Thundercracker stared out the port window as the Infinity Chaser approached Polyhex. The city looked awful. Buildings were rampshackled and each had at least two bomb craters on them. The ones repurposed as military out posts were glaringly obvious. Patrols scampered through the city, hunting down rebels, ignoring derelects.
He saw the harvesters, large bots in vehicle mode grabbing the downtrodden and wounded all to be taken to Darkmount, there were no need of medics nor prisons in Polyhex.
Thundercracker turned his attention to some of the landmarks. The Megabomb, terrible name really, had left a massive crater in the western district, at least 8 blocks were wiped out, by a bomb that exploded in their faces. He saw the stadium, once a great place to watch the races, abandoned and closed near the start of the war. The bleachers had a few blast holes from when some mechanics used it as a base for a rebellion, they failed terribly.
Then there was Darkmount. In a word the fortress could be described as oppressive, a massive Decepticon symbol adorned the outer wall, the symbol's eyes burned their way into the sparks of all who would stare upon it. The walls were high, and an automatic turret sat atop them every 30 meters. Guards moved between them in shifts, weapons ready to kill anyone who would even suspect to try and run these walls
Behind the walls was the fortress itself, another symbol adorned its black walls. The fortress was massive, spread out with a spire at the front to great them. Dreadwing was turning the ship to the landing strips on the eastern side of the fortress, a control tower directing him to his landing. The west contained the armory and tactics room while the east had the landing strip and hanger. Within the center of the fortress was the factory. The smelting pools burned hot, and Straxus's throne room hung suspended over them. Repulse engines and chains keeping it aloft. Any injured or bot unfit for work was tossed into the molten pits, and from there they were recycled. The factory forged the molten steel into weapons, armor and even spare parts to be shipped off to aid the war effort. That was why there were no jails, information wasn't needed, raw materials were.
The ship entered the landing area, setting down in zone three. Thundercracker stored his data pad and got up from his seat, joining his wingmate Slipstream by the door, they disembarked first, before standing at attention at either side of the ramp.
Shockwave descended then. The two seekers watched the hulking purple frame step surprisingly lightly down the ramp, his assistants Bido and Fistfight following him.
Next came two silver Vehicon ground soldiers, Morrec and Jyck, pushing hovercarts with some machines which Thundercracker assumed had scientific significant. Dreadwing followed, carrying a datapad with the flight plan that he was to give to the operators.
"You are dismissed," Shockwave said to the two seekers in his usual monotone.
"Megatron told us we had to protect you," Slipstream replied, trying to hide her annoyance.
"Having you in my lab would be a hindrance, the need for protection is unnecessary. Dreadwing, let the record show I dismissed them," Shockwave said.
Dreadwing jotted it down on his note pad before transforming and flying off to the control area.
Shockwave stomped off, Jyck and Morrec following him.
Thundercracker and Slipstream exchanged glances before departing toward the strong hold.
"I'm surprised Straxus didn't get off his throne to personally greet such a high ranked member of the Decepticon army," Slipstream said.
"He's got suffering to inflict, besides, Shockwave doesn't care about formalities, he just wants to finish up here," Thundercracker said, before adding, "And if you ever meet him, address him as Lord Grand High Governor Straxus, forget a title and"
Tundercracker dragged his index digit across his throat.
Slipstream rolled her optics, an unfortunate habit of hers, and kept walking.
"So what now?" she asked.
"I guess we should just head into town for a drink." Thundercracker said, "Unless of course you wish to meet the illustrious Grand High Governor for assignment?"
"Drink it is then, Slipstream said, entering the fortress with him.
Inside was, dreary.
The lights worked, so someone in maintenance was doing something, the walls had peeling paint and chipped metal. Minor blemishes stood stark on the walls for all to see. The two seekers continued down, and noticed that the Hallways were viciously inconsistent. The next hallway had pieces of the wall coming off and the lightbulbs laying bear in cracked holders, the hallway after that was almost new, paint having dried in the morning.
"Primus, the maintenance should be tossed into the smelting pit." Slipstream said.
"They probably were and now we have terrible hallways." Thundercracker replied.
They exited another hallway and got to a balcony, where the two hopped off, transformed and flew beyond the wall.
Thundercracker took in the sorry sight. He'd visited Polyhex a number of times, and now it just looked awful.
Patrols of two wheeled Decepticons zipped through the streets, avoiding bomb craters. Main roads had been resurfaced, or at least had more metal plating applied for greater troop movement, but the back roads looked awful.
They flew over a building which had its top blow off, and Thundercracker could see a few neutrals huddled inside around a fire. Likely hoping that the patrols continued to not care about them.
"Remember that dive on 7th?" Slipstream asked through her communicator.
"No way that's still open," Thundercracker responded.
"Let's check it out anyway." Slipstream said, angling herself to the district.
The two jets flew two their destination, a dilapidated part of the city no different from anywhere else. Thundercracker remembered that there was a large department store famous for it's holo-book store wherein some of the best fiction and trashiest novels could be found and purchased. Swindle may or may not have taken him there at one point.
The mall was in abysmal shape, the holo-book store had been bombed out, and the entrance a mess of bullet holes.
While the structure was unmistakable, the center had collapsed in when a firefight broke out inside, killing all participants. The bar was across the street, door hung on its hinges, not a single window intact. The two transformed and landed, staring at the dilapidated structure.
"Well this place looks like scrap," Thundercracker said.
"It always did, now it just has the excuse of being in a war zone," Slipstream replied.
"I remember this store," Thundercracker said, pointing at the holo-book distributor.
"Of course you do, I can't believe you read that trash, actually, do you still read it?"
"Of course." He said.
"Why? You leant me that Sparkbeat book, it's just trash, cliché, melodramatic, predictable, trash."
"Sure the prose are tiring, and the plots begin to all get samey. But, when I'm crouched in a bunker with nothing to do, I have to fight off the boredom somehow." He said.
Slipstream thought about that for a moment, being stuck inside those cramped bunkers with nothing to do was almost as bad as being out of them and shot at. At least Autobot attacks kept them from slipping into a boredom based stasis lock.
She accepted the answer and the two entered the bar, Slipstream shoving the door off its frame. The inside looked terrible, everything not bolted down had been stole, the bar crystal the distillers, the various expensive fuels, the nucleon shots, all of it. The bar table and walls had a few bullet holes, and part of the bar table had been smashed. The Synamatronics machines had all been stripped for parts.
The two surveyed the room in all of its ruined glory.
"Well, this sucks," Thundercracker said, sighing, "Y'know I heard there's an officers club over on-"
Slipstream raised a hand to silence him and Thundercracker stood still, listening.
Both could hear a rustling noise that was coming behind the counter. The two exchanged glances, and their null rays slid out and powered up.
A bot sprang up from behind the counter, and the two immediately trained their guns on him.
He stood there, clutching a crowbar in both hands, shaking. Slipstream and Thundercracker spread out, guns trained on him, but it was becoming rapidly clear he wasn't a threat. His paintjob had faded away long ago, and rust was creeping into his joints. He looked dilapidated, one of his fingers was missing and his arms were at their bare joints. His face was narrow and drawn, terror etched through it, optics dimming because of the lack of power. His chasis was grey, but so damaged that Thundercracker guessed he no longer had an alt-mode.
In short an Empty.
He dropped the crowbar on the table, still trembling, and the two seekers began lowering their blasters.
"P-please," he said, stuttering with his tremor, "I haven't had anything to drink for a while, I'm dying, the fuel, it's so short now, and I can't get anything, please!"
"Who are you?" Slipstream asked.
"I'm just so thirsty, you people just take and take and take! You leave nothing for us, you leave us to die! Please I haven't had anything, I'm just so thirsty!" The Empty said, optics sparking electric tears.
"You the bartender?" Thundercracker asked.
"F-Finder?" The Empty said, "N-No, Finder's gone. He was good to us, good to me. Cheap prices, happy atmosphere, didn't take no bribes or nothing. Then you guys came, took away our energon. Your squads broke into his house and dragged him out screaming. Made him kneel in the streets before puttin' a bullet in his head. He didn't do nothing!"
The Empty was shouting now, spark tears streaming in full.
"He kept his head down, he wasn't some Autobot spy, but you still killed him, and everyone else. We're starving in the streets cus of you!"
"Look pal-" Slipstream started to say before the Empty interrupted.
"No, we just get killed or thrown into the pits, I won't take it!" The Empty grabbed a gun from his waste that the two had missed because of the bar table and aimed it at them.
Both seekers raised their blasters at him.
"I'm sorry, but we can't just stand here and let you walk all over us!" The Empty shouted, grasping the gun in two hands, his servos trembling.
The two seekers kept their weapons aimed. Thundercracker examined the gun, it was ramshackle, the barrel was broken at the tip, some of the pieces were fitted in oddly and adhesive material seemed to hold a bulk of the weapon together.
"Oh God, I'm so sorry." The Empty said, shutting his eyes pulling the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Thundercracker and Slipstream exchanged glances as the Empty opened his eyes. He pulled the trigger again and again, the clicks echoing in the destroyed bar.
The Empty grew desperate, pulling the trigger more and more, the gun wasn't even aimed at the seekers anymore.
"C'mon, c'mon, please!" He shouted, desperate, "Why, dammit, why?"
The tears came again, his useless weapon clicking ineffectively as he examined the sides.
"Stupid piece of junk," The Empty said, crying, "I thought enriched nucleon would-"
The gun exploded, sending the Empty crashing into the shelves behind him.
Both seekers jumped in surprise at the scene, and lowered their weapons, the smoke from the explosion blocked their view, but they heard the Empty crash to the floor.
They split up and went behind the bar at both ends, cautiously approaching the Empty. Thundercracker got to him first; he got down on a knee to examine the bot. He looked awful; the blast had blown off both his arms at the elbow, and lacerated his chest. His lower jaw had been taken off, and his face was marred with even more cuts. One eye had been smashed, and the small amount of energon within him was leaking out.
"Primus, he's alive!" Thundercracker exclaimed, realizing that the damage hadn't immediately killed him.
Slipstream was looking at the crushed shelves and damaged wall from the Empty's impact. She shoved the shelves aside to get a better look at the wall behind; the chipped metal sheet seemed to have something behind it. She began peeling the painted sheet off to find what looked like a safe or secret cupboard. She turned to grab the Empty's discarded crowbar, and shoved it into the door's crease. She yanked the safe open and looked inside.
"Score," she said, smirking.
Thundercracker looked up as his companion reached in and produced a golden decanter.
The Empty's functioning eye moved to her and her prize, the last drop of fuel left in this place.
Slipstream smirked at the wounded Neutral, and swirled the decanter around. The engex inside made a satisfying slosh indicating that the decanter had quite a bit.
"This what you were looking for?" she asked the Empty.
The empty only let out a sorrowful moan from his damaged vocal box.
"Sorry, but there's not enough left."
She reached in and grabbed two square glasses stacked in each other, the only other content of the safe, and walked away.
"Come on Thundercracker, this has to be some refined stuff if the Bartender kept it hidden, probably his best. Let's go off where there isn't any rabble."
Thundercracker rose to his feet, "What about him?"
"What about him? He's a half starved, broken Empty who can't work nor contribute to society. He pulled a gun on us, and that little mistake has cost him."
"We can't just leave him here he'll-"
"Be dead in a few minutes, yes." Slipstream finished, "I'm going to head to the Stadium, there have to be a few seats still there."
Slipstream exited the bar, and Thundercracker looked back down at the empty. His eye was flickering, spark in its last stages. They hadn't even learned the bots name, and now nobody would, it was such a waste.
The eye went dark, signaling that after the trauma he'd bled out, and Thundercracker followed Slipstream out.
The two transformed and flew to the Stadium. The track was shot up beyond belief, seats were strewn everywhere from bombshells, and the west end was structurally unsound. Still there were a good few seats left, and the two landed in a VIP box on the northern end.
Slipstream tossed herself into one of the seats, no doubt it had once cradled the chassis of a senator or some other rich pompous jerk, and Thundercracker took the one next to it, across from a table.
She removed the decanter from her cockpit and the classes and put them on it, pouring into both.
She laid it down, picked one up as Thundercracker did the same, and raised it up.
"To fine energon not finding its way into the gullet of some hopeless empty," she said.
"To another day of functioning," Thundercracker said, and the two clinked their glasses together.
The energon was excellent, probably refined into engex thrice in some rich city and imported to Polyhex, a gift perhaps?
"Ah, that's the ticket," Slipstream said, leaning back. The engex went down smoothly, adding an extra buzz to her joints.
She looked around the stadium, from the Jumbotron smashed and hanging from rusted cables, to the obstacle course filled with spent ammo, and to the drag marks from when the bodies were taken away.
"I admit, this really was a prized blend, hard to find outside of Deathsaurus's stockpile," Thundercracker said, swirling the bright blue liquid in his glass.
"The indulgences of the old tyrants become the indulgences of the new, eh?" she asked.
"Yeah, you think Straxus has his own Energon cellar?" he asked.
"Doubt it, can you see him even pretending to be refined? I wouldn't be surprised if he actually bleeds his enemies into a cup and drinks that," She said.
"That would make a morbid bit of sense," Thundercracker conceded.
He sighed and leaned back into his chair.
"Something wrong?" she asked.
"Polyhex is really friggin depressing, I hope I'm never assigned here," Thundercracker said.
"Meh, Straxus is just another tin ruler with delusions of grandeur, if the Autobots don't spike him, he'll probably try some coup." Slipstream said.
They both were silent after that, sipping and staring at the torn up stadium. They say several dozen troops died here, fighting for control of a sports area which was so far from the center that it was worthless as a tactical target. So many lives wasted.
"Is this it?" Thundercracker asked.
Slipstream took another sip and regarded him, "Is what it?"
"The revolution? Is this it? The big plan to throw off our castes, and become our own people, now we're sitting in a bombed out city making jokes about some poor starving bots death? Is this it?"
"Okay, don't launch into some preachy speech with me." Slipstream said, rolling her optics, "We're taking the planet bit by bit. So what if we're whittling each other down in a war, it's better than slipping into stasis lock with the rest of the planet."
"We replaced decadence with slaughter. Slipstream you were a cop, and I was a lab assistant, last week, we executed some Autobots who were probably carpenters, or pilots. Is this the revolution we signed on for? Watching Skywarp crack his stupid jokes over people he doesn't blink at shooting, and Starscream?"
"Starscream was unbearable before the war." Slipstream stated matter-of-factly.
"Fair point, but still. Remember the Exodus?" he asked.
"Those cowards making a run for the stars? The little ingrates who'd rather run than stay and fight for their planet?" she replied.
"Yes, those same unarmed people whom we shot down and killed. Those people Slipstream, the ones who got stepped on by the old guard and shot by the new. By me! I remember opening fire on one of those ships, the people screaming. I still get problems in stasis, y'know."
"Get Scalpel on that, he'd probably fix your head up."
"No, I don't want that little bug in me." he said.
"Suit yourself. Though seriously, cut the guilt BS out." she said.
"Why, am I making you uncomfortable?" Thundercracker asked, an edge in his voice.
"Yeah, you're sounding like one of those bleeding spark Autobots." Slipstream said, refilling their glasses.
"Bleeding spark Autobots, see that's the thing!" Thuundercracker said, almost spilling his drink, "What happened to the 'crack down on protest' Autobots or the 'reprogram you for speaking out" Autobots, or the-"
"They died, like all the other scrap filled idiots. In their place are a bunch of weak willed, weak sparked indigents. Too stupid to quit, and to soft headed to know when to trim the excess."
"Slipstream, why did we sign up for this? Actually, why did you sign up for this? Starscream wanted to advance, Skywarp wanted to crack some skulls, Primus knows what Sunstorm wanted, but why did you leave the force?"
"Simple, there was a revolution coming, something big. I didn't want to keep patrolling some beat somewhere and rust away; I wanted to do something significant. I wanted to live without being overseen-"
"And, how did that turn out? We're in a city whose ruler will melt you down for spare parts if you screw up. We're supposed to be guarding some freak whose mind goes to places I shudder to think about. We've exchanged one regime for another, this one even more delusional."
Thundercracker slumped back into his chair, and put his glass back on the table. Slipstream regarded the other seeker coolly.
"Thundercracker, listen, first off, don't let anyone hear this. If Soundwave or Starscream go a hold of that talk, you'd have an example made of you. Believe it or not, I'd rather not see that happen. Second," She sighed and placed her glass on the table, "That's the digger in the room ain't it. Order and fear replaced with chaos and fear. The true Decepticon cause. We signed on for a reason, we wanted change. For better or worse we got that change. The Autobots are way too compassionate, that will make them loose, and we'll make something new. Sure Megatron's gone from heroic rhetoric to executing civilians, sure the revolution wasn't what we'd thought, but from all this we will win. We will make Cybertron great. It will be worth it."
Thundercracker smirked, "Now whose being preachy?"
She glared at him, before returning the smirk, "Alright, let's cut this ponderous nonsense."
"Yeah," he said. "Oh, hey, you remember the Mecha-soccar champion?"
"Oh yeah Vos Vaporizers right? Krok, Snapdragon, and that Insecticon."
"Yeah, Krok's been assigned here." he said
"Really?" she asked.
"Yeah, aerial squad." He said.
"I'd just love to see him get into another fight with a ref for calling him out."
"I know right, remember when they came to Iacon?" Thundercracker asked.
"How could I not? We had all hands on deck to stop that soccer riot." Slipstream said, laughing a bit.
"Yeah, they just got so crazy, they set the bandstand on fire!" Thundercracker said, joining her.
"Inferno was sooo pissed!" she said, laughing harder, "He began hosing down the rioters to get to the damn blaze."
"And remember the news, front page was an image of Momus putting Ratbat in a headlock, something about a bet, right?
They both laughed even harder at that.
The (slightly tipsy) trip down memory lane lasted the rest of the decanter. From Momus's extravagant parties, to Armorhide's sharp political satire of Senator Proteus, to Sunstorm's time as a missionary, which ended with him atop a pile of corpses singing the praises of the possibly apocryphacal deity Logos Prime.
With the Decanter empty, they left it and the glasses there, perhaps someone would find them, an expensive Decanter and bar crystal left erect in an abandoned stadium, in the VIP booth.
A testament to the decadence of the previous rule? To the current rule? Or just a passing curiosity to be pawned for something to eat?
It was sunset now and the two seekers transformed and flew back to Darkmount, past the ruins of the city. Past the massive hole left by the poorly named Megabomb. Past the Officers club, made from a still in tact building. Over the oppressive walls and to the oppressive fortress itself.
The day was over, a drink was had, a nobody died, and life moves on.
Notes:
The Continuity is a G1 IDW hybrid. This functions on the idea that Starscream, Skywarp, Thundercracker, Slipstream, and Sunstorm are all siblings.
Slipstream Thundercracker and Shockwave are all in their Fall of Cybertron Bodies. Dreadwing is in his IDW body. Bido is a Micromaster, Fistfight is an action master partner. Straxus looks like his generations toy. The Empty was Wheezel.
The silver Vehicon names are a reference to a book.