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): Too much talking

[* * * * *]

Scrapper talked too much.

At that moment, Vortex couldn't have been more grateful for that fact. Let the mech talk. Talk some more, Scrapper. About what? Who the frag cared. So long as Vortex could see the Constructicon speaking with Shockwave, it meant that he was still present. He still had a body. He had no control of that body, but it was there. Teasing at the edge of his mind, all the switches tripped to off and out of his hands, but it was there.

He'd spent 5 million years without that faint echo at the very border of his mind indicating he had a head. Five million years trapped in a box had made Vortex that aware of a tiny sensation like that. Time had ingrained the pathetic feel of being just a personality component, his mental core trapped inside the plasma of his very spark and filed neatly into a literal prison block.

Aware? Hyper-aware. He could map out the wavering limits where thought brushed processor, linked him to a body he couldn't actually touch, and he held onto that not-sensation with the desperation of 5 million years without. The continuous pulse of electricity throbbing around his mind was another of those not-sensations he greedily absorbed; he scrambled to fully map basic life functions and vital system logs. He needed to remember and never let it go. Circuitry and wires, programming and codes, lasercore and spark and armor: they were the tiny, forgettable, unimportant details that were a whole world.

These things could be taken away. Were taken away. Had been taken away once, 5 million years ago, and Vortex had only his mind to twitch at the horror of having it taken away again. His body wasn't gone yet, but it hung around him like a cloudy presence. It wasn't his. The only thing left to him was the memory of his senses, and it wasn't enough.

Vortex knew what it took to make someone break. Bodies faltered if mind tricks didn't unfold prisoners first. Vortex used himself as another interrogation tool. He could fly until even he didn't know which way was up, if gravity still applied, when the crash would come, and he loved it. Had to have it, truth be told, and to him it inevitably would be. He'd been the best in his chosen field, and interrogation had been his addiction as much as career.

The relentless assault of chaos could only be ridden by a disturbed mind, and Vortex had a VIP pass on that ride. His prisoners? Not so much. Take a grounder for a wild ride up in a cyclone, and gyros would destabilize. The turbulent air created a world of false input that forced systems out of sync with a mind that knew differently, and Vortex could see it happen. He could cause it, took great pleasure in causing it, and then came the delicious moment when he dove through the whirlwind and drove questions like spikes into that gap. Interrogations were recipes: a little pain here, a pinch of confusion there. Add a peppering of logic where it would do the most harm, and sometimes shake in some pleasure, involuntary and humiliating. Let it stew in the brig, or maybe call in some bruisers to punch out the raw ingredients into a more malleable shape. He could lever answers out of the toughest Autobot like a versatile cook challenged to work with any ingredient thrown at him.

Combat had a more brutal, immediate edge, but Vortex enjoyed it, too. Flight and firepower were more tools, and prisoners were the reward for tools used well. Afterward, because he was very good, he'd get to interrogate the prisoners. Vortex did, after all, know the trade inside and out.

Even Shockwave had noted that about him 5 million years ago, in the last few moments before audio feed had cut off. Without that, the words had been flashing light as Shockwave's optic had reacted to unheard syllables. The patterns could be read, yes, but only if the one-opticked loyalist had stayed within sight. Sight had quickly followed audio, however, as the connections between personality core and body were severed.

And then Vortex had been left with nothing. He'd spent 5 million years wondering what exactly Shockwave had said after the cut off. He'd wondered with decreasing hope and increasing insanity. Perhaps it had been a second of regret for losing Vortex's skill, and in that direction lay hope that egged insanity on. If Shockwave had regretted, he might remember, and Vortex might be reactivated. Hope had bent Vortex's thoughts at right angles and sharpened them, making blades of thought because it was his only remaining tool. The solitary victim left for his interest and entertainment and amusement was the mind trapped in that prison box. He, himself, was all he'd had left for an eternity of turning in on himself in the search for anything outside the box.

Time could not be measured within that box, and side-by-side with hope had come anguish. It'd tortured him in that timeless wait. Hope caused insanity, and insanity eventually broke a mech. Vortex knew this, because he was an expert at driving mechs beyond their tolerances. Facing the process himself had given him no comfort because the other end of the spectrum offered no sanctuary. It had been either hope or despair in that box, and part of Vortex rebelled against giving up that way. Although he knew better. He'd known prisoners only had value if they were useful, and Shockwave's sentence made it clear that he felt the Combaticons' usefulness to be at an end.

Onslaught. Reflexive and below the level of actual thought, and for an agonizing fragment of a micro-second, Vortex thought he felt something. He didn't know what. It didn't matter. He clutched at the sensation with mental hands that didn't grip, and it slipped away.

Vortex knew what it took to make prisoners break, and he'd broken fellow Decepticons for fun before. He drank in sight because he would not break like this. He silently, motionlessly urged Scrapper to keep talking because it gave him just a little more time to gather sensation. He memorized the limitation of his mind, studying where mind lost control of body, because he would remember and retain and would not break. It didn't matter what they did to him. He refused to break.

Shockwave and that blasted, talkative Constructicon could take away his body, melt down his lasercore, and fold his spark energy back around his personality components. They could destroy him outright or stick him in a tiny prison to rot. They could poke with delicate little tools and torments at his vulnerable mind like sadistic scientists chasing a chattering experiment 'round and 'round a cage.

…that sounded sort of fun, really.

Regardless, Vortex wouldn't break. Taking his body away again only deprived them of an important tool in an interrogator's repertoire, even if they were too amateurish to realize it now. He knew they weren't trying to question him - he had no information they wanted - but it gave him concrete purpose. Resisting his own unstable mind would be the only hobby to occupy his attention forevermore, once Scrapper stopped his infernal yapping and let Shockwave get back to the imprisonment.

Vortex lay suspended in lockdown, grasping at even the dead weight of a body, and buried under his last-minute, desperate scramble for sensation whimpered a sensualist gelded. He could feel nothing, and the circuitry of his open head crackle-popped in the silent, crazed, sobbing laughter of the already broken.