Unthinking Violence

Quickstrike knew, when he bothered to think about it, that he wasn't made for thinking. Most of the time he just accepted his inherent violence as the instinct it was, but it was one of the things that puzzled him about the Maximals: they insisted that he had been a Maximal protoform, yet they also insisted that they were peaceful. If he was so hard-wired to be violent, how could he be one of them? The closest explanation he could come up with was that his circuitry was scrambled when his stasis pod crashed. How did that explain Silverbolt, then? The bird-dog was completely opposite of him; could they possibly have the same origins?

It was here that his mind usually bogged down with the fleeting bits of hatred. He wanted to beat up the other fuzor, prove his superiority, and for brief moments he hated Silverbolt. Those seconds were common, however. He held smoldering hatred for all of them, Maximal and Predacon alike, short-lived spots of heated anger that consumed coherent thought before they passed. They often succeeded in turning him from serious thought, instead making him think of how the metal would crumple under his fangs and their optics would show their submission as he stood over them. Oddly enough, it wasn't their deaths he craved, but dominance. He wanted the fight, the violence, and the rush of battle.

When he forced his mind to concentrate on the thoughts, he knew that he had never been a Maximal. Nor had he been a Predacon. At best, he conceded that he could have been a neutral. What he was, and he knew he had been so even before the stasis pod, was a mercenary. It wasn't just Silverbolt those painfully bright flashes of fury lit. He'd attack anyone for the sheer joy of defeating them, and he'd join the 'bot, any 'bot, who offered him the greatest chance of a fight--as Tarantulas knew. The spider had offered what Quickstrike wanted, and in return the fuzor offered his services. It wasn't loyalty for the spider, but it wasn't betrayal for Megatron. It was simply a fulfillment of a mercenary contract.

Of course, once he realized that, the thoughts wouldn't stop.

He referred to the violence as something he wanted, but in truth it was a need. It was an addiction that Tarantulas had taken an advantage of, feeding the junkie, and deep in his mind was the quiet whisper of a prediction. The need would only increase as it was fed, and eventually the rage, the violence, the hate…it would stop being quick flashes. It would linger, and it would fill him up, and it would destroy him.

That wasn't something he wanted to know. His mind could only circle around such things with confused intensity until the craving rose in him to overwhelm everything else. Even then, it disturbed him, scratching around the edges of his consciousness because he knew he couldn't deal with it. He wasn't made to handle the feeble prompting from damaged programming, urging him to turn away from the violence. That wasn't an option for him, anymore. Whatever else he may have been, had his stasis pod landed right, he was stuck as he was now.

But, most of the time, he just didn't think about it.

.

Quickstrike was never reprogrammed as a Predacon. Even allowing for damage from his statis pod, that makes him somewhat of a mystery. I mean, he not only joined the Predacons, but he LOVES violence. That can't just be pod damage.