Disclaimer: The Transformers are the property of hasbro.
This story plays in the parallel time-line, I have created in the fanfic time circle, chapter 17. It is however not necessary to have read that story to understand this one.
Important facts of the alternate time-line are:
After another failed take-over attempt, Starscream is exiled from the Decepticons.
In the year 2005: The planet Cybertron is destroyed by Unicron
2010: The remaining Decepticons invade earth.
Thundercracker´s decision
He was seeing the other jet in the firing cross, his target was only a few meters before him. His technological brain gave a command to his weapon systems and the lasers were fired, all of it in the blink of an moment.
The heck of the fighter exploded and the remains fell screaming and bursting from the sky.
Hundreds of meters beneath, it´s burning wreck crashed into a building, one that had to be full of humans. A few more people who died at his hands. Even if it was only indirectly in this case.
But did this truly made it any better? Did it even made a difference anymore?
xxx
Everything was burning.
Hundreds of meters beneath him a city was standing in flames, like so many did before in his life.
Like the cities on Cybertron, like the Autobot´s sectors, like once, a long time ago, his own home-town.
It was not the first time he had seen a city in this state in his millions of years, by far not, he had actually watched it thousands of times.
Often enough he was under the ones responsible for the destruction, both back on Cybertron and here on earth.
It had not always been like that. Once they had at least fought for a cause. When they destroyed something, it was usually at least for a reason, for energon, for conquest, for survival. This wasn´t like before.
But things were different now. Since the destruction of Cybertron, after Unicron, after the most of them had died and everything he thought he was fighting for was gone,
nothing was the same anymore.
Thundercracker transformed into robot mode and joined the fighting closer to the ground.
If you called it fighting.
It wasn´t a normal battle,
it wasn´t a raid for energon.
It was a inferno, pure unleashed destruction.
At the side of his eyes he saw how Ramjet was hit by a volley of Autobot missiles, fired by Bluestreak and Sideswipe and exploded. His cockpit and wings were ripped apart, while a second hit destroyed what was left of his body and his remains fell as burning rain down on the streets.
Another face he would never see again, another comrade destroyed.
Not that it made much of a difference anymore. In the last years, he had already seen countless losses like this, more than in the millions of years before.
This morning Megatron gave the order to attack Los Angeles, like he did it with a number of human towns before. A short time later a group of Autobots arrived to defend the city, like usual.
All this led him to one question. What was he doing here?
Why were they doing this?
Why was he doing this? He thought to himself.
The truth was, as so often, quite simple.
He was standing here and killing innocent people, was a part of an army that was attacking a town on a foreign planet for seemingly no reason. That was all that was here.
There was no real excuse this time, no higher cause that he could bring up.
Who had Megatron become to give such orders?
Who had he become to follow them?
He saw a group of humans running on the ground. A middle aged male, and two females, women, he thought to himself, one older, one younger, a family.
Thundercracker felt himself hesitating. His aim wavered.
Butcher, he thought to himself for a moment, murderer.
He didn´t want to shoot, he didn´t want to kill this beings, no, didn´t want to kill this people.
But then he saw Megatron. The Decepticon leader was levitating in some distance to him over the city, not saying a word, looking in his direction. His face nearly expressionless but with a dangerous gleam in his optics.
Thundercracker could literally feel his gaze on his body.
He looked first at Megatron, then at the running humans on the ground.
He lifted his guns, took aim and fired.
Before his eyes, he saw how the three humans were burned to dust.
xxxxxxx
One week later
Thundercracker remembered how all that had happened.
He was now in jet form and had just left earth´s atmosphere. With speed several times faster than a real F15 jet could, he was flying into space.
Would he really do it? He asked himself, after this millions of years.
Secretly he had often already thought about it.
Just leaving, leaving the war, the killing and even the Decepticons, getting all of that behind him.
But could he really do it? That was another question.
Thundercracker was just about to reach the moon´s orbit, where the Autobots and the humans had placed the space gate they had built a few years earlier. From there he would be able to leave earth space and go to
where ever he wanted.
To where? He asked himself. The Decepticons were all he had.
Thundercracker had been one of them for over 9 million years, the most of his existence. Everybody he had known outside the army was long gone.
Suddenly he detected something on his scanners, a fast moving object.
A few moments later it changed course and was now flying in his direction. It knew he was here.
As it came closer he could get more details. The energy signature matched a Decepticon flyer, like himself. He had been found, he realized.
For a few short moments of paranoia, he thought that Megatron, probably through Soundwave, somehow knew what thoughts he was playing with and sent someone after him.
After a few seconds however, he calmed down a bit. There was just one of the others out here as well. It was a coincidence. That was the best explanation.
As the other came closer Thundercracker could make out details. It was a seeker, black, designed nearly identical to himself. Skywarp.
Well, it could be worse. It could have been Astrotrain or Blitzwing or Thrust or Laserbeak or anybody else of the army. If any Decepticon was to find him out here he was glad it was Skywarp.
He was his oldest friend. Thundercracker knew him longer then anybody else in existence. They had literally been created together.
Skywarp had also been the one who had the idea to join Megatron in the first place. He had always been the one of them who was more convinced, more loyal, he was often pulling him along. Secretly Thundercracker sometimes envied him for his conviction. He wasn´t regularly doubting himself or what he was doing.
As Skywarp had reached him, both seekers transformed into robot mode and landed on the moon´s surface, in close distance to each other.
"Hey T.C.", his friend greeted him, "how is it going? As I see you are taking a flight. Couldn´t stand it in the base any longer, care if I join you for a bit?" He asked.
For a moment Thundercracker was staggered by his relaxed tone. With Skywarp you never knew how much of his behavior was just, pure theatralics, an act.
Did the dark seeker truly not realize why he was out here? Or was it just Skywarp being Skywarp?
He remembered that story some years back about one particular, sadistic drill sergeant at the war academy. This guy was constantly harassing students and ordering them to impossible tasks. It became that bad that it started to compromise the entire unit and Starscream was sending them to "deal" with the situation.
Skywarp solved the problem by pretending to be a new recruit and mixing himself under the trainings group. Then he started to make snide comments about the sergeant the entire time and messing up every simple task he was given.
Well, to say it short the story ended with the idiot being demoted for assaulting an superior officer and Skywarp chasing him a few rounds over his own training grounds in the aftermath.
Thundercracker nearly had to suppress a laugh then he thought about that time. But he calmed himself down very quickly. This was long over, the present was far more serious.
He decided to play along for the moment.
"And Skywarp, how are things going?" Thundercracker asked him. He knew he had just given his friend an opening. If he had realized why Thundercracker was out here, he had now a chance to say it.
"You know how it is, with Soundwave´s twerps the whole time running under your feet and brooders like Dreadwind hanging around? All that is sometimes makes you wish to just run away. I can understand that."
Thundercracker felt as if someone had punched him in the gut at this comment.
"But we are talking about you here, not about me", Skywarp said.
Was he just messing with him, Thundercracker asked himself?
A few years back, it would not have been that bad, before Unicron had destroyed Cybertron.
Then, if you had left the Decepticons, it was not exactly been seen gladly, but it wasn´t such a big deal either. Megatron would not have bothered to go after a few deserters in the middle of the war anyway.
Now, there only a few hundred Decepticons were left, and it were becoming fewer every year, every attempt to leave without authorization was punishable by death.
Ironically decisions like that were the reason he wanted to leave in the first place. He could not longer stand all this, he could not longer get along and pretend everything was alright.
"Have you talked with Thrust or Dirge in the last time?" Skywarp asked him.
"No, should I?"
"They have just lost a trine mate, like us some time ago." Skywarp was referring to Starscream´s banishment after one of his last attempts to take over. "It is possible that we will be teamed up with one of them."
Or maybe you will be teamed up with both of them, Thundercracker thought, after he was gone.
"Ramjet had died only one week ago", he replied loud.
"Megatron will reorganize our units", Skywarp said faithfully, at least on the outside.
"Yes, I am sure he will."
Yes, Thundercracker thought sarcastically, `Megatron will reorganize our units´, sure.
Starscream had been gone for several years now and Megatron had not even bothered to name a proper new air commander. He had just placed Soundwave as new second in command and let the seekers care of themselves. That alone showed to what the Decepticon army had become. The old Megatron would have "reorganized" his entire army in only a few days.
However the current one only cared about whatever twisted ideas he had in his head about the future of this war and let everything else fall into disarray.
Not that Thundercracker even believed that there was something like a future. There were only a handful of them left, killing each other and even managing to ruin the planet earth in the process.
"Well", Skywarp asked him, "are we gonna fly now or not?"
"Of course we are", Thundercracker replied and just wanted to move to transform.
"You know Thundercracker, on desertion is standing the death sentence", Skywarp said casually, as if it had not the slightest to do with the matter.
Thundercracker froze. So he did notice.
"Only for the last few years, since the time things were starting to get downhill."
His sensors detected the activation of Skywarp´s weapons. Only moments later he activated his own.
"It doesn´t have to be like that", Thundercracker said.
"No, it doesn´t have. Come back with me to the base. We will drink some energon, talk about everything and tomorrow we won´t even remember that anything had happened."
Just go back and pretend everything is alright?
"No Skywarp, I can not do that." For years I have always listened to you and came back, no matter what happened, he thought silently.
"You will see, things will work out, if only you stay."
"Things will work out? How should they? Our world is destroyed, there are only a few of us left and we are becoming less every month."
"Megatron knows what he is doing. You just need to have a bit more patience and then…"
"And then what? Do you even believe yourself what you are saying here? Or have you just convinced yourself?
Megatron had completely lost his way years ago. Since the loss of Cybertron. Every week he orders one senseless attack after the other and more and more of us die."
Thundercracker could now see anger building up on Skywarp´s face. He knew if anybody else would talk about Megatron like this in his presence, the black seeker would have already shot him.
"Megatron is following a secret plan. In the end we will win", he insisted.
"Yes, and how many of us do you think will still be alive to see this?" Thundercracker decided to make his stand here and now.
"No Skywarp, I won´t come back with you. I won´t end like Ramjet or Frenzy or Reflector or any of the countless other Decepticons who had died senseless.
If you don´t want me to go, you better kill me here and now."
Skywarp pointed his guns at him.