Title: Backstage: Just Act Natural
Warnings: Drunken Stunticons, implied violence, mental torture; looking "behind the scenes" of G1's funny Decepticon villains.
Rating: G
Continuity: G1
Characters: Thrust, Dirge, Ramjet, Stunticons, Thundercracker, Skywarp, Starscream
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation (Prompt): Scenario - in solitary confinement
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New enemies generally did not concern Ramjet. He was the elite of the Elite, an undefeatable power in the air who could bring even the strongest fliers crashing down by targeting their weak points. If he happened to get to those weak spots by ramming through an ally or neutral? Oh, well. This was war, and he dismissed those less powerful than himself. Let them get angry! Pathetic little weaklings should have gotten out of his way.
If they dared tried to start something with him afterward, they'd better be prepared for open warfare. Ramjet didn't do backstabbing gossip and political machinations. Those were the weapons of weaklings. Confrontations suited his style best of all, since head-on collisions and subtlty didn't mix.
Plain and simple, Ramjet believed Starscream's ambition to be a weakness. Starscream's strengths lay in powergames, and not physical power. Trying to take over the Decepticons had been a foolish mistake because Megatron was, like Ramjet in the air, undefeatable. For all Starscream's cleverness by enslaving the Combaticons and twisting the deception of the Autobots around back on Megatron, he remained too weak to challenge for leadership. Having that kind of ambition without a body to back it up was foolishness. Ramjet knew the truth: no matter how smart the mind, physical strength always, always won. Megatron was bigger and stronger, and Starscream lost because he was weak. The fact of life in the Decepticons was that strength triumphed over intelligence on the battlefield.
Off the battlefield, however, Ramjet had to rethink his straightforward philosophy.
Physical strength hadn't caused the complicated tangle of powerplays among Soundwave, Shockwave, and Skywarp. Physical threats had been secondary when Ramjet assessed the danger to his trine, because the threat of deactivation would have come only after the politics thoroughly shredded them. The air ranks on and off Cybertron had quickly descended into a shifty arena of verbal promises and rescinded oaths, sworn support and timely withdrawals of the same. If Starscream hadn't returned from exile - another exercise in mental manipulation, since the actual fighting hadn't turned Megatron's favor - Ramjet's entire trine would likely have ended up dead or demoted. Either way, the Decepticon Elite would have had a new set of wings on this dirtball planet.
Dropped into this middle of this unfamiliar territory, Ramjet had floundered. He made enemies far easier than allies, and his few contacts on Cybertron weren't willing to risk their own tenuous positions for him. Their lives on the battlefield, yes, but physical fights were easy. Taking on the likes of Shockwave meant far more than death threatened the losers.
By the time Starscream returned, Ramjet had almost been glad to see him.
Yet he'd been far more afraid of the exiled Air Commander than any fight he'd ever faced. Physical battles he could handle. Pain? He'd endured pain before. But Starscream hadn't chosen that method of discipline, and that was terrifying.
Ramjet had stood at attention before Starscream and waited in dread for a beating that didn't come. Fists and guns, Ramjet trusted implicitly; they had betrayed Starscream, however, and the only power the restored Air Commander trusted to bring the traitors to their knees was what he himself wielded. And - as Ramjet had noted, and sneered at, and finally realized in dawning horror - Starscream was physically weak. So Starscream didn't use his fists.
He used his mind. The weapon that'd failed him in the power struggle against Megatron had been physical force, not mental power. The air ranks that didn't come at his command had failed him, not his own mind.
To Ramjet, the math seemed obvious. Five Seekers against one? The one lost. Except that Starscream smiled his cold, calculating smile, the smile that sent Dirge into a nervous breakdown and caused Thrust's knees to wobble alarmingly, and Ramjet's equations of brute force stopped adding up. The Air Commander gracefully soared back into his rank as if he'd never left, and he rewrote everything without resorting to a single punch thrown or shot fired.
Five Decepticons met their exiled commander, and they walked away as only four. Down one Seeker already, and the Air Commander hadn't even mentioned the issues swirling invisibly between them. The very air in Starscream's office had shivered with the silent warning of incoming fire. It was a battleground Ramjet had absolutely no experience in, and he felt like he was missing half the battle. And missing information in the midst of war? Even he knew to fear that.
Thundercracker, calm and collected Thundercracker, ran himself ragged trying to plan an impossible assassination. His engine throbbed as maintenance ran down, rattling almost painfully with stess. Thrust and Dirge didn't sound much better. Ramjet was beginning to run hot himself, and Starscream hadn't laid a finger on him. When Ramjet stated the obvious - Just promote Shockwave's candidate, alright? - they all looked at him like he'd suggested they shoot themselves instead. Which it felt like they'd done anyway, and Starscream didn't need to do anything. They'd do it to themselves.
He knew then that his philosophy had flaws, leaving him weaker than Starscream's ambition before Megatron's fusion cannon. The simple rules that governed Ramjet's life skewed sideways, and no matter how the Conehead obeyed them, he still came out in the wrong. Worse, the rules of physical warfare changed as well.
Win a battle against the Autobots? The reward for success mysteriously refused to manifest, and Ramjet carried Thrust away from the repair bay still crippled. The Constructicons looked right through them and totally failed to see their injuries. Show up for patrol? Soundwave blandly informed them that all their flight slots had disappeared, and Dirge began to morosely count the days between battleplans against the Autobots on Earth just for time outside of the ship. Flyers kept underwater didn't deal with their confinement well. They needed the open sky now denied them, but there were still battles - oh, but for some reason (what possible reason could it be?), suddenly all of the plans to distract or attack the Autobots didn't include the Seekers. Any of them. At all. So they were trapped under the ocean, wings twitching for open air, while Starscream allegedly caught up on a backlog of work and trained Vortex.
There was only so much of that they could take. "We don't have to tolerate this slag," he snarled at his wingmates, and he uneasily wondered why they only gave him tired looks in return.
They went to him, because what else could they do? They had to leave the ship, had to fly, but they couldn't without leave. So four big, bad Decepticons asked permission to enter the Air Commander's office, and they waited for that permission before risking so much as a hand on the door. They assembled ranks once inside, indignant and ready to demand answers from the red Seeker sitting casually behind his desk, but there was Skywarp.
Thundercracker was weak enough to flinch when he saw him. They'd been wingmates for ages, after all, and…to be fair, the Coneheads winced as well.
Their temporary, now ex-Air Commander had been unseen for days, but here he was: face gone blank and somehow meek as he sat on a spare chair in the corner and didn't even acknowledge their entrance. Starscream looked at them with an innocent face and hating optics, and Ramjet could almost see the dare. Ask me, Starscream challenged them silently, charm glittering poison-edged in his smile. Ask me why you're confined to the ship. Ask me why Skywarp is here. Ask me why. Just give me the chance to tear you apart, and I will give you a reason.
And the words fell completely apart in their mouths.
"Hostage," Thundercracker said later, but he sounded uncertain with that conclusion. It was too easy. Too physical.
"What is he doing to him?" Thrust asked, and they looked at each other with matching expressions of confusion. Wondering, a little fearfully, if they could do that to someone. If they had the minds to match Starscream; if they could transmute their physical power into his ability to invent something ugly enough to not leave a mark.
They couldn't, however, and Ramjet's dumb, blunt courage cracked against the brittle razor of Starscream's wit. He could use his fists as cudgels, but Starscream didn't need to lift a finger in order to trap all of their sparks, expose them, and twist. They writhed on tenterhooks, captured and knowing and loathing it, and Ramjet suffered most of all. An enemy he couldn't confront, a battle with weapons he couldn't seem to grasp, broke him.
Skywarp couldn't stay in the Air Commander's office forever. When he emerged, he was brought to heel. The normally gregarious jet became a steady, quiet shadow at Starscream's beck and call. He lifted his optics in the occasional pleading glance at the others before looking down again. The Coneheads and Thundercracker had yet to find a solution to Shockwave's candidate, hovering with increasing apprehension on the verge of plan, and Starscream pointedly ignored the whole issue. He resumed commanding them as if nothing had ever happened, but his silent ultimatum stalked the four jets like a beast.
Inescapable, it sank teeth into their throats every minute of every slippery day, clawing, clawing tick tock tick tock into their wings. It curled around Skywarp lovingly, purring threat. Ramjet could barely stand the sight of the purple-and-black jet, unable to face his own growing fear written on the ex-Air Commander's face. Thundercracker's plans became more desperate, the sound of his engine more alarming. Needed repairs and maintenance were adding up in them all, gradually degrading their performance. Or rather, it would have if they were allowed out of the underwater base, and that was the worst of all. They could feel the sky-mad need consuming them, but they didn't dare try to appeal to Megatron, they didn't dare…
The other Decepticons watched them, impassive but careful like bystanders at an accident treading on shattered glass. They watched, but they didn't help. Because Starscream had that power. Not raw power to win through strength, but power, and Ramjet felt as sick as if he'd hit sudden vertigo when he thought about it. They'd been condemned to solitary confinement as effectively as any solid door closing on a prison.
They hadn't known how bad it really was, though. Ramjet had thought they'd sunk as low and hopeless as they could go, but no.
His wing had been watching the other Decepticons fight on a vidscreen in the base. The Combaticons had been taking on the Earth Autobots in that elaborately staged way Megatron's overarching deception required, and Dirge had said something. Ramjet didn't even remember what it had been. It was only significant because Ramjet had met Thrust's optics immediately afterward for a shared moment of Primus, he's creepy.
…really, he's creepy.
Really creepy.
Some thought had flickered through both their minds, a sense of how wrong that was. Not just wrong, but sickly, horribly familiar. They'd looked to Dirge. And their wingmate had been staring back at them in horrorstruck revelation.
Poor maintenance. Earth's filth corroding their cerebral circuitry. Confinement warping their minds.
Starscream, no. No.
They'd all been crazy before. Earth-mad, the Decepticons called it once returning to Cybertron had restored their sanity. But they hadn't gone crazy; they'd come online already insane after their 4 million years of statis-lock buried on Earth. They hadn't felt the difference and actually recognized their insanity until they had been repaired. It was like waking up in the repairbay after a crash: terrible in retrospect, but already over. Compared to that, this was feeling the crash coming: the pain of a crippling shot and the spark-wrenching fall, watching as the ground rushed up, dreading the crash getting closer and closer and unable to stop…
Starscream redefined 'devious.' He also stripped away any vestige of pity from 'merciless.' He chained them by duty and power into a personalized, private torture chamber to slowly go mad. To feel themselves slowly go mad, questioning every thought and winding themselves into hyperventilating, trembling knots. The helpless sensation of losing control overwhelmed their pride and flayed them open to whatever he wanted. Shockwave's candidate's head on a platter? They'd get it. Obedience on and off the battlefield? They'd do it. Oaths of personal fealty? They'd swear it. They'd fall over themselves for that kind of opportunity, because in reality they knew it wouldn't be that simple.
Kennelmaster and puppeteer, Air Commander and jailer; Starscream had them at his nonexistent mercy. They knew they deserved no forgiveness, and he would never forget. He held the keys to their freedom, strung up their minds and dangled them dancing from his hands, and they'd sit up and beg on command because they had no idea, not a fragging clue what it was he'd take from them next. He'd defeated them without a shot fired. Prisoners had no leverage to make demands. They could only try to appease their jailor.
Starscream sat behind his desk, leaning back with a lazy smirk, and completely disarmed Ramjet by wits alone. He couldn't fight these tactics. He couldn't crash through any weaknesses. Confrontation only smacked him between the optics with his own vulnerabilities, and, small and shamed, he retreated and surrendered and was utterly crushed under Starscream's mind.
Ramjet had made an enemy of an ally. He'd believed he knew everything to know about him.
He'd forgotten that Starscream knew him, too.