Title: Backstage: Stage Hands
Warnings: Powerplay? Buncha helpless Decepticons? Reprogramming.
Rating: PG-13
Continuity: G1
Characters: Combaticons, Decepticons
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation (Prompt): Scenario - seeking oblivion
[* * * * *]
It felt like coming home.
Brawl knelt at Megatron's feet, and he could not remember what else it might have felt like. There was rage, and there was violence, but in the end, there was always Megatron. Shout loud enough to shake screws loose from the walls and demolish buildings with a fight, but Megatron would still endure. The universe turned its predetermined course and deposited him back here, knee joints planted firmly before the Supreme Commander of the Decepticons.
Onslaught, he thought dimly, and there was a thick barrier blocking his thoughts. It felt like a wall pushing up against the outside edge of his right optic, applying pressure on his bare cerebral circuits. It should have hurt, but it didn't. Brawl just felt somewhat uncomfortable, as if he were being compressed by an alternate mode too small for his primary build.
His unit-commander should have been more important, and he thought he knew that. Maybe. But there was a nonexistent pressure bearing down his mind, and the thought wasn't certain.
The Combaticons weren't just a unit anymore. They had become one, the carefully reconstructed lasercore in Brawl's chest configuring tick by tick to the other members of his new team. He could feel them as faint shadows at the edge of his core, the edges clearing into definite personalities and thoughts as their lasercores ticked toward total integration. Countdown to completion, and statistics were scrolling up the side of Browl's HUD, updating him on positions and fuel levels and temperature gauges that weren't his own. The stats ticked, and to their counting numbers, parts of him were rearranging.
He couldn't control it, physically or mentally. In a peculiar way, he didn't want stop it; he wanted it to hurry up and finish, already. Combining into Bruticus had rushed the process, not completed it, and the incomplete sensation was maddening. They were - Brawl was – weak until the combiner programming finished integration.
The weakness wouldn't stop there, however. Not really. Earth bodies and sadistic ingenuity had freed him from Shockwave's prison and slaved his body and mind to four other Decepticons in the same grand stroke. The gestalt circuitry burned like minute fires following the wires under his armor; the Cybertronian technology melded but not merged with Earth materials, and he hated Starscream all over again. Five million years in prison, and the Air Commander of the fraggin' Decepticons couldn't even manage to make them real bodies for their return?
He liked the tank form. He had to hand that to Starscream: at least the fragger had picked an appropriate Earth alternate mode for him.
And he knew how complicated lasercores were because he'd ripped out his fair share before and crushed them beyond saving. He didn't understand the construction, but he'd known it would be fiendishly difficult to come back online the same way he'd gone off. Shockwave's prison sentence had been meant to do more than isolate Brawl in a box. The process of restoring him post-sentence would have likely resulted in a mech who bore only superficial resemblance to pre-imprisonment Brawl. It had something to do with the balance between personality core and lasercore, and getting that balance just right was really important. The sentence hadn't really been about the time in the box so much as the knowledge that Brawl, the original Brawl, probably wouldn't be the one to get out again. His body - lasercore inside - had been melted down after extraction and imprisonment of his mind.
He didn't understand much more than that. Brawl wasn't known for his patience, and the others in his unit had been more concerned with their own lasercores at the time than explaining the threat to him. Shockwave hadn't kept them waiting long. Prison, prison sentence - boom: little storage box for half an eternity. No time for optimism or an escape plan. Just facts that Brawl didn't really get.
Starscream had spent a painstaking amount of time accurately rebuilding their lasercores and installing them. Sure, he'd installed them in the junked-up Earth vehicles he'd found on that little island, but internal balance meant more than external armor. The external bits could be changed out or modified. Brawl knew that. He didn't feel any different than he remembered, so Starscream's careful work had probably succeeded. Real Cybertronian bodies or not, at least they'd come back online as the same mechs.
The charge coursing between lasercore and personality components had unwound the spark plasma Shockwave had imprisoned them in, and Brawl had come online feeling murderous. That, and feeling the constant, irritating shocks as brand new, horrifyingly new, unexpected and unasked for and controlling gestalt circuitry linked up. The writhing ball of electricity-snapping plasma churning between lasercore and personality component now had an additional, outside source - and drain. The combiner programming and components sent him into chaos and acted as stability, all at once.
Brawl couldn't get rid of it, and from what he did understand, he couldn't live without it, either. It supported and chained him. His understanding of that fact was becoming clearer as time passed. It wasn't really his understanding, per se, so much as his unit-team's, combiner-team's understanding. That pissed him off, because it only ground jagged shards of undeniable truth into his very spark where his hands couldn't tear it free.
Earth was stupid. The Earth Autobots were stupid. Acting stupid along with Megatron's stupid plans was stupid. He'd been too full of hate for the stupid things to give a slag about gratefulness to Starscream or anyone. Yeah, sure, restored with extreme, patient care - whatever. Megatron would have freed them eventually. Onslaught had, even before Bruticus, forged the Combaticons into an invaluable team. Then Onslaught's takeover had failed and Shockwave had gotten his aft shot, but so what? Ol' One-Optic would get over his illogical little snit, and they'd be back in action.
Okay, so it had taken five million years. Big deal. They had time, and Onslaught was good at that long-term planning stuff. They didn't need this gestalt slag, and they definitely didn't need to cooperate with Megatron's stupid plan. Even Onslaught had looked askance when Megatron's Earth plan was explained, and Onslaught did tactics. Stupid Megatron. They had bodies, and they apparently had to have each other, so what - or who - else did they really need?
Then the Air Commander had held his bag of missing vital systems over their heads like a mech withholding treats his pets, and things had gone straight to the smelter. Starscream had explained Megatron's plans, but the tricky Second had his own plans. Plans that he had been able to make the Combaticons go along with.
Brawl didn't do plans. Plans were for team leaders and commanders who sent him out to smash things, because Brawl did smashing things. Onslaught, Brawl thought, dim and disliking it, and on the edge of his consciousness something despairing stirred. Too feebly to matter, but it was hard to remember why it should.
Starscream had failed, of course, because the Supreme Commander wasn't that easy to defeat. The Combaticons had been exiled onto that asteroid, but they'd been whole. They'd been free. There were no limits to their freedom, no more boxes or threats to their lasercores, and they'd seized the opportunity.
They'd returned to Cybertron, returned from exile, and vengeance had been waiting, hot and strong. Oh, the sweet, high pleasure that sang over the erratic gestalt link! It'd twined in joyful glee around their conjoined sparks as Shockwave disappeared into Cybertron's sky. That's what it had felt like when Starscream had been at their mercy on the asteroid, fear and inferno-deep rage glaring up at Brawl as he held the exiled Second in Command down and pounded. It had been physical, hold-in-his-hands revenge. First Starscream, next Shockwave, and then the stupid fraggers came back to Cybertron, and both at once, like Primus personally delivered the quicksilver excitement that poured down Brawl's back.
It had been home, that feeling. Brawl's old friends: delight in violence and never-ending anger. He hadn't had to plan, because Onslaught, as always, had been there. Closer than before, maybe. More controlling and binding nearer with every shivering click click of reconfiguring machinery inside him, but Bruticus wasn't so bad. Not…like the statis box, where Brawl's rage had just bounced off the walls inside his mind. Not like Shockwave's prison, where he didn't understand anything. Bruticus just slotted in, wrapping everything up into the link. Those shadowed forms he knew as teammates – gestaltmates – bound around his spark until they were one and the same; his violence permeated the plans and greed and interrogation and he didn't know what all.
Brawl didn't have to understand. He didn't even have to think. If he'd ever wanted to think about it, he'd have thought that he preferred it that way.
An opaque thought, slower than a dead mech's final drop of filthy engine oil, gurgled nauseatingly to the surface: …Onslaught.
The barrier closed down, quickly-flitting numbers and words writing codes that meshed through his personality code, and Brawl shook his head. The wall pressing against his right optic had a twin now, slowly forcing its way against the left, but it wasn't his vision that changed. There wasn't actual physical pressure, but that was the only thing Brawl knew to compare it to. Something was shifting, narrowing down around him, and he didn't know what. It bothered him. Not much, less and less every passing moment, but it did.
On the other side of the block, a shadow shape slumped in defeat, and Brawl knelt at Megatron's feet. There was rage, and there was violence, and there was always, always Megatron - and Brawl found his oblivion therein.
It felt like home.
He could not remember what else it might have felt like.