliberately planning things very carefully - making the smarter play meant allowing his body to heal and letting the dust settle.

I had walled myself off from him again since my lapse of judgement and control on the first night. My robotic interactions with him didn't seem to bother him too much. I figured he either was banking on me coming around eventually, or was too preoccupied with weeding out the traitors in his ranks to care about my sudden change in behaviour.

I was startled awake one night when he shook me out of an otherwise oddly peaceful sleep. Waking up and seeing him looming over me, I scrambled upwards and out of the covers in surprise.

"We're leaving," he said flatly.

"W-what? Why?" I asked, blinking in the dark and clinging protectively to the blankets.

"We've stayed in one spot too long. It's time to move," he added, dropping my little cardboard box on the bed.

I hurried to get up, stashing the knife and screwdriver in my pocket again and he picked up the handgun from his side of the bed.

"We will need to get rid of this," he muttered, sliding it into his waistband for the meantime. I noticed that he was no longer wearing the sling.

"The arm's better now?" I asked tentatively as we replaced the bedding and plastic sheet before quitting the room.

"Near enough," he replied.

We wound our way back down the hallways and staircases to the entrance. I felt relieved to be leaving the godforsaken relic of Gotham's twisted past to rot. Nature was slowly reclaiming it, pulling it back into the earth - and that was the only comfort about the whole place. The car's engine rumbled to life and J put the heating on full blast to try and clear the fogged up windows. It was another bitterly cold night and I could see my own breath.

I soon found myself by a bridge watching J lean way too far over the barrier for anyone with a reasonable fear of their own mortality to hurl the stolen gun down into the darkness of rushing waters below us.

"Even if they find it, the water will wash away traces of any fingerprints and DNA, though they likely won't bother looking to begin with," He announced smugly.

I wondered how many other things had been hurled down into the cold waters below us. Knowing the city we were in, there were innumerable possibilities. People even... I shivered. The cops had condemned me to that sort of fate, I was as expendable as any other piece of junk sitting in a heap down there.

I felt dizzy just looking at the sheer drop as I clung to the barrier between my body and oblivion. As I was being buffeted around on the stormy sea in my mind, I hadn't noticed J stalking over to me like a big cat in the tall grass.

Strong arms linked around my waist from behind and began to lift my feet from the ground. The feeling of being suddenly airborne immediately set me in a panic and I began to struggle. In reality, he had probably barely hoisted me a foot or two off the ground, but I hated heights.

Not heights specifically, but how being exposed to them made me actuely aware of my own mortality and the endless possibilities of pain in the breakable body of a human being.

"Put me down!" I screeched in protest.

"No, I think I need to dispose of the rest of the evidence," he said sternly.

I couldn't tell if he was being serious.

"Please, i'm not joking - just let me go!" I begged.

"You sure about that?" He laughed, suddenly letting me drop.

I lurched forwards towards the railing for a moment, before he caught me by the waist. I jolted even further forward, feeling the railing dig into my ribs as I met it. My feet were on the ground again, and without being lifted higher or climbing over the rail, my centre of gravity was too low to go over it, but I still felt in danger. The shock of thinking for a moment that I really was going over it had felt like a stab to the chest.

My body was screaming at me to get away from the edge of the bridge. My eyes stung with the beginning of tears in the cold breeze. He pressed close to me, trapping me between his body and the barrier, which was digging into my mid-section.

I felt his cheek brush against my temple as he bent his head down to speak into my ear.

"Doesn't it excite you?" He asked.

"That wasn't funny," was all I managed to say, choking on my words.

"Ah come on, I wasn't going to throw you over there, doll. You know that."

"I don't know that. And i'm not good with heights," I said, shaking.

"Listen," he said leaning the full weight of his body against mine, "you're not going anywhere."

The way he said it and the feeling of being pressed between him and the barrier, his arms wrapped tightly around me, did make me feel anchored to the ground. I felt my tense muscles relax a little.

"Just look down," he said.

"I can't."

"Look. Down." He commanded, a little harsher in tone.

Reluctantly, I did as he told me and peered down at the long drop into the murky river below. I felt the fear rise in me again, prickling up my spine.

"Don't look away."

"I - I can't," I protested.

"Don't look away," he reiterated, unwaivering.

I continued to look at the way the river was churning below, muddy and silent. Deceptively quiet from up here, as the immeasurable amounts of water surged out towards the old docks in the distance. If you really had fallen in, and the height of the drop hadn't shattered your bones on impact, you'd have been swept along with such force that drowning seemed inevitable. This wasn't the sort of water you could swim or even tread water in. It was a chaotic force of nature and inspired a kind of morbid awe in me. Strangely enough this wave of feeling seemed to displace the fear.

"Does it make you feel alive?"

"I guess... it's more, like, it's more that it reminds me of how impermanent everything is. Like Parkview crumbling back into the ground... nature endures."

"We live. We die. We rot." He added, his voice rumbling out from his chest like some kind of running engine. I thought more about it as I continued to scan the view below.

Suddenly, he startled my sense of relative peace by separating from me and hopping over the barrier. His feet were now on the ledge as he stood facing the bridge, his back to the sheer drop into the river.

"What are you doing?"

He ignored my frantic question as he positioned himself directly in front of me.

I gripped the cold metal of the only boundary separating us tighter, whitening my knuckles. The disturbing thought crossed my mind for the briefest of seconds that I could push him and as my eyes met his, he had a knowing look on his face. He slowly pulled both of my hands away from their tightly locked grip on the bridge and placed them on his chest.

My head was spinning. Why would he make himself so vulnerable like that? Did he have total conviction that I wouldn't push him, or did he enjoy the slim possibility that I might do it? I searched his face for some kind of answer but didn't find anything conclusive. I stayed frozen like that for a while, the two of us standing on the edge of oblivion.

When we hit the road again, we drove in silence, until the car rolled into a run-down motel on the fringes of the city limits. J wound a scarf around him and pulled it up over his scars. I shook my hair loose around my face so that my own were less immediately obvious.

"Name?" Squinted the wrinkled old lady behind the reception desk as we stood opposite her - looking dishevelled.

A cloud of thick cigarette smoke seemed to hang around her as she tapped her latest into the ashtray.

In a panic, I blurted out an answer.

"Luna."

"Surname?"

Again I panicked. I had to say something and fast.

"...Tick," I mumbled out.

J shot me a sideways glance as if to say, 'you've just fucked this up for us'.

I swallowed, my mouth suddenly feeling bone dry.

"Luna... Tick?" She said dubiously, peering up at me over her reading glasses.

"Yes, my parents were pretty cruel for that one, don't you think?" I laughed nervously.

I somehow managed to convincingly pull off years of frustration that the name would have wrought. She smiled weakly.

"Well, maybe it's not all that bad, Luna is quite a pretty name..." she offered, clearly trying to offset the awkwardness she had brought by failing to hide her surprise.

I nodded sheepishly.

"And who is this?" She nodded towards J, still with the scarf wound over the bottom half of his face.

"That's my fiancée. He's mute, i'm afraid."

I looped my arm through his, trying to make our soon-to-be-married status more convincing.

"Oh," now she looked deeply piteous, "just sign here please."

I scribbled "L Tick" and she tore off the hand written receipt for me. Then I put down the crumpled bills for a two night stay and she handed over the key.

"Here ya go sweetheart. It's back outside, up the stairs and second on the left, you both take care now," she waved us off hurriedly.

Once we got inside the room and shut the door behind us, J erupted into laughter. The suddeness of his outburst made me nearly jump out of my skin.

"You," he pointed a finger at me, "I thought you had us rumbled, but somehow you got her to believe that!" He said, shaking me by the shoulders before he finally relented, unwinding the scarf and throwing himself down on the bed - still reeling with the odd aftershock of laughter. I smiled faintly as I hung up his coat on the hook by the door.

"Well, who knows if she really believed it, maybe she just didn't care..." I sighed, sitting beside him on the bed.

I looked around us. The room was like a 70s time capsule; beige and brown everything, from the wooden funishings to the thick blackout curtains. I could see through an open door that the bathroom was tiny and avocado in colour scheme. I was pretty sure from the cigarette burns on the bedside dressers and the yellowed ceiling that not one of the room's previous occupants had obeyed the faded no-smoking sign plastered to the door. Still, compared to Parkview it was warm. It had electricity and hot water, two things I had taken for granted until I was left without.

I felt a great swell of pity whenever I thought about how many people in the city were at the mercy of the cold. The homeless, the people forced into the squats and slums of the narrows. People left to die, preferably unseen and silent, in the minds of the men and women at the top of the ladder - heights you could only reach with blood money, corruption, and exploitative wealth, whether you were born into it, or a newcomer.

As I got under the covers and clung to my side of the bed, trying desperately to calm my frazzled brain, the girl from the dress store appeared there. I wondered what she was doing right now and I hoped she was happy and safe. Maybe she was also tucked up in bed somewhere. I briefly imagined that she wasn't plagued by the hostage situation... but she probably was. From pure physical exhaustion I finally drifted into the darkness of sleep, long after J's occasional bouts of snoring indicated to me that he was dead to the world already.

I stirred a couple of times in the night, struggling to calm my restless mind. At almost 4am I woke up, suddenly cold. J had his back to me and seemed to be mumbling something as he was hogging all of the duvet. I reached across to try and drag some of it back, hoping he'd just notice and loosen his grip. Instead, my increasingly frustrated tug of war caused him to roll over half onto me as the bedding finally gave in my direction. A heavy arm was now draped haphazardly across my torso. I realised that he was still in deep sleep as I watched the corner of his mouth twitch, and he mumbled something unintelligible again, his lips barely even parting to make words. I was fixated - seeing him this way was so strange.

In sleep, his face looked deceptively innocent and I wondered what he could be dreaming about. Who was he really? Before he'd appeared in Gotham, did he have a normal life? Everyone has a past... even people like him didn't just materialise out of thin air. Psychologically speaking, there was almost always an escalation. A spiral. A 'ramping up'. Often, though not always, there would be catalysts. Something significant. Endless possibilities ran through my thoughts.

But trying to apply these lenses to someone as mysterious and confusing as the man beside me was fruitless. Trying to gather any kid of tangible piece of his past was like trying to outrun nightfall, or trying to retain grains of sand spilling out from between clenched fingers. It felt like he really had just appeared one day, like the batman, a kind of mythical figure. Perhaps he was some kind of vengeful spirit, sowing chaos and disorder, or a harbringer of bleaker times ahead for this already bleak city of rot. Maybe he had rolled in on a desert storm, like the villain in an old Western, or one of the plagues of Egypt. It was hard to see any pieces of the man standing at ground zero...

I could feel his breath tickle my shoulder as he shifted a little, leaning still closer. I took in all the minute details of his unpainted face. The curve of his jaw, the shape of his brow, the delicate eyelashes... and his scars. I was still entranced, gazing at the little forked one which rose up into his lower lip, when his voice pierced the silence.

"You know," he murmured, eyes still closed, "it's a little creepy to stare at someone while they sleep."

I immediately felt defensive and embarassed to have been caught. He opened his intense brown eyes to look at me, staring into my soul for a moment. I sheepishly tried to look away but I felt paralysed under his gaze.

"I didn't mean to," I protested.

"Don't lie to me, or to yourself. What's the point?" He sighed, closing his eyes.

I wanted to protest, but he had got me there, so the words wouldn't come when I tried to summon them. He yawned and stretched out lazily, before returning to the exact same position - with his arm draped across my body. This surprised me, as did any trace of behaviour that could be considered affectionate, not least of all from him. I rolled onto my back and looked up at the ceiling, but I didn't move him away from me - a kind of fence-sitting gesture. Testing the waters, he moved closer, laying his cold hand flat against my warm ribs where my t-shirt had ridden up and planting his head against my shoulder. I didn't know what to make of this so I stayed perfectly still in his half embrace. He was silent for a while, and I thought he might have drifted back into sleep until I felt him bury his face further into the crook of my neck, inhaling deeply. My skin felt as though it was burning with each breath he exhaled against it.

"Why do you do it?" He murmured.

"Do what?" I frowned.

"Why do you keep fighting for restraint?"

"I, I don't want to lose control, to be powerless."

I felt his lips trail up to my ear, sending shivers down my spine.

"Does following the rules really make you the one in control?"

He was mumbling the words against my neck and I was struggling to stay focused on the conversation rather than the physical responses he was stirring in me.

"I don't know... my mind is so tired. For once I want to let myself not know."

"The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules," he sighed, as he pulled me into a tighter embrace.

"Some rules are bullshit, sure, but some are important. Some shouldn't be broken," I pressed back.

He let out a hum of derision, but it sounded lighthearted rather than angry - It didn't feel like he was suggesting I was stupid for disagreeing.

I thought for a moment about my apartment, and the life I had vanished from. What was there to go back to? Even if I chose to run from him, I was likely left without a job and the bills wouldn't stop while I scrambled to find a replacement. Even if I took the first thing I could get my hands on, the wage would be pathetic. I was at serious risk of ending up on the streets, or having to take to something illegal in one way or another to keep my head above water. To make matters worse, chances were high that the crooked cops would try to seek me out.

"Would you kill me if I tried to leave?" I finally spoke.

He seemed to give it some thought as he sucked air through his teeth and drummed his fingers against my ribs.

"No," he answered finally.

"Why not?" I asked, feeling more uncomfortable than relieved.

He shurgged non-comittally.

"Would it make you feel better if I did want to kill you?" He asked mockingly.

"No - I don't know!" I snapped.

"Are you going to leave?"

"No... I don't have anything to go back to, and I think those cops might be out for my blood," I sighed rubbing my forehead to try and relieve the stress headache I was getting.

"Well, the GCPD don't tend to like it if you cause bodily harm to any of their officers, even if they are as twisted as a corkscrew, speaking from experience," he grinned.

"If I stay, what will you do? It feels like no one in this city does anything out of good will. Everything has a price."

"If you stay, the only thing I'll ask of you is that you don't interfere with my plans."

"That sounds suspiciously easy..."

He looked gravely serious for a moment.

"And what if that pesky moral compass of yours tells you what I'm doing is wrong?" His voice had dropped low into a more sinister register again, and I felt the hairs on my arms stand on end.

"I thought you didn't like rules?" I muttered, wondering if I could make such a promise.

"Some rules are important," he echoed my own words.

"Okay, how about this? If I can't hack it, I'll walk away. I won't interfere, and you let me go."

He pursed his lips as he mulled it over.

"Hm, those aren't the terms of the deal I just laid out."

"Well, I like to keep you on your toes," I teased, hoping he would accept my compromise.

"Alright (y/n), we'll play it your way - but I mean it. If you break your promise, I might just be forced to break mine."

I knew by this he meant his promise not to kill me, but it didn't bother me as much as it should have. Maybe he was right that I did have a few screws loose. Abruptly, he slid his other arm underneath my body and pulled me into an almost crushing embrace. In the coils of the serpent I should have felt afraid, but I felt protected from the harshness of the outside world. I found myself playing with his fingers as everything began to slow down. Even my ceaselessly noisy brain seemed to be winding down enough for me to drift into sleep. I couldn't remember a time where anyone had held me like this, or a time when I had let anyone...