Demon of the Desert
In the deserts of Afghanistan, an American convoy followed a long dirt road down the valley, its masses of Humvee's, trucks, and Stryker armored vehicles rolling down the road slowly, carefully, well aware they were in guerrilla-held territory.
On the hills to either side of them, Afghan guerrilla's perched among the rocks, Kalashnikov's, belt-fed machine guns, Lee-Enfield rifles, and even a few rocket-propelled grenade launchers were in their midst as they waited for the convoy to reach a certain point, where an improvised explosive device had been set up to be detonated by the pressure of a tire resting on it.
The guerrilla leader narrowed his eyes from under his turban and shemagh, noting the lowering sun, and judging the time to be mid-afternoon, a time where many started to grow weary of the heat and relax at the coming of the cool evening air.
Watching the front Humvee get closer and closer to the IED, he racked the charging handle of his beat-up AKS-74, a worn weapon that had served him well since the Soviet-Afghan War, a prize that he had gladly taken from a BTR gunner after a successful raid.
Flicking the selector switch down to fully-automatic, he nodded at the comrade next to him, who racked the handle on his equally worn PKM machine gun.
Raising a hand to show he was about to give the order to attack, he awaited for the inevitable explosion to follow.
But it did not come, as a boom stormed through the air, the front Humvee going up in a ball of flames before it had reached the explosives.
Pausing in shock, the guerrilla fighter scanned the terrain to find out who had done that. Scanning down his line of fighters, none seemed to have fired the shot, all of them looking as shocked as himself.
Then another boom rang out, and a Stryker armored fighting vehicle went up in a ball of flames, the supply truck and Humvee next to it going up in flames from the shrapnel and flames coming off the burning husk.
That's when he noticed the hull, a dull desert camouflaged hull with a trio of dark barrels sticking off it, the three guns firing independently as he made out the indistinguishable silhouette of an M1 Abrams tank.
"By Allah…" he whispered, amazed at the firepower that the lone vehicle brought to bear as it rolled out of its defensive position, firing astride the convoy line, similar to the sight of a man-of-war firing broadsides down a line of enemy vessels, the three guns blasting away, the sounds of rockets rolling off the racks behind them punctuating the deep throated roar of the guns.
Some of the vehicles returned fire; .50-caliber machine gun rounds pinged uselessly off the armor, the Mk 19 automatic grenade launchers doing little more than taking off flakes of paint. The only thing that seemed to do much at all was when three of the Strykers, or to be precise M1128 Mobile Gun Systems, returned fire with their 105mm cannon, moving away from the convoy as they returned fire, the lighter, more agile systems peeling off to attempt to divert the lone tank from annihilating the whole column.
But it was not to be. Some of the shells left blackened dents in the armor, other literally pinged off the front armor as the tank trained its main gun on one of them and blew it wide open, it's twin secondary guns and rockets still ripping into the convoy, a .50-caliber machine gun's slow staccato joining the hail of lead.
The remaining two Gun Systems closed the distance, driving as close towards it as they could, blasting away to little effect before succumbing to return fire.
Minutes later, the whole convoy was a smoking wreck, hollowed shells marking the destroyed vehicles and shredded flesh showing the remains of what few bodies could be identified. The only evidence that something human had done this was the masses of empty shell and cartridge casings resting in the dirt and the tread marks of the tank.
The guerrilla fighter just stood there, amazed at the awesome firepower he had just witnessed. That is, until he saw the tank's trio of heavy guns rise up towards his position.
He yelled in native Farcce for his men to retreat, helping his comrade pack up his machine gun as they scrambled up the hill.
The main gun barked; a few men were blown off the hill as the shell slammed into the hill. The secondary guns fired, but they fell short of their targets.
Rockets were then fired, the Afghani swearing profusely as he felt their heat as they fell all along the hill, some wildly missing, some tearing apart his men.
They scrambled and tripped, some falling and resorting to crawling their way to safety. Finally reaching the top, he looked down at the monster weapon below, glad he would be able to fight another day and to hopefully never see it again.
But he would never live to see the sunset as he looked ahead and stared straight at the front end of an Mi-35 Hind, or the Devil's Chariot as he had fearfully named them many decades ago. The gunship hovered, almost staring at the surviving guerrilla's with its bulbous cockpit and large payload of weapons aimed at them. Then it fired, a combination of rockets, missiles, and cannon shells plowing into the survivors and wiping them off the face of the planet in less than two human seconds.
The gunship hovered, surveying its work, before arcing over the hill to do a fly by over the tank.
The Hind came by the desert-camouflaged tank, almost surveying it as the latter transformed, exposing a large, hulking figure armed to the teeth with guns, rockets, missiles, and blades.
Coming around to hover in front of the mech, the helicopter uttered in Cybertronian "So you have survived for all these years. Stay low and keep your communications offline. Everyone thinks you are dead. The Autobots, the humans, even the Decepticons believe it. But I was not foolish enough to believe it, I knew you were a survivor, just like I. Live your life of carnage, but do not return to the Decepticons, Brawl."
The hulking mech stood still for a moment, processing the speech. Then, in a deep, gravelly voice, he uttered "I am free from the Decepticons, and from Megatron. I am my own mech now, and I refuse to bow before him in order to obtain satisfaction in blowing stuff apart. I shall heed your words wisely, Warblast."
The helicopter hovered for a moment before stating "We'll keep in touch", slowly arcing away, flying into the sunset as Brawl stood there, finally recognizing that now, he was free to do as he pleased, without any superior to order him around. The former Decepticon transformed back into his alt-mode, the large tank rumbling away into the desert, quickly swallowed up by the sand and dust of the Afghan desert and hills.
Note: I do not own Transformers, so I have no claim to Brawl, I can only hold claim to my original character, Warblast, who so far you will only find on two Transformers forums (including one on the Transformers forums in the Cartoons category). I hope you enjoyed my take on what happened to Brawl after the first film ,primarily due to Hasbro's Deep Desert Brawl figure, which suggested he survived the first film, as well as me thinking he was just too heavily armored to just give up and die after getting the slag beat out of him by at least three Autobots and still fighting.