AN- We're in TFA now, but this time we'll get Cyclonus's perspective rather than Scalpel's.


In that state of stasis, thoughts oozed and fired and had little coherency. It was pitch, but flashes arrived too fast to be clear but completely visible nonetheless. A shadow. Silhouette. Searing away. Like the yells vanished. A flash brought it back to let it sear away again. Everlasting purgatory of repeating failure, loss. The incoherent thoughts followed the same patterns.

Forgive-

Forgive me-

Please forgive me-

But Galvatron was never one for forgiveness. Why should the presence of his death act any different?


Then stasis crawled away.

The fog left and with it went those visions. The last visions he had, no matter if they were mere reminders that his commander was dead.

Cyclonus heard the groan before he knew it was he himself making the sound. Something was applying pressure to his face and that as well took awkwardly long to realize his own servo was responsible for.

He was awake.

Alive.

In his same body, feeling his own face, looking through his own optics just as he had always done in the world he came from and abandoned now. That he alone survived. Alone.

Disorientation faded and Cyclonus was able to take stock of his situation. There was a tiny mechanism sitting up on his berth, glaring at him. Glaring with multiple optics, red, narrowed into little suspicious slits. He recognized those optics.

No.

Those optics were dead. Their owner was gone.

(Galvatron was gone; the rest lived on, but not his, not those he'd known)

Scalpel was here, in front of him, but Scalpel was likewise dead.

In the moment, Cyclonus felt extreme distaste for the engineers who'd decided interdimensional travel was the path they would take. He was the only who had followed it through to its finish and what did that leave him with? Total strangers wearing the faces and pasts of people he'd once known.

He had no place here and yet here he was.

An invader in a universe where he ought not exist. The Skywarp here, if Starscream should create or had already created one, would not have met his Team Athenias, his Galvatron, his pressures in the furnace molding him into Cyclonus. The names alone would not come to the clone without either party involved. And would either be involved if the lumen purgatio were to never arrive here? Cyclonus could be a nonfactor. A being that never existed here, that never would. This could act as an alternate universe parallel to his own all it wanted, but there were portions of his own that had no coding in this one's writings and the entire entity of Cyclonus was one of them.

He had no place here.

Alone. No companion. No familiars from his own universe. Surrounded by faces he knew and did not know here.

Faces he would have to meet again, hear introductions for, vital conversations with, all again, all again, it repeated, never ended, why had he awoken?

There was, of course, the technical reason. Someone had lifted medical stasis. Judging by the two present in the room, Cyclonus felt confident that it had been Scalpel.

But his was a more metaphorical question.

And to it, no easy answers arrived.


If there was any solace in his stasis, it was that his mind could not string any thought together to completion. There was a mercy in that incoherency. It numbed reality, for reality could only be grasped if thoughts could string that reality together for the mind they belonged to. He'd known he was grieving, known he wanted forgiveness from Galvatron, known sometimes in the waves of clarity that he wanted that forgiveness for surviving when the other didn't before that clarity washed away and left him knowing he was in grief but unsure of the complete, coherent, sharp pain arising when he knew why.

That solace was gone when stasis was lifted. The world around him was perfectly put into words by his thought and his mind numbed nothing.

The world around him lived brightly. Chaotically. Full of decepticons mulling around. A world thats biggest worries were restarting a rebellion war they had already officially lost.

A world he didn't belong in.

He wasn't supposed to be awake.

A world that would force him to belong until their priorities became his, their battles his, their planets his to tread on.

He was given total life again and he did not want it. He did not want to repeat this. Did not want to restart. It spat on the life left behind. It was tedious. It was overbearing to consider doing it all again: improving, gaining status, finding purpose.

There was no alternative but to do so again in his new world. It would allow him nothing less. There was no ending in finding a new world.

That had been the idea, hadn't it? A second chance for life?

He alone had received it and- alone, solitary- it felt more a burden than blessing.


It was only logical they question him. Upon awakening to Scalpel and the looming frame of general Strika, he'd known exactly what came next.

If a stranger had dropped through the sky of his home, he would have demanded answers as well.

Even as the ever-suspicious Scalpel scattered away, the general wasted no time in beginning the interrogation. Cyclonus would have been amused at her angry urgency if he could find it in himself to be amused at anything.

"Who are you?" Strika growled only a few nanos after he'd even awoken.

Ah, but she could forgive him for not rushing to answer. He was still rather disoriented. It took time to put answers together. Safe answers, at the least.

Strika wasn't interested in giving him time.

"What is your name?" she prodded after his pause seemed to have worn her patience thin.

They would hardly recognize the name. It seemed rather unlikely a Cyclonus existed in most living dimensions.

So he would give her that much.

"My name is Cyclonus."

The two decepticons exchanged glances.

"And what faction do you belong to?" the general asked next.

Ah! Right to it. They were in war, then. Worried about autobot spies or the warriors who swore loyalty to Megazarak's memories and arrived on decepticon outposts to make violent statements. They had no understanding of a world without such concerns, no understanding of a world burned into nothing and flooded only with a force that replicated until the space of the world could no longer fit them all. No understanding.

Fools. He would be crushed into the values and wars they found important? He would find no stress in them at all. Their wars would pale in their entirety to what he alone had survived in his home.

Still, it would likely be important to find allies here. He had to be ready for this universe's Galvatron, if the mech did not yet exist. Perhaps he did. Or perhaps this dimension was far enough back temporarily that it was still Megazarak on Chaar's throne. Perhaps still, there was no familiar leader in this world and its history was unrecognizable to that he hailed from.

This was an interrogation, no? The goal of an interrogation was to find answers to settings and plans. He may as well take advantage of questioning.

"Who is the leader of your army?"

It was Strika that answered. She spoke the name with a pride and loyalty she'd never issued Galvatron's name with.

"Lord Megatron," the general answered him.

A part of him wished to be frustrated over how she displayed her loyalty to the inferior precursor's name when his version of Strika hadn't for her commander at the time.

But it was truly a small issue. He could not issue the passion for frustration over it.

And, at least, it gave him the answer he needed to find an impromptu place in the allied forces of this dimension.

"Then I am a decepticon."

For as long as it took before Megatron sought out a planet-eater and became the mech Cyclonus had known.

It was thought with conviction enough, but that confidence wavered under the presence of a single word.

If.

If Megatron sought Unicron out-

Not when.

There would be no lumen purgatio in this universe. He'd succeeded at that much.

Here, there may never be a Galvatron.

Without the alliance taking the allspark and its fleet's members, there may never be the younglings he'd recognized only cycles before. Firefly could be irrelevant here. Remembered by himself as a bright, moldable assistant, but so much more than dead in this universe. Never to exist in the first place.

And those alliances wouldn't arise either. The two doctors he'd had as Skywarp wouldn't have reason to meet, let alone work together. Dreadwing and Skyquake would shoot down the autobot younglings they'd tutored in a different world. Team Chaar would, at least, be together. That much did not rely on the lumen purgatio.

So much had. Galvatron. His Galvatron, shared experiences and all. The newsparks and alliances.

Still, planets still stood. Chaar. Cybertron. Earth. The Co-Prosperity Sphere. Everything that had burned where he came from.

It would almost have been easier if they'd burned away his memories with everything else they'd taken from him. Galvatron's last yells rang in his head and he felt despairingly sure they always would (it was more frightening to think they could stop, eventually; that he could just walk away from all that Galvatron meant to him now and leave the screaming guilt in memories behind- No. No no, he wouldn't, no, he couldn't). For a moment, they drowned out what Strika was saying next.

" -did you come from?"

Ah. Even if it felt safe to answer, he would not have. That was private. Intimate. He could not share it with strangers. They would not grasp the weight.

"I cannot say."

It did not seem easily understood by the general.

"Do you not understand the severity of your situation?" Strika's optics flared in threat. Her looming grew closer overhead. "You crash down in New Kaon, offer no answers, disrespect a-"

He had no passion to listen to her misunderstand his status here. Cyclonus moved to interrupt the stream of anger.

"I know you. I know who you are and I mean no disrespect. You operate a specialized team. You lead Blackout, Spittor, Blot, Mindwipe, Sky-Byte, and-" he pointed at Scalpel, seemingly taking the scientist by surprise. "-him."

"While I have led all of those soldiers before, you're missing an important member of my permanent roster: Oil Slick."

There was something more too. Some added words on Scalpel. Cyclonus did not listen to them.

But there was his first link lost to his universe. In his, he'd never met Oil Slick. Heard of the mech, yes. Detested him for what role he played in kicking off the life he'd created; in dealing out cosmic rust to Rodimus Prime, he'd spelled the death of Kup, the rest of Team Athenia and with them Tailgate, his own failure when he'd warped that last time...It led him to Galvatron and he would never chose otherwise, but detesting the cowardice that was chemical weaponry displeased him still for its role in the deaths of his first, short lived companions.

And he was meant to be dead.

That confusion led him to slipping out of the stiff confidence he'd hoped to conduct this interrogation with. He wasn't supposed to let anything slip, but-...

"He hasn't been killed yet?"

Considering that he was disoriented from awakening from stasis so recently, he felt he could offer himself some amount of grace for slipping. That reasoning did not mean that he did. Any mistake was still a mistake. An error on his part when he was meant to be stronger than that.

The general had no inclination of understanding this storm of thoughts. She'd stepped back and her optics had widened briefly in confusion. Strika was not one for containing emotions all that well. She made up for it with the sheer ability to slag whatever witnesses there were for errors.

"Who?" she snapped through confusion. "Oil Slick? What are you talking about?"

The future.

Nothing.

Not a future that would occur.

Still, when Galvatron arose here, Oil Slick could still be killed. Hardly a loss.

So perhaps a future, perhaps a partial future, perhaps nothing at all- whatever the case, he would not say more of those questions built out of his previous situation to these two. They did not need to know. Let the knowledge of that universe and its horrors die whenever he did. It was not a burden he would share with any others who would offer hollow condolences without grasping the true tragedy of it all without experiencing it.

Cyclonus went quiet then in that determination and no amount of this Strika's and this Scalpel's questioning could bring him forth to share again.