Ep. 1.5 - Barren Ground - (Closed)

[Deleted]

Set on Day 6 of Week 2, very late afternoon, around 6-7pm!

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He was running on fumes.

Exhausted in body and restless in mind, Fortress Maximus tore across the alkali flats of the Black Rock Desert. His tank mode ripped a line of dust from the cracked rock and dry mud beneath him and sent it billowing into the deep blue afternoon sky.

The steady roar of his hard–running systems beat a loud but steady tempo through his frame. Powered by his engine, the rear drive sprockets spun and clutched into the steel track pads of his tracks, hurtling them over the assembly of support rollers and idler wheels that kept his treads clawing forward, while against his hull his suspension system flexed to absorb the shock of the rough ground. Behind his turret his whip antenna wagged back and forth with every jolt.

The empty desert stretched out in front of him, bare and pale and baking beneath the late afternoon sun. Mirages rippled at the edge of his vision as Maximus ploughed across the flats and savoured the overwhelming sense of space and light. Felt good.

The painful burn in his dry fuel systems, on the other hand...

He was eating into his reserves now, and knew it. Both of his modes were heavy and powerful, and subsequently guzzled down energy at a high rate. His main tanks were drained; this jaunt into the desert was fed entirely by his reserves. Agent Fowler and the Autobots had yet to determine the best way to store a cache of energon at the Black Rock base for his use. Ratchet had sent a comm to warn him it might take another day for it to arrive. Still hammering out the logistics.

Fine. Maximus had assured him he could hold out until then. He would ration and monitor what he had. Drop himself down into a low power endurance configuration to weather out the wait. He could do it.

Except he hadn't.

He hadn't recharged in days. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't shut down his mind, his overwrought battle net. The long nights were spent in agitation, in futile pacing. The fight with the convicts and his subsequent flight from the Autobot base had chewed through a lot of fuel in a hurry. Which made this foray into the desert foolish and poorly thought out.

But here he was little more than a speck wandering amid hundreds of miles of dusty nothingness. There were no humans to be wary of, no reason to confine himself to avoid detection. The emptiness of the desert both welcomed him and weighed down upon his spark. It made him feel small next to it, shrunken. He had never thought of himself that way before, in stature or in presence.

It was strange. Unsettling. But at least it was good to be alone.

His navigation system pinged at him, warning that he was a minute back from his waypoint. Maximus dropped gears and decelerated, his drive system humming down. After a moment he ground to a halt. The dust he had been dragging in his wake caught up and rushed over him, hazing the air and coating his plating in a layer of soft grit.

Maximus transformed.

Amid the cloud of dust he rose to his full height, grimacing at the strain. He flexed his back. His frame was still sore from the fight. It would take another day for his fried electrical systems to repair themselves. At least out here there was nothing for him to do but rest. No patrolling, no monitor duty. No distractions. Nothing to do but sit with his thoughts, until the light faded from the sky and the shadows of the old hanger closed in around him.

Then the real darkness set in.

Maximus stood in the middle of the flats and put one hand on his shoulder and rotated the stiff joint. With squinted optics he looked around himself. Just dirt and rock and old dry mud, and those far–flung ranges. And nothing else. Not even a cloud in that stark bowl of a sky.

Yeah. Air and light. This was better. This was good.

[Deleted]

Deserts.

Goddamn did Thundercloud hate deserts.

Sure, they had the one saving grace of being mostly abandoned of human life so he could move about freely in them, without having to hide up past the clouds to avoid detection, but still. They were hot, and dry, and his dollar-store cooling systems just didn’t get along with environments like that. Granted, it only really started to become a problem if he stayed under the blazing heat for extended periods, or did the stupid thing and physically exerted himself when he knew full well his systems wouldn’t be able to compensate for the excess heat, but it was still an inconvenience he reserved the right to gripe about with a few not-so-nice words he had been told he couldn’t use in front of the human children.

It didn’t help that the godforsaken wasteland their base was stationed in seemed to be smack dab in the middle of the area’s Hot and Dry Central. Everywhere he looked there were heatwaves, dirt, canyons, and oh, more dirt.

At least the late hour made the heat (and the uninteresting scenery) a bit more bearable.The deserts tended to be considerably cooler at night then they were during the day, which made them slightly more habitable, and therefore mildly less unpleasant.

He was still gonna glitch up a storm about them either way, though. That’s just what he did

Oddly enough, he wasn’t even technically supposed to be flying in the area at all. At least, not alone. He hadn’t been ordered out on a scouting mission, or told to patrol the area. He had just felt like getting out of the base, out of the confining, stifling atmosphere that all enclosed areas carried with them whenever he was in them. It was really his own fault he was flying around in an environment he disliked, when it came down to it. He didn’t want to use the ground-bridge to warp himself to a more pleasing environment, only to have to file a report about it, and he certainly didn’t want to be forced to take a partner along with him for ‘safety purposes’ when all he wanted was to be alone for a while to stretch his wings.

That most certainly ruled out ‘bridging, which left him with the nearby areas. And since he couldn’t very well fly over inhabited places, that left him only with Nevada’s numerous deserts and canyons to muck about and waste his time in.

And waste time he did.

He flew aimlessly through the clear skies, marking the clear blue canvases with stark white contrails. He had no course to follow, no direction he particularly cared to go in, so his flight path was somewhat erratic. The contrails that followed in his wake paid testimony to this, making random spirals, loops, and zig-zags, marking the points where Thundercloud had gotten particularly bored.
He was strongly considering writing something profane in the sky to keep himself amused, when a far more interesting prospect showed itself to him in the distance. It was a tiny speck. A tiny moving speck. A tiny moving tank-shaped speck. A tiny moving tank-shaped speck that transformed into a mech-shaped speck.

God he hoped it was a Con out all on their own. He hadn’t had a good fight in...however long it was he had been on the planet, honestly, and it was finally starting to wear on him. He got antsy if he didn’t get his daily dose of ass-kicking, and it showed.

He moved closer to the speck, dropping in altitude to get a better look at them. It took him a moment, but he was able to piece the mech’s features together and figure out that he...most certainly was NOT a Decepticon.

That didn’t make him want to kick the guy’s head in any less, though.

Thundercloud realized, even as he made his rapid downward descent, that this was a bad idea. That in-fighting was strictly prohibited. That there was no way this situation would end peacefully. And yet, he still found himself making a b-line for Fortress Maximus, regardless of all the reasons he knew he shouldn’t.

The incident in the control room was still fresh in his mind. It wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t stop nagging him. He wanted to have some words with Max. Maybe a little heart to heart to fist to face would help ease his mind a little.

He decelerated as he drew closer to the ground, to slow his momentum and make his landing softer, before transforming mid-fall and twisting in the air so that his pedes were aligned with the ground. He landed with a tremendous thud a hundred or so yards away from the other mech, kicking up dust and leaving deep imprints in the cracked, dry ground. He could already feel grit starting to settle in his joints, but he didn’t care. His focus was all on Fortress Maximus.

“Hey, Tall Dark and Handsome.” He called, waving casually to the other mech as if they were good friends, and not at all on terrible terms with one another.

“--No, wait, homicidal. The word I’m lookin’ for is homicidal.” He added in a deadpan, after pretending to think better of his previous word choice.

The grin he flashed at Fortress was not entirely friendly.

“So. This where they send us when we misbehave?” He continued, maintaining his casual tone as he crossed his arms and looked around, feigning interest in the scenery.

[Deleted]

One hundred yards away.

That was how close the bastard was. One hundred yards away, give or take a few feet. Close enough that Maximus could cross the distance in two strides and ram his knuckles straight through the blue and grey flier's throat. Close his hand around his voice box and rip it out, wire by wire, throttling the smug voice into silence within his fist.

All of this flashed through Maximus' head in less than a second.

He had spotted the high altitude contrails first, white lines in the sky. That had set him immediately on alert and he had stared up at them, frowning, one hand shielding his optics. Contrails meant fliers, and fliers meant Decepticons in his experience. It had taken him a long time to convince his weapons systems that contrails could also mean jet airliners. Even the distant roar of a turbojet engine passing overhead at night made his head ring with tense activation requests from his weapons systems.

The aircraft had descended straight for him, glinting in the sunlight like a falling star. Not a jetliner. And Maximus had abruptly found himself wishing it was a Decepticon.

The hot sun beat against him as he backed away a step and then stood bristling, one foot edged back in the dirt. His engine snarled, while in his chest the dull burn of fuel starvation turned into a sick ache. Of all the Autobots who could have chosen to drop in to visit him now, of all times, it had to be this one.

No. Not an Autobot. Just a filthy criminal in a red badge.

Why here. Why now?

Feeling ill, Maximus jabbed a shaky finger at the jet.

"This is where they send us when we have hit the limits of our acceptable tolerances," he snapped. "So shut up! What the hell are you doing here?! I thought I told you both not to follow me!"

[Deleted]

A reasonable mech would have turned around. A reasonable mech would have seen Fortress Maximus’ slowly building anger as the warning sign it was, and take their leave.

A reasonable mech would have done the exact opposite of what Thundercloud intended to, which said a lot about the kind of mech he was.

Instead of responding to Fortress’ heated words with an appropriate response, he simply continued to favor the other mech with a jaunty smirk, looking for all the world as if he were having a pleasant conversation with an old friend. He flicked his wings out casually, unfolding them and letting them droop a bit to show just how utterly at ease he was despite ever reason he had not to be. Namely the rather obvious danger Fortress Maximus presented to his structural fortitude.

“I was in the neighborhood, figured I’d drop by, say hello.” He replied with a shrug, his smirk sharpening slightly as he looked the other mech up and down, sizing him up.

Damn, he was a big mech.

“So, how’s life treatin’ you, mech?” He asked, despite knowing full well Fortress Maximus had not had the easiest time as of late.

He wasn’t quite sure why he was doing this, provoking the other mech with this mockery of friendly banter. Maybe he just wanted to irritate him, to piss him off then fly off once he was consumed with a seething rage he would have nothing to vent against. Or maybe he wanted to provoke the other mech into a fight, make him land the first hit so he could have an excuse to vent his own frustrations against him, and pay him back for what he did to Carbine.

He didn’t really know which one it was yet. He just had the overwhelming urge to give the tank hell, and he had never been very good at ignoring his instincts. He’d just figure out the rest of the details later, deal with the fallout when it happened. He was good at thinking on his feet.

[Deleted]

How was life treating him? How was life treating him?

Maximus stared at him, speechless in fury. No one would ask him that. No one. It was a taunt, meant to goad him.

It was working.

It was the breezy indifference that did it, as if the convict believed that he deserved to be there, drawling out his absurd remarks. That he was not an invader here, trespassing upon Maximus' personal solitude. That he had every right to smirk at Maximus and adopt a relaxed stance around him, wings lowered as if he believed there was no need to be wary of the bigger mech's strength, no need for deference. The lack of respect was galling.

The up and down look was worse.

Maximus felt his internal temperature spike in rage. All of a sudden the sun was too hot, too bright in his eyes. His tired head swam. It felt like he was boiling under his plating.

His joints whirred as he slowly lowered himself into a combat stance, his hands open and ready. Down his back a row of vents hissed as they spat out heat and dust, while behind his shoulders the massive tank tracks rattled and spun with menace. Maximus fixed his red optics upon the jet and lifted his armoured forearms.

"Get out," he snarled. "Turn around, and get out. Get out of here! Go back the way you came! Go back to the Autobot base! That's your outpost now, isn't it? Get out of here, or by Primus, I swear to god I'll..."

[Deleted]

Thundercloud stood, unmoving, as Fortress Maximus’ anger finally began to boil over. The mech lowered himself into a combat stance, hands ready and waiting to be used to inflict harm. Heated air poured from the vents in his back, the tank-tracks mounted behind his shoulders spinning, roaring, in an open display of aggression. He was a truly imposing presence. Every line of his tense frame suggested--warned--that he was seconds away from bloodying his hands.

Thundercloud saw the immense and immediate danger the larger, infuriated mech presented, recognized him for the threat to his well-being that he was.

And yet he grinned.


“You’ll what?”He asked, unfolding his arms to raise them at his sides and gesture towards himself.

“Do what you’ve been wantin’ to since the day I got here?” It was there his friendly tone finally came to an end, an edge of hardness creeping in.

“If that’s the case, mech, you’re gonna have to threaten me with somethin’ a little more intimidating, ‘cause where I’m from, death-threats were how we said Hello.”

His smirk returned, bearing none of its former good-spirited amusement. It was sharper now, and lacking its friendly pretense, considerably less kind.

“Not that I need to tell you somethin’ you already know.”

He rolled his shoulders, fingers flexing slightly in anticipation.

It looked like he was going with option B and stick around to throw down with the big blue bastard after all.

[Deleted]

That god damned smirk again, the yellow optics gleaming coldly.

Maximus' temper snapped.

In an instant he forgot about the heat, the blazing sun, the lack of fuel. His tiredness evaporated in a haze of anger. The other Autobots shrank to the back of his mind. This was not one of them. This was just a mocking thug, a grinning face among the long line of thousands that he had watched trudge below him in the past, silently hating him and everything he stood for. A leering face among a crowd, that spat and reached down for him - and now this brute was going to get exactly what was coming to him.

Maximus charged.

He kicked into motion, exploding into a flat run that hurled dirt into the air behind him. The wind of his onrush roared in his audials. This was a thug and he was a warbuild, forged for nothing but directed speed and power. His long strides thundered into the ground, cracking the dry lake bed beneath his feet, even as they carried him across the distance separating them in a flash.

His tactical net scanned the jet, took note of his size and weight and surveyed the newly formed battlefield. Quiet and precise, it calculated routes of strategic engagement in less than a second: aerial take-downs, slides, driven strikes to neural clusters, knife-hand blows that would shatter a cranial unit, a joint, or shear through armour and mesh alike and rip out handfuls of vital biotechs. Maximum damage and a dying opponent in two moves or less.

Blinded with anger, Maximus slammed into Thundercloud head on.

The impact roared through his frame and into his head. It hurt. Maximus grit his teeth. Even as they fell together he planted his legs, entering a slide that tore up a cloud of dust around them. As he fought to keep his footing he got his arm up, rammed it into the jet's throat, and heaved with all of his strength, seeking to hurl the big mech to the desert floor.

[Deleted]

Thundercloud was not a warbuild. He wasn’t programmed to make calculations and run battle protocols, to factor in variables and come up with numerous possible responses to a specific situation. He wasn’t Fortress Maximus. He wasn’t made to be a tactician, didn’t have the sub-protocols or training that Fortress did.

What he did have, however, was a hard-won pain tolerance, a diploma from the school of Hard Knocks, and a lifetime’s worth of experience in being an ornery bastard who just didn’t know when to die.

The big mech charged him. He held his ground, pedes planted firmly as he was tackled head-on, rammed hard by sixty tons of Pissed Off Tank. The impact was hard enough to dent plating, loud enough to put a car-crash to shame. It never occurred to him that dodging was an option - rarely did he find moving out of the way to be the favorable choice over standing his ground and taking the hit like a mech.

The collision threw him backwards, Fortress Maximus’ momentum pushing him backwards, his pedes skidding across the ground, tearing gouges in the earth beneath them. He might have been a big mech himself, but Fortress was bigger, and his considerable weight advantage allowed him to keep propelling Thundercloud backward despite his own attempts to regain his footing.

Then, without preamble, Fortress Maximus raised his massive arm to choke-slam him into the ground. Thundercloud had to admit, it was a nice move. Fast, precise, brutally efficient.

It hurt like a son of a glitch, too, which he bet Fortress enjoyed.

The hit had landed solidly, with no effort made on Thunder’s part to avoid it. Instead, he simply rolled with the blow, allowing himself to fall back as his throat was painfully rammed to lessen the damage, rather than stand firm and risk the very real possibility of Maximus breaking his neck. Possibly in half.

He gagged as he fell back, landing hard on the ground with a solid thud. His helm cracked against the dirt, the cloud of dust kicked up into the air from his landing surrounding him in a gritty mist. He coughed, turned his head to the side to spit out what was probably blood, and coughed again. Then he made a far less expected, but infinitely more worrisome sound.

He began to laugh, the sound a deep, rumbling rasp that tapered off into stifled chuckling, interrupted periodically by another cough or odd hitch in breath.

“Ah, hell.” He rasped, as he grinned up at the sky, his field crackling with dark amusement. “Ain’t this nostalgic. Gettin’ my head kicked in by a warden.”

He lifted his head, peered up at Fortress with a smile ill-fitting for someone who's throat had just been dented inward.

“You sure know how to make a mech feel at home, big guy.”

[Deleted]

Maximus stood over him, hunched and panting with the effort it had taken to throw the jet off his feet. The arm that had slammed into Thundercloud's neck hung slack, the fist still balled. His armoured forearm had taken the brunt of the impact, but it had still rung up his arm and through the rest of his frame like a hammer blow. Things were ringing in his audials.

A haze of dust hung in the air. As it thinned out and drifted away on the desert breeze Maximus saw the flier lying flat on his back in the dirt. He spat, savagely. Good. Stay there.

That took care of that.

Maximus flexed his arm and shakily pulled himself upright. As he did so he heard a strange sound. Deep. Harsh. Rattling, like it came through a throat full of fluid. Amused.

Laughter.

The damn flier was laughing. At the blow - at him.

Maximus backed off a step when the flier lifted his head and smiled at him, with a mouth flaked in spilt energon. The golden eyes were undaunted.

He'd felt it. The blow had crumpled the flier's throat. So why was he smiling about it?

"What did you say?" he said. "What did you say?"

His face dark with anger, Maximus stepped forward, crossing the ground rapidly. He bent and clapped his hands over the heavy collar of Thundercloud's chassis. With effort he dragged the flier upright, rotors straining in his back and shoulders against the big mech's solid weight.

"Stop laughing!" he snapped as he drew back one fist. "What the hell is wrong with you? There is nothing funny about this!"

[Deleted]

Fortress Maximus thought there was nothing funny about the situation. Thundercloud begged to differ.

He didn’t resist as the larger mech surged forward and seized him by the collar, didn’t bother struggling as he was hauled roughly to his feet and then promptly snarled at. Instead, he simply let his arms hang loosely at his sides, making no motion whatsoever to use them to defend himself, to fend off Fortress before he could deal out another blow. What’s more, he had the gall to keep right on grinning, heedless of the obvious and immediate repercussions that would befall him if he provoked the other mech further.

He was having fun.

A lot more than he thought he would, honestly. At first his intent had been to simply provoke the mech into attacking him, so he could justify beating on him in return, but now...well. His plans had changed a little. He didn’t write off trying to punch Fortress Maximus ugly entirely, however - it was still a definite possibility - he just wanted to mess with the other mech’s head a little more. Whether to rile him, unsettle him, or just plain piss him off, Thundercloud couldn’t decide. Each result had their own unique perks, which is why he figured he may as well try for all of them and see what stuck.

He could start face-checking the big blue bastard with his knuckle-spikes later, when psyching him out started to get boring.

“Maybe not from where you’re standin’.” He replied, blithely, still smiling that infuriating smile. His voice was hoarse, raspy, his throat still sore from the choke-slam.

“See, I kill my number, think I’m done gettin’ beat down by guards, then you happen. It’s ironic” He explained, with surprisingly little venom.

He paused, then glanced at Fortress Maximus’ raised arm, his tightly clenched fist. He blinked at is, pretending as if he was paying so little attention to the threat Maximus posed that he only just noticed it was there. Then he smirked, which was most certainly not a good sign, and turned his head to look back up at the other mech.

“...Kinda like you gettin’ off on hurtin’ people.”




((Translation: To kill one's number means to max out of prison/finish one's sentence, and be released on parole.))

[Deleted]

As Thundercloud had spoken, Maximus had listened with a frown, his fist raised.

He had never been a prison guard. He had never seen his penitentiary from the ground up, slogging through the system in a slow upward crawl up the ranks from a recruit to a correctional manager. Never done patrols, never manned a security post, never provided prisoner escort, never moved on to a supervisory role. Autobot command had approached him about a posting at one of the Garrus prisons, and he had been assigned directly to the position of Warden. It's a tough job, they had said. We need an officer with significant military experience to defend what will likely prove a high-priority target.

From his post in the command centre Maximus had never seen the gritty bottom of his own prison, where the guards and the prisoners mingled. The Rehab labs, yes. The Rig. The extraction cells. The security offices. But rarely had he walked the cells blocks. Even then, he still knew a little of what it's language sounded like. He heard things. Mostly from his guards. Absurd jargon that meant little to him.

'Kill my number.'

This convict had served his time. He was done. Released. For him, prison was over. Garrus was over.

Maximus had faltered then, his brow furrowed. The big fist lowered.

But Thundercloud had one last thing to say.

He listened. And the red haze exploded over his mind.

Maximus wasn't even aware of moving. All he registered was the smirk, the ugly implication behind the words spoken. They stung inside his head.

"Shut up!" he roared.

His armoured fist slammed into Thundercloud's face. The impact rang up his arm. Maximus reared back and hammered his knuckles into the jet's face a second time, a third, and with each painful impact it felt like a little of the venom was being beaten out with them.

Still wasn't enough.

With a bellow of frustration Maximus gathered his legs beneath himself, coiled, and heaved upwards. His battle engine engaged with a howl and a surge of power flooded through him, filling his massive frame with the strength needed to lift the heavy jet off his feet and straight into the air. He let go of the jet at the apex of the throw, and for an instant Thundercloud hovered weightless -

With all his fury Maximus wheeled through the punch.

His fist collided with Thundercloud's chest. Maximus rotated with the blow, allowing it to carry him downwards until he was bent in half at the waist. His fist remained dented in Thundercloud's armour, until the big jet finally smashed into the desert floor hard enough to crater it beneath his back and wings. The dry earth split, cracks radiating outwards, even as dust fountained into the air.

Within the dust cloud stood the warden, still bent. He stood astride Thundercloud, his legs spread for balance, his fist embedded in Thundercloud's chassis. His head was lowered and he was gagging, either on the dust or something else.

[Deleted]

It was a good thing Thundercloud was not a vain mech, nor one unfamiliar with pain, because Fortress Maximus’ was a big mech with big fists who was damn good at breaking things with them--namely, in this instance, Thundercloud’s face.

The first punch dented his cheek, the second fractured his optic, and the third split his lip and somehow vaguely reminded him of an old boyfriend, which he fully realized was a fucked up thought to have, one that probably said a lot about him, or maybe just his terrible taste in partners. It was probably a mix of the two, considering the latter was directly influenced by the former, which was what made him predisposed to ending sour relationships with a fist-fight in the first place.

He figured there was probably something to be said about vicious cycles or some other bullshit there, but he wasn’t really the kind of person to be introspective or contemplate the metaphysical implications of his behavior and actions, and their consequences.

That fourth punch, though. Damn. He’d contemplate the hell out of that for days. Mostly because he would be feeling it for that long, but also because it was just a damn good hit. It was solid, devastating. Crumpled four overlapping layers of reinforced armor and left his chest dented inward around Fortress Maximus’ fist, which kept him pinned down in the crater that had formed around him upon his harsh, heavy impact with the ground.

Goddamn, was that a good punch. Thundercloud realized he really ought to be a little less impressed and a little more concerned for his structural integrity and continued existence, but damn. Credit where credit was due: Fortress Maximus knew how to beat a mech down and make them stay down.

He probably would have appreciated the raw brutality of it even more if his fame wasn’t comprised mostly of sharp, mind-scorching pain that made it somewhat difficult to do anything but tense up hard enough to shake a little and let his frame yell at him for his poor, poor life choices.

Not that he he ever listened to it when it did. He had never paid it any heed before, and he wasn’t about to start now, because as far as Thundercloud was concerned, learning from past mistakes was for cowards who were afraid to suffer again something they had survived before. (Granted, that logic didn’t really work when applied to a situation that could very easily escalate to something he WOULDN’T survive, but Thundercloud was quick to overlook that little flaw in his excuse to do the dumb shit he wanted to do reasoning.)

Fortress Maximus might have had hit him to the dirt, but he had hit Fortress Maximus where he lived. He knew it, Max knew it, and Max knew that he knew it. That was worth the pain, dents, and what he suspected to be internal damage, judging by the harsh rattling sound that echoed in his chest every time he dragged in a ragged cycle of air.

His chest hurt from Fortress’ punch, his back hurt from being slammed into the ground. The back of his throat felt wet. He swiped his tongue over his teeth and was entirely unsurprised when he tasted blood.

He blinked up at the sky, felt his fractured optic well with fluid. With the lens cracked, it felt as if he were seeing the world through a broken mirror--everything was cracked and spider-webbed, images distorted. He took a moment to simply lie there and cycle in air, something wet rattling in his chest with every invent, before swallowing hard. His throat burned, he coughed, his throat burned more.

Then he eased his head up off the ground a bit, his fractured optic flickering as he tried to focus on Fortress Maximus.


“You know,” He began, somehow managing to sound almost casual despite his voice being reduced to little more than a pained rasp. “--We could probably have the greatest hatesex. I mean it. It’d be goddamn legendary.”

[Deleted]

The damn flier was still online. Still looking at him, still watching him. Still talking.

The cracked yellow optic seemed to gleam at him mockingly. And the words...

Maximus froze.

His tank turned over. Nausea swept through him as he stood over Thundercloud, rigid with offended outrage and...

... and...

"Are you insane?" he bellowed.

He raised one foot.

It slammed down upon Thundercloud's chest, and Maximus leaned of his crushing weight down into his leg it to pin the flier into the dirt. Bent low, nearly face to face with the jet, he shouted, "Are you completely insane?! Why would you think - how dare you suggest -"

Incoherent, he couldn't even finish the thought. Maximus was not even aware of reaching down to seize the mech's left arm. His hands moved of their own volition. His fingers dug into the armour at the elbow joint, crumpling it. He reared back again, drawing the limb painfully straight.

Savagely, his head ringing, Maximus began to pull.

The big rotors in his shoulders whined, then howled at the strain. He distantly felt the roar of hydraulic fluid in his own lines as his frame responded to the call to violence and heaved, wrenching Thundercloud's arm into a humming line. Metal crumpled under his foot as he pressed down hard and yanked back, wrenching and twisting at the limb. Through his hands he felt it, every little sensation as metal sheared and tore at the flier's shoulder joint. Lines popped, fluid spilt. For an instant the satisfaction of inflicting hurt against his tormentor sang through Maximus' head -

And then -

The red haze thinned.

Maximus faltered.

His anger drained. In horror Maximus stared down at Thundercloud, at the battered armour and ruptured mesh at the flier's shoulder. His red optics widened and he dropped the arm and hastily stepped off the other mech. He did not look back once as he turned and moved a distance away before bending with his hands clutched over his thighs, breathing hard.

[Deleted]

Oh.

Frag.

He touched a nerve.

---No, he didn’t touch it, he pile-drived it through the floor.

For the briefest of moments, Thundercloud almost looked as if he regretted his words, though not because he feared the oncoming brutality he had called upon himself. He was, by his own admission and in his own words, being a total dick to the other mech, and these were just the consequences of being a dick. He knew that. He was expecting it. He didn’t begrudge Max for reacting the way he was supposed to. In all honesty he would have been a little confused if the mech hadn’t become violent against him once again.

It was just...well. The big mech hadn’t reacted the way he wanted him to. The expression on his face, the emotions that flashed through his field--they weren’t at all what he had been aiming for with that flippant joke. For the briefest of moments he thought the mech actually looked like he felt sick, which...lead his mind to wonder unpleasant things he really did not want to have to think about.

All of the sudden this wasn’t funny anymore.

Thundercloud lurched as Fortress’ boot slammed down upon his already-battered chest, instinct prompting his hands to reach forward and take hold of the mech’s ankle in a desperate attempt to keep him from pressing down until he ruptured his spark casing. Unfortunately. only one of his hands made it to their intended location, as Fortress Maximus was quick to seize his left arm in a crushing grip.

Then, he started to pull.

Thundercloud would have been a bit more concerned for the limb were it not completely void of feeling when it came to pain. His sensor-net had been butchered long ago, the pain-receptors in his arms from the shoulder down having been removed for reasons of ruthless practicality. He could not feel what was being done to him, couldn’t be prompted by his neural-net to respond more appropriately to an injury it did not even register until energon-lines started to rupture.

No, he was far more concerned with the boot on his chest, and Fortress Maximus’ heavy weight pressing down upon him hard enough to make his reinforced armor creak under the strain.

Joints popped, fluid spilled from severed lines, metal screeched as it was rended.

Thundercloud very nearly fired up his electrical-generators and electrocuted the hell out of Fortress, when the mech abruptly halted his assault, red optics widening in horror as he realized what he was doing, as if he hadn’t been aware of it before. That...honestly surprised the hell out of Thundercloud. The last thing he expected was for the mech to have a crisis of conscience, for a warden to feel there was anything wrong with brutalizing a convict.

All at once the suffocating weight upon his chest was lifted, only to be placed upon his mind instead. Thundercloud couldn’t help but drag in a sharp, ragged cycle of air, his optics offlining in a pained grimace as he brought his hand to his wounded front, his fingers clenching around the battered metal. He focused on the hurt rather than Fortress' reaction, on the physical sensations plaguing his neural net rather than the questions that were now plaguing his mind.

He swore, set his jaw hard, then took a few moments to breathe hard through his clenched teeth.

Frag, but that stomping had hurt.

Firewalls were hastily thrown up to block out the worst of the pain, the number of medical alerts on his HUD decreasing slightly as he did so. The rest were quick to disappear as well, as he deleted them without so much as a second glance shortly after they cropped up. He didn’t feel like he was dying, so he deemed them unnecessary and wrote them off as Slag He Would Deal With Later.

He cracked open one optic, then the other, his helm tilting slightly as he stole a glance at his ruined shoulder. Ooooh, but Ratchet was gonna have a fun time repairing that.

Gingerly, and with no small amount of effort (and swearing) Thundercloud managed to push himself upright into a sitting position, single-handedly as his left arm hung uselessly at his side, unresponsive to command. He made a ghastly hacking sound in the back of his throat before turning his head to the side to spit out an ugly blue and black ichor onto the ground. He cleared his throat, still tasted blood. Made a face.

Then he turned to look to Fortress Maximus, who had staggered some distance away, his back turned to him. He stared a moment, hard, contemplative, before abruptly clearing his throat.

“Well” He began, only to immediately pause to swallow, not liking how wet his voice sounded.

“This was fun. We should do this again sometime.” He gathered his legs beneath him as he spoke, grimacing as he finally pushed himself to his feet.

“Maybe now that you’ve got some of that batshit crazy outta your system, we can actually spar one of these days without you wantin’ to unalive me.”

He looked down at his hanging arm, dislocated from his shoulder joint.

“--Or maim me.” He added, as an afterthought.

[Deleted]

For a moment Maximus did not respond. He remained where he stood, half bent, his hands braced against his legs.

Dimly, he remembered.

Once, back on the medical station, the staff had gotten worried enough about him and his wall of silence to send a bot to speak to him. A psychiatrist. Primus, he hated that word. But the fellow had been inoffensive enough. Kindly asked some questions that Maximus had greeted with the same stone-faced silence he turned against the rest of the station. What did he remember about what happened to him before he woke up? Nothing. Did he need a specialist to retrieve those memories? No. Curt, one word replies, too blunt and short to be dwelt upon.

But one question... one question had stuck. Unpleasantly.

Do you feel like you've changed?

He had killed a lot of people at Simanzi. But he had been given the chance to step away from the war at the penitentiary. Once there he had run a clean prison. Tight. Tolerated no violence, no disorder. They'd called him hard-nosed, but he was fair. For almost a thousand years he had been fair. And then after the prison he had ripped his first Decepticon apart with his bare hands. Not because he didn't have a weapon at the time, but because it would hurt more. The Con died in terror and agony. For the first time in his life, that mattered to him. Intensely.

Something had changed.

Maximus wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and straightened, slowly, like his joints had seized up. He did not turn around to face Thundercloud right away. He stared at the ground instead.

"I -" he said, and grimaced. "I think about someone a lot. About hurting them. In revenge for something they did, at a prison."

He spoke grudgingly. He balled his hands into fists.

"But you are not that person. Nowhere near it. Knowing that - I shouldn't have done what I did."

Maximus nodded stiffly to the flier's arm. "And for that I - apologise."