== RECONCILIATION ==
By Ayngel
Prologue
I do not own Transformers, or any characters therein, or any other aspect of it. Any appearance otherwise is complete imagination. I will make no money from this story.
I've redone the prologue for this story, as it was unnecessarily long winded. This should be much more palatable – and if you don't like prologues at all – just go straight to chapter 2 :-)
This is quite a dark tale. The Autobots are not saints, it has political undertones and it involves difficult and complex individuals, as neither Mirage nor Skywarp are your average Autobot or Decepticon, and neither show their inner goings on outwardly; so it's a challenge in any event, let alone in the first person – but its a likeable challenge!
My interpretation of Mirage is different from some others. He's often portrayed as a sweet, lonely thing - a misplaced rich kid who can't cope very well in the prevailing environment. In this story, this is only partially so. Mirage is also highly intelligent and talented and in possession of an extremely powerful weapon (I am not aware of anyone else in either faction able to use an electro disruptor) He is a force to be reckoned with - but part of a different culture from the Autobots, the old "ruling class", something which was never popular with them and now has been totally destroyed by the 'Cons. He has a complex past. He hates the 'Cons but is not one of the 'Bots, fighting for them as a mercenary but frequently disillusioned because of his marginalisation, which has implications for his relationship with them: they admire him but because he is different and has superior abilities they are ever wary. His solitary tendencies and aloofness don't help.
All this makes Mirage not as sweet as some might have him - and somewhat embittered - but, given that he's also beautiful, demure and sophisticated, he is also very exciting and enigmatic. Well – I think so. But then I'm biased! He is also empathetic, however, because underneath it all he is misunderstood, and suffers greatly.
As for Skywarp – suffice it to say he has a depth of perception and a penchant for beauty which is not outwardly apparent and a great desire to be rich :-)
Warnings: none for this chapter, but story later contains adult themes, slash, violence, course language
Author: Designation Mirage.
Autobot Special Operations Team.
Position: Intelligence Officer
To be invisible.
It is power: It is to see what cannot normally be seen, to hear what cannot normally be heard. To break rules undetected, to take unhindered. To tease and to scare, ultimately, to terrorise, and to overpower and then to withdraw leaving no trace. It is to instil great fear. For there is no enemy more terrifying or more deadly than the one who can strike and kill but is an unknown quantity.
I did not join the Autobots at the start of the war. Belonging in a different world of wealth and past rule I was not one of them, and they did not understand my ways, or my need for revenge. I worked alone, inhabiting a secret world of shadows and lost sparks; an existence of stealth and guile which few who knew me before the war would have thought possible. I rested in the darkness and I hunted in the light, unseen, taking my enemies out like the creatures I had hunted before and living from their spoils. They hunted me also but I passed through their ranks like a ghost, undetected and unsnared, and I left them always in confusion and great fear. Revenge I had in plenty, a triumph far superior to the reactive, half hearted efforts of the Autobots.
Invisibility is to have power; but all power has its limitations. And it did not save me forever.
Some time before Earth, I was captured by Ravage, who was, like me, a hunter, an ancient creature of stealth, patience and persistence. She took me and I was held at Mordac, the Decepticon stronghold on Cybertron. I still remember nothing of events there, which is merciful and perhaps preserved my sanity, as Mordac was notorious, and the methods of the Decepticons were less than benevolent, and few emerged alive or intact - if they emerged at all.
Yet, somehow, I prevailed, and escaped – which I surmised owed to my scant knowledge of the Autobots about whom the 'Cons desperately sought to know more; and I thought myself lucky, and to have made the right choice regarding the 'Bots.
And so it may have been if that was all. But it was not. For I soon realised that not only did I remember nothing of my capture but I remembered nothing about my previous life at all.
It was a shattering predicament. For with no past, how there could there now be a future? So it was that need and desperation drew me to the Autobot camp. They were kind to me in my fragile state; no doubt hopeful that I would join them, and, eventually, I did so reluctantly; not because I believed in what they stood for and now only partly for revenge. But because they alone could tell me who I was, and what I once had been.
But knowledge is not memory; the wounds were not healed and the recreations of my past did not return: Life as I knew it began in a bunker close to the ruins of Iacon; sparklinghood, mechalescence, my life in Iacon: all that had been before the war was lost to me and of the war only scant glimpses remained; and then I despaired again and drifted in and out of their Cause, not knowing whether I belonged with them or not and searching alone for some vestiges of identity, some spark of recall, and finding none.
And I freely admit that when I came to Earth - a hostile world, ugly, raw and lacking in comforts and filled with underdeveloped, uncivilised organics - it was as much as anything a last bid to find something of worth in a Universe which had deserted me, and in which life had ceased to have meaning.
Author: Designation Skywarp.
Elite Aerial Combat Unit.
Position: Second in Command
The war was supposed to make things better for Seekers.
Before the war, Seekers were nothing on Cybertron. Pests which had been brought in from outside; lowly off world scum; organics turned Cybernetic freaks. There were lots of nice places on Cybertron. But we weren't even allowed on the walkways of Iacon, and most Cybertronians would happily have blown us off the face of the planet.
Of course, the Prime Government said it wasn't like that. They said everyone was equal. The Prime Government had to make that out because it got elected to make everyone equal, and to do away with the ruling castes. But that was all right. They put Seekers in jail, and asylums, or out scavenging in the provinces – so in the end many didn't know if we were equal or not. We weren't there to be seen to test the theory.
Seekers weren't the only ones to suffer. Don't ever let anyone tell you what the Autobots supported was just and equitable. That was only if you were the right stuff.
So many Seekers suffered so much. It makes me sick to the core just to think of it.
After a while, Cybertron got really overcrowded, and when the missions to outer worlds failed to turn up energon sources, it was fragged.
That was when Megatron planned his coup. And small wonder he made his armies from all the mechanisms that Optimus Prime had let down so badly with his hypocrisy. Oh yes. They try to blame the 'Cons for everything; what they never recognised was how easy Prime made it for his brother to succeed.
So - we were going to take over Cybertron. The rightful hierachy was going to prevail. Survival of the fittest and strongest; and with the best of the best at the top ... and that meant Seekers at the top ... and getting what the best deserved to have.
Only - it didn't really happen. The best of the best just didn't quite didn't quite make it like they were supposed to. Iacon wasn't full of sky cities again, with us in flash offices, running things. We weren't waving to teaming masses or commanding vast armies; Nor were we sitting in luxury homes sampling Premium Grade; or cruising the southern sea; or basking on a revitalised moon of Itopis.
Rather, by the time we went to Earth, we'd spent the last five hundred vorns or so kind of - underground. Stuck in Mordac, sneaking out on raids to Iacon just to keep ourselves going; No luxury quarters, and the energon we were managing to squeeze out of the measly selenium rods we scraped up definitely wasn't Premium. And we were having to live like that partly because a lot of Cybertron above ground wasn't really there any more - because we'd totalled it - and partly ...
Well, we'd just blown it, hadn't we? Things had screwed up. The leaders were fighting and we were scattered, divided, underenergised and out of control.
But then, a miracle! This Earth mission – this following of the Autobots. And Starscream knew where they were going and Megatron wanted what they were going for and it seemed like a second chance...
So here's what I told myself when I came to Earth: that the Decepticon Cause was still the best and the greatest and it had not stopped giving hope to Cybertron; and it made me something, and not nothing, and one day I was still going to be rich and famous because it still had it all ...
... and even though things hadn't really – well – gone quite as well as they could have in the last quarter epoch or so, now they were going to be all right ... like they should've been in the first place ...
Yeah! Dream on, Skywarp! It only goes to show you how wrong you can be.
Thank you for reading. A :-)
