Alterations

There had been screams. There had been gasps and cries and helpless noises of suffered pain.

Now there remained nothing but the labored rasp of dented air intakes, waiting with each breath for the last blow to descend. For any other 'bot, it would have ended by now. The fact that he hadn't struck the death blow yet confused him, and that confusion drove him away from the crippled form in the sand like Megatron's hand on his spark. He turned his back to his victim and looked out the cavern entrance because there were no answers in Depth Charge's broken body. He had what he'd always wanted of his victims. There was no reason to stop. Was there?

If the magenta optics hadn't been punched out, he imagined that they would have stared accusingly in his direction. How dare he make his oldest friend and enemy wait? For all the pain inflicted upon the raybot, once he'd ceased to react there wasn't a reason to keep him alive. That had been the pattern he followed for every person who came kicking and screaming into his grasp: torture until it no longer amused him, and then execute the pathetic remains. Magenta optics--long gone, and dark with unconsciousness at this point had they been more than glass scattered in the sand--drilled into his back and demanded an explanation for his deviation from the established roles. The victim moved out of that role with every continued breath, and the uncomfortable feeling that today he was not a murderer had driven Rampage to the mouth of the cave. The roles didn't fit.

Outside the cave was a beach like any other, another battlefield for their ongoing war instead of the scene set for torture. Yet the crab's gaze was troubled. If Depth Charge didn't die today, then a fundamental part of his life had to change. It was one thing to let one Maximal live; exceptions could find excuses or respect. But there was a vast difference between a fighter and a victim. To let the victim live would change…something. He wasn't sure what. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what.

He knew one thing for certain: if Depth Charge died today, he would stay forever the unnaturally docile 'bot that had come to him today. That 'bot bore little resemblance to the fighter who went down flinging insults and earned an honor guard on his life, the life that stomped around in Rampage's memories and amused him in the times between their meetings. If today ended that life, then this last memory of his oldest enemy would overwrite everything previous. Optics sharp with accusation and defiance but stifled by voluntary surrender stayed steady in the back of his mind, memories of a soldier forced to submission even as Depth Charge lingered on the edge of dying.

Rampage scowled out at the receding tide, refusing to turn at meet that nonexistent gaze. He had no ability to feel guilt or remorse. He could barely comprehend the thought of self-hate. They were all concepts he had trouble with, as were all emotions that required doubt and reflection on the depth of his personality. Rampage, killer and torturer, simply couldn't analyze himself. He couldn't compare himself to those around him and find himself lacking in one way or another. He couldn't separate out the parts that weren't right and wasn't able to figure out the pieces that made him wrong.

Rampage was.

Everyone else wasn't.

He understood, in a way, that no one else thought that way, but he couldn't make himself care even if he wanted to.

Imaginary optics pried into his mind, foreign thoughts of someone he pretended not to realize anything about, and Depth Charge whispered, "Liar."

The Transmetal cat slumped in the sand outside the cavern where he'd left him, and Rampage nudged him with a foot. Offline still, then. That honestly surprised him a little, as he'd judged the damage carefully meted out on Cheetor to be superficial. He'd expected the cat to have woken up before the tide turned and crawled back to his Maximal friends, probably mewling for help. That's what he'd planned. He'd wanted the whole stupid faction to storm the cave he'd chosen to torture Depth Charge in, only to witness him escape into the ocean while the dead body of their friend waited for them to bring home. It would be delicious. Their pain would be exquisite.

"How do you know they'd react like that?" Depth Charge sneered in his head, and Rampage shifted uncomfortably. The raybot was as offline as Cheetor, but his imagination could apparently circumvent such things as reality.

He'd known. How long had he been a Predacon under Megatron's cruelty? Days and months, through cycles of the moon and changing seasons that developed the reluctant fighters' personalities in his plans like film in an ancient camera. He knew these Maximals as he'd never known anyone, even the scientists who'd twisted his spark to breaking. They'd become real where before his life was inhabited by empty shells that could scream and cry but never be more than passing pieces in shallow plans. These people, even the Predacons he hated to work with, had bigger parts in his life. He could map the complicated emotional ties between the Maximals and plot how to hurt them individually or as a group using those ties to choke them.

Thus, it rather upset him that he'd misjudged his torture of the cat like this. It screwed up the timing of his plans and made him think he didn't know everything he thought he did. It made him wonder why he'd suddenly felt the urge to check if Cheetor had woken yet, right before he'd let the death blow fall. Something had made him hesitate, as if he'd been waiting for an interruption late in coming. He'd known the Maximals, known their reactions and responses, and something hadn't been right. They should have been here by now. They should have…interfered.

Now he shuddered at the strange, creeping dismay he felt when he turned back toward the victim waiting to die.

"How well do you know yourself?" his mind supplied when Depth Charge's head didn't lift from the odd angle it lay on the mechfluid-soaked sand. His hand twisted toward his gun despite knowing the voice didn't come from his favorite enemy; the acid in that voice burned mockery into his head as only Depth Charge could manage. He knew what the Maximal ray would say to him better than he knew how he'd react to Megatron's domination on any given day. Rampage couldn't figure himself out, but Depth Charge…

That strange apprehension surged like the tide outside, creeping higher until it lapped over the edges of his thoughts. It irritated and alarmed him as he stood over the blue-and-silver Maximal. They'd tried to kill each other for so long that he didn't understand the sudden depth of feeling in this particular moment in the fight.

Except this time it hadn't been a fight. Rampage had kidnapped the precious little kitty of the Maximals, and instead of the challenge he'd expected--and planned on accepting, because when had he ever turned down Fish Face's challenges?--he'd been forced to scramble for nonchalance when Depth Charge had contacted him with a different offer entirely. Apparently he'd misjudged the strength of his raybot's ties to the rest of the Maximals.

"Maybe that should have given you a clue that things wouldn't go as planned?" Depth Charge said nastily, and Rampage's hands tightened into massive fists.

He let them relax, MADE them relax, because, yes, he should have taken that as a sign that his plan wouldn't work right. He'd accepted the offer eagerly, of course, because when had Depth Charge ever negotiated with him before? The idea of a peaceful trade was laughable, and he'd expected the Maximals to attack at any moment when the ray began to disarm himself. Optimus Primal may have thought to sacrifice himself like some martyr to a cause, but the pompous Maximal leader would have never allowed any of his crew to do the same. Such hypocrisies never ceased to amuse Rampage, but in this case it had left him more than baffled as the raybot submitted to his terms and reluctantly exchanged his life for the cat's--and the rest of the Maximals failed to intervene.

The plan still stood as it was, however, because he'd immediately connected the facts. Depth Charge was a loner. He wouldn't have told the other Maximals what he'd decided to do, being the only one who understood X enough to think he could possibly influence him one way or another. Of course Depth Charge had been right. Depth Charge could nearly always predict what he would do. He understood Rampage in a way the crab could barely wrap his mind around. The closest thing to knowing himself, he'd found in the course of their drawn-out game, was to know his pursuer.

It turned out that he didn't know him all that well after all. The prisoner who'd walked into his grasp was an unfamiliar 'bot. Nor did he know the Maximal cat, Cheetor, as well as he thought. Two such miscalculations unsettled him, changed his plans in ways he wasn't sure he could adapt to, and now he didn't know at all how he should react.

Rampage hated it when Depth Charge was right, even if the Depth Charge who annoyed him spoke only in his head. Even if his imaginary Depth Charge born little resemblance to the real Depth Charge he had last seen--and tortured offline. This Depth Charge was the one he wanted to remember. This was the one who was more significant at this moment, smugly pointing out that he didn't know himself even to the extent of knowing the ending of his own plans. Cheetor's injuries weren't supposed to be extensive enough to hamper him going for help. The Maximals, good and pure and disgustingly heroic, were supposed to be here by now. His victim--

--he wasn't ready to admit that to himself yet. Something shifted inside his head, subconscious blocks and chunks of personality rearranging themselves under the surface of his thoughts, and he didn't need the voice of an enemy to point out that the things he'd always been able to push aside or dismiss as unimportant were going to require explanations. Old customs were coming back to haunt him. The game's rules were changing.

It hadn't been long since the hostage exchange. The Maximals would discover Cheetor's body before long in their surveillance of a hostage situation, even if the hostage in question had changed. They would come and save the day, but if they didn't hurry, Depth Charge wouldn't be alive to save.

That made Rampage very, very jittery, and he didn't know why. And that only made it worse.

He didn't know what to do with hostages besides kill them. He didn't know how to deal with Depth Charge outside of a fight. Before, they'd forced combat on each other with an inevitability born of unhealthy glee and vengeful hate. Depth Charge had never understood his side of the battle, and he'd come to regard the stubborn Maximal with a weird kind of affection that didn't contribute well to any kind of understanding at all. But since he didn't understand himself, that had never been a problem. Now it bothered him.

That was the problem of trying to know himself by knowing his enemy. At some point, it started to work. And that was really just too confusing for the average psychopathic Predacon, much less Protoform X.

It was one thing to batter Depth Charge into submission and stand guard over his involuntary surrender. The twisted kind of respect for a long-standing foe had roots in his oldest relationship. Now he had a variety of new relationships, ones that didn't seem like they were leading anywhere fast at least as long as the Beast Wars would continue to stalemate. He should examine old traditions and discard a broken toy now that he had new ones to play the game with. Depth Charge had broken the pattern, surrendering without a fight. The easiest action would be to follow through and land the killing blow, willing victim or not.

No one had ever given themselves up to die before. Once the novelty of a sacrifice wore off, the fun disappeared. The struggle was the part he enjoyed. That realization felt weird. Take the struggle away, strip away the raybot's weapons and snide remarks, and it left Rampage standing there despondently in a dark cavern, waiting for something that wouldn't come. Waiting for a death that he suddenly realized, despite himself, he didn't want.

He'd kidnapped Cheetor because the opportunity was there. He hadn't killed the cat because that would defeat the ultimate purpose of using his captured life to taunt his old friend. The ever-entertaining emotional ties were there, had he chosen to slaughter Cheetor and watch Depth Charge explode into fury, but the cat wasn't a random colonist or starbase resident. He was a Maximal with a suppressed desire for the traitorous black widow and rising resentment for Silverbolt, and Rampage wanted to see what kind of soap opera entertainment would come when that geyser eventually burst. He wanted to see who would side with the cat against the wolf fuzor. He wanted to see if the rat would attack Blackarachnia, finally provoked into an act of hate. He wanted to see how Depth Charge would react.

He wanted to go back to the base and play cards against Quickstrike. He wanted to threaten Tarantulas with disembowelment for trying to scan his spark while he slept. He wanted to delicately rip holes in Dinobot's over-programming and find out how much of the original Predacon traitor remained underneath.

He wanted to torture. He wanted to hear the shrieks only true pain could tear free.

Afterward, however, he wanted to see how he'd changed his victims.

He didn't want his last memory of Depth Charge to be of a victim at all.

Somewhat dazed, the crab looked between the two bodies--still alive, and when did that become part of the plan?--waiting for rescue. One he'd never meant to kill, and the other he wanted to live. He'd never felt himself change, or seen anyone else change around him. There had never been a time or a place to stop long enough to notice a difference. Now the difference smacked him in the face, as hard to ignore and entirely part of him as a fourth transformation, and he didn't know what to do about it.

"I didn't see this coming," Depth Charge said softly from inside the flood of revealed desires, and Rampage had to agree. He had the feeling that no one could predict how he would react from here on out, and wondered what the real Depth Charge would say to that.

.

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Based off of the idea of someone frozen at the moment of death, never to change, and continuing with the ""You can't commit rape if your victim's a willing participant." quote-prompt, this Rampage ficlet came out, ummmmm...different. I basically sat down and said, "What version of Rampage HAVEN'T I done yet?"

I've had Reluctant Good Guy (TM) Rampage in the Reluctant Heroes series. Evil Bstrd Rampage has crept into every fic I've done of him, as has Victim Rampage, for some reason. I've never done Outright Good Guy Rampage, 'cause that would just be weird. So this is Changing Rampage (different than Plotting/Learning Rampage, who his scheming his way through the Celestial Skies series). This is a Rampage who finds his goals in life defined differently than he'd originally thought and stumbles through the confusion of finding out he even HAS goals.

I think Rampage is growing up.