#you can find it easy enough through the tags of the other mech posts here <3

[best-fnaf-song-competition]

I CANT BELIEVE ALL THE MECHANISMS FANS ARE ON THE FNAF SONG BLOG, THIS IS GREAT!! (Someone else who is also both very into FNAF songs and The Mechanisms)

The venn diagram may not be a circle but there is juuuuust enough overlap that I have never been happier <3

And for everyone else you WILL listen to Stranger. Right now. Pretty please. It is my favorite. Here, I'll even link it. Okay this is ACTUALLY my final message now. Goodbye <3

[starvonnie]

Love Languages

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Fandoms: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types Relationship: Megatron/Rodimus | Rodimus Prime Characters: Megatron (Transformers),Rodimus | Rodimus Prime Additional Tags: Kissing, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, In a way, Suggestive Themes

Prompt: Patience

Also on AO3 “Be patient with him.”

That had been Drift’s advice when Rodimus broke the news to him that Megatron and him were now “a thing.”  He’d little more to say on the matter at all.  Just that he was happy for him.  Oh, and that he’d kill Megatron if he hurt Rodimus.  Which was fair.

Rodimus regretted that he hadn’t really asked for clarification on what he’d meant.  Be patient with what?  Did he just need a lot of foreplay or something?  

Whatever.  He didn’t dwell too much.

They kept to themselves for a little while.  Just long enough to spread the news to close friends and to smooth things over with Ultra Magnus before it got to the rumour mill. It took a week or so before they decided to just announce it (which was weird and awkward… but necessary), so now the whole ship knew.  Now they could just be a normal couple, right?

Rodimus strolled onto the bridge happily, for once. He walked right up to Megatron, touched his arm, and went to get up onto the fore of his pedes when Megatron took a half-step away.

“Good morning, Rodimus.”

Rodimus tried not to look hurt.  “Morning.”

Megatron awkwardly patted his hand, then got back to what he’d been doing.

Rodimus sheepishly made his way to the office, feeling optics on him.  The day passed slowly in a haze of rejection and paperwork.

The next day, he tried to walk normally and keep up a smile.  Again, he made a beeline for Megatron.  This time, he wasn’t engrossed in any work, and noticed Rodimus before he got to him. He went to do the same thing, and again, he stepped out of his reach.

“What gives?” Rodimus hissed.

“We’re at work.”

“Hmph.  Fine.” Rodimus stewed for a bit, but managed to lose himself in his work.  Plus, it was easy to look forward to the end of the day.  Megatron had agreed to go with him to Swerve’s for trivia night. If I must, he’d said.  

Still.  They wouldn’t be at work.  He couldn’t refuse a kiss then, right?

“I’ve got an idea to make this a little more interesting,” Rodimus said later, sitting across the table from Megatron.  

“Oh?”  Megatron looked wary.

“Well, I know most of the people here are on teams, but what if we competed?”

“I thought the point of this night was to be a couple’s thing?” Megatron asked, looking confused.

Rodimus shrugged.  “It’s not like a rule or anything.  That’s just what tends to happen.  But we’re both pretty smart, so I think it’d be fun to see who’s the smartest.”

Megatron shrugged.  “If that’s what you want.”

“Hold on, I’m not finished.  I haven’t gotten to the stakes.”

“I’m beginning to regret agreeing to this.”

Rodimus rolled his optics, annoyance creeping into his field.  “Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad.  I just figured that if one of us gets an answer wrong that the other gets right, the one who got it wrong owes the other a kiss.  Kind of a win-win situation, y’know?”

“Or you could just ask for a kiss.”

“Come on, Megs,” Rodimus whined.  “Can’t we just have a little fun?  Please?”

Megatron sighed.  “Alright, Rodimus.”

Fortunately, or unfortunately for Rodimus, they were both either really good at trivia or Swerve was really bad at coming up with trivia questions.  Either way, they hadn’t gotten any answers wrong.  It was time to take matters into his own hands.

“Whoops, looks like I got that one wrong,” Rodimus said, sarcastically feigning disappointment.  “Darn! Looks like I owe you a kiss.”  He crooked a finger at Megatron, pursing his lips slightly.

“Here?”

“… Yeah?”

Megatron shook his helm.  “Just keep a tally or something.  I’ll give them to you once we’re back at our habsuite.”

The rejection stung again, but at least he was able to soothe it with that fact that Megatron had called it our habsuite.

“Fine,” Rodimus muttered.

He had no trouble getting the rest of the questions right.

At least when they were walking back, Rodimus managed to capture Megatron’s hand and he didn’t take it back.  He seemed surprised at first, but then squeezed back with a smile on his face.  What weird rules did Megatron follow?

Whatever.  They were holding hands and heading back to their room together.  And maybe once they were inside…

Finally, Rodimus got his kiss.  He’d been so starved for kisses that the first one sent a rush of electricity through his frame.  His knees literally felt weak.  Really, every trope he’d ever heard was taking over his frame.  He did his best to steer them towards the berth, but he had no strength in his limbs.  Megatron had to be the one to do it.

“Satisfied?” Megatron asked with a little smirk.

“With you?”  Rodimus pulled him down again.  “Never.”

Rodimus wished the hands sitting courteously on his waist would slide lower.  After all, it had been long enough.  Too long, in Rodimus’ opinion.  If Megatron were one of his exes, they’d be getting into the kinky stuff right now. But here he was, stuck on first base.

Maybe he was just being cautious.  There were a couple conspiracy theories circulating around the ship.  One was that he’d manipulated Rodimus or was blackmailing him.  The other suggested literal brainwashing.  So… Rodimus would just have to make his intentions crystal clear.

Rodimus fixed Megatron with a lustful gaze.  He softly bit Megatron’s bottom lip during their next kiss and tugged on it as he pulled back.  With a sultry smile thrown over his shoulder, he guided Megatron to the berth and lay down.  He put his hands above his helm and spread his legs a bit, giving himself wholly to Megatron.  Wherever he wanted to touch, he could.

“Could you move over a bit?” Megatron asked, a little irritation in his voice.

Rodimus gave him an annoyed look, but obliged.

“For someone your size, you manage to take up most of the berth,” Megatron commented as he climbed in.

“We’re supposed to share,” Rodimus said.

“And that’s a two-way street.”

Rodimus stifled a frustrated growl and rolled onto his side.  He pressed himself flush to Megatron’s frame and kissed him again.  At least he seemed to be okay with this.  

Trying to be subtle, he slid his hand down Megatron’s frame. Just before it got to his array, however, Megatron grabbed his wrist.  He froze, his field crackling with confusion as he met his lover’s gaze.

“Sorry,” he said, when he realized how forceful he’d been. He lifted his hand to kiss where he’d hurt.  “Not tonight. I’m a little too tired for that.”

Not tonight?  More like, not ever.  Why didn’t Megatron want to frag him?  Did he not think he was hot?

“Okay…”  Rodimus tried not to let it show, but disappointment flooded his field.  His spoiler fell, too.

Megatron lifted Rodimus’ fallen chin.  He kissed him and pulled him close, instead.  It was nice, but… all of these rejections were piling on top of each other and weighing him down.

Did Megatron not want him anymore?  Maybe there was something to those conspiracy theories…

It didn’t help when he woke up in berth, alone. Tears pricked at his optics.  He was going to look so stupid in front of everyone when they found out he’d already managed to screw things up.  This was Megatron.  He should be happy anyone looked his way!  And why go to all the trouble of telling people and announcing things and even filling out paperwork because of their “working relationship?”

Well, frag him.  He can go to hell and he wasn’t even that hot and—

Rodimus cursed when he knocked over a glass on the nightstand and spilled energon everywhere.  He was already berating himself for forgetting about leaving it there when he saw the note.

Had to leave for an emergency.  It’s nothing major, and I can handle it.  

Ah.  He hadn’t forgotten.  But that meant he’d spilled what Megatron had left for him.

Sighing, but feeling a little better about things, Rodimus cleaned up the mess and mixed his own ration before heading to the bridge. He was thankful Megatron was in the office when he got there.  After checking in with Ultra Magnus, he went to the office, ensuring that he left the door wide open, since he could feel Magnus’ optics on his back.

“Thanks for dealing with whatever.  And for getting me my ration.”  He left out that he spilled it.

“You’re welcome, Rodimus.  I know you forget some mornings and the last thing we need is a cranky mech capable of creating fire.”  He smiled at him.

Rodimus chuckled.  He considered trying for another kiss, but decided against it.

He nodded towards the stack of data pads.  “A lot of paperwork today, huh?”

“I’ve got it today.  You go keep an optic on things out there.”  Megatron gave him a small smile.

“Okay.  And, um… we’re still on for tonight, yeah?”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

 Rodimus had gone through every possible reason for why Megatron might be late until he landed on the only one that really made sense.

He wasn’t late; he wasn’t coming.

He dangled his pedes into the oil reservoir, pointedly choosing to not look at the stars.  Maybe then he could just pretend he wanted to be here alone.  It wasn’t meant to be romantic.  Maybe he was just checking the integrity of the oil, or making sure they had enough or…

Or maybe he was alone because he was so undesirable that even Megatron didn’t want him.  He was ready to slink back to his habsuite—his, not theirs—and cry himself to sleep when he heard the door open.

“I’m so sorry I’m late, Rodimus.”

“Oh, did we have something planned?” Rodimus said sarcastically.  “Well, there goes my plans to drown myself.”

Megatron sighed as he took a seat next to Rodimus. He refused to look at him.  He’d see anger in his optics, yes, but also the tears threatening to escape.

“I was on my way here when I saw Brainstorm… being Brainstorm.  I had to get him to stop what he was doing and then find some experiment to give him permission for that wouldn’t blow up the ship or tear a hole in the time-space continuum.  You know how he is.”

“Yeah, and I know how you are,” Rodimus said bitterly.

“I truly am sorry, Rodimus.  I wanted to be here.”

“Uh huh.  Just like you wanted to kiss me all those times, or, or frag the night before or like a week ago or when you wouldn’t hold my hand, or…”  Rodimus clenched his denta to keep himself from crying. He must already look so pathetic. He certainly sounded pathetic. It all sounded so petty when he gave voice to his thoughts.

“I’m sorry, Rodimus, this is… difficult for me.”  He sighed again.  “I apologize.  I didn’t realize this was weighing on you so heavily.”

“I don’t care.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Yeah!  Well!  If you don’t want me why did you even agree to date me?”  He turned flaring optics his way.  His anger fizzled out a bit when he saw the apology in Megatron’s gaze.

“Because I do want you.”

Rodimus scoffed.  “You’ve got a great way of showing that.”  He swiped at the one errant tear that leaked from his optic.

Megatron took one of Rodimus’ hands in both of his. He sighed, deflating.  “Let me explain.  I should have told you this from the start, but…”  He looked away.  “I suppose I was hoping I would just be able to get over it, but it’s clear that won’t happen just because I get to court a beautiful mech.”

Rodimus said nothing, but a blush tinged his cheeks pink.

“I’m sure you know that war can change someone.” He met Rodimus’ gaze, but wasn’t able to hold it.  “For me, one of those changes was touch.  Affection, really.  It’s…” He sighed again.  “Believe me when I say I want to hug you and kiss you and everything you want me to do.  And I will, eventually.  It will just take me a little longer.”

“Oh.”

Megatron brought Rodimus’ hand to his mouth and kissed it.

“But… I mean, you let me kiss you when we’re alone,” Rodimus said.  “So it’s clearly not the kiss that’s the problem.”

“It’s not inherently the problem, but, yes, it’s easier to do when we’re alone.  I was caught off-guard at Swerve’s.  But if we’re on the bridge we won’t be kissing.  We’re at work.  We have to be professional.”

“Fine.”

“For everything else, though, it’s… complicated. The want is there, but doing it…”

Rodimus put his free hand over Megatron’s.

Megatron looked up and smiled at him.  “I think I’m just having trouble letting my guard down. It has nothing to do with you.”

“Okay… so… what can I do?”

“If you want to do something, just ask me.  At least for now.  Whenever you…”  His face scrunched up in thought.  “You know when you hear a loud noise you weren’t expecting?  How your weapons seem to power up on their own?  Or your plating clamps down to prepare for a fight?”

“Yuuuup.  Fun stuff.”

“It’s like that.  In a way.  If I’m not expecting someone to touch me, well, that could be someone coming to stab me in the back.  Or you’re trying to get me to let my guard down to launch an attack when I’m not prepared.  And before you say anything, yes, I know how crazy it sounds.  I’m working on it with Rung.  Because I know you don’t want to hurt me.  I’m fighting my instincts here.  Instincts that kept me alive for millions of years.  I’ll get there, eventually.”

Drift’s words made a lot more sense now.

“Okay.  I’ll be patient with you.  But you gotta be patient with me, too.  Or understanding, I guess.  I’m pretty touchy-feely.  If I’m honest, I thought you’d just already gotten tired of me.”

Megatron chuckled and then gave him a sympathetic look. “I don’t think anyone could tire of you.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Well, I can’t see it happening with me.  That being said, can I kiss you?”

Rodimus beamed.  “Of course.”

[cheesecaketyrant]

Hello all! I would like to take the time to say; Thank you to: (Unfortunately I can't tag them! But they are known as shockwavefan and as well Soundwave - I'm not sure if I do have them on Tumbler or not!) @artsy-archangel @zen-drift! Y'all are amazing!

Now, I tried to clean it as best to my abilities in the form of RP format.

I did realize that for the cover is not quite accurate. But that's okay! (There were few mistakes in the last post; Shockwave was the one who killed Megatron, not Optimus Prime)

I'll be posting these as Chapters and Parts. Anywho I'm sure some of y'all been waiting for the next post- so.. here!

Oh boy, this starting to look quite interesting!

Chapter:1- All Hail Shockwave

(Part:1-2)

--------

Shockwave saw that his people were cheering, he looked at his experiment, no one could read Shockwaves mind. Not even those who have worked closely with him for years know. He walked down the steps, his metallic feet hitting the ground with each step.

After a few hours since he had left the stage, he was underground. Shockwave was once again his old self, the senator long ago was gone; the leader they know now is fake. He became leader as a way to have access to more tools. On the table lied a Cybertronian, a Decepticon, he screamed in agony but they never reached their destination. After enough energon had leaked the victim stopped screaming. Behind Shockwave were multiple dripping bodies of Decepticons hanging upside down. Shockwave, the terror which spread through the Autobot army was back, only he wasn't affiliated with anyone but logic.

--------

Today wasn't the best of all days as a sudden riot began however this wasn't the first that has happened. Prowl has come to an assumption that someone is starting the mods on purpose therefore he's been sending in the authorites to investigate. Later, situations got worse when Decepticons came Archangel's office reporting missing friends that haven't returned to their homes for awhile. He assured them he'll handle the investigation and they left in high hopes they'll have their friends back.

Archangel sighed as he laid back againts his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose as he closed his optics. Everything seemed to be getting worse however some events were to be expected but not missing bots.

A knock on his door interrupted Archangel's thoughts. "Come in." He responded as he fixed his serious composer.

Prowl entered with a datapad in his servo. "My team has discovered the culprit behind the sudden riots." Prowl told him. "Ratbat has been planning a scheme however its unknown what his intentions are."

"Ratbat was a Decepticon..."

"Of course you would know that given your past. Was isn't the right word for it: he " is" a Decepticon. He's proven to still be loyal to the dead cause." Prowl interrupted him and handed Archangel the datapad. "While I deal with Ratbat, I need you to inform Shockwave about the energon supplies. We've been getting reports of cannibalism in the streets and the percentage of casualties is high."

Archangel straighten and his servo tightened against the datapad in reaction to what Prowl wanted him to do. Was he testing him again?

"I'll... Be sure he's aware of the problems." He said in a serious tone, hiding his sudden dread.

"Good. Send me a report when you are finish." Prowl said as he left.

Archangel slumped in his seat more and groaned from stress. "Primus give me strength." He whispered.

Through that whole conversation, Prowl didn't give Archangel a moment to speak. Yes he knew how much the mech disliked him but this was peculiar. Also asking him to deal with Shockwave was definitely really low since Prowl was aware of his past. He was planning something and Archangel wasn't sure he wanted to play his game.

-----------

Drift gazed at the datapad in his servo, optics ridges scrunched together in a frown as the latest census showed that instead of an increase in their clients in the housing, some area were showing a drop in numbers. Odd. He placed that datapad aside and pulled up the records for the previous counts. The decrease was there but very marginal. Enough to be explained away by miscount or simply some bots just up and leaving their designated housing, moving in with others or goodness knows what else. He had had to deal with a fair number of strange reasons that bots just didn't stay put. But this was beginning to look like a pattern or maybe his war-wired brain module was trying to put a more sinister twist to what could just be perfectly normal situation. Yet his tanks gave that curious twist that he always trust and he simple knew that something was up.

But who could he turn to? He could try his Senior Officer but he also didn't want to come across as being paranoid. Primus knew his religious habits already earned his strange looks despite most bots being really good natured about it, some even being interested. his old friends were...dispersed. At one time he felt he could trust Ratchet above all, but the mech had thrown in his lot and time with Shockwave now. And it made sense, The CMO was always aligned with a leader.

Drift rubbed his helf crest and stared at the numbers again. He didn't know anything beyond them and a tank feeling. It wasn't enough to go on. He needed to start doing some ground work. Subtly of course, since he didn't need to start a panic. He was no Jazz but he was a fairly decent interrogator. Maybe he could start with the Police Reports. See if there were any notices for missing bots and if those names matched the ones in his register.

He vented out and picked up the datapad again. He had really hoped things would be different this time around but it seemed that it wasn't going to happy crystals. A mech poked his head in. "Drift, we got another riot happening, this time a bit closer to the recent bot settlement. Some of them are demanding relocation. Boss wants you on it!" Drift nodded, out of his chair even before the mech finished speaking. "I got it," he said, shiting to bot mode and heading to the scene of the now dispersed riot. A tall blue Seeker frame caught his optic as he arrived. "Archangel?" he mouthed to himself but the Seeker was swallowed up by the crowd work and his duties and Drift had his own to attend to. He made a mental note to check and see if that was indeed the Seeker he knew. The frightened group of mech and femmes huddled together as he approached.

"Hello, my name is Drift. Im from the Immigration Center. I'm here to attend to your issues," he began giving them a smile. "We need to get away from this!" a femme blurted out in a high pitch whine of her vocalizer, "We didn't come back to be in more war!" Drift shifted to modulate his vocalizer to soothing but firm tone. "I understand that and unfortunately I cannot relocate you to another sector. However, lets go inside and I can let you know how to make this place a bit safer for all of you. The Police as you see also got this under control. Trust us to do our jobs. We will make this better." The group huffed but led the way into their housing, Drift following behind them, hoping he was right.

-----------

The war was over. Cyberton was in an odd state. Shockwave was leader, the Decepticons and Autobots were scattered. You could even say they were shattered factions. (Roll credits.) The two factions in the war now needed to find a way to co-exist somehow. Putting that dreadful war behind would not be easy. The Decepticons' leader, Megatron, had unfortunately ceased functioning. Killed by that traitor, Shockwave. Soundwave would rip out that traitor's spark if he had the chance. But the Decepticons were not fully lost. They were nowhere near their previous power, however. They had much fewer numbers, not as strong a fighting force, and they had a leader who could not even hope to amount to what Megatron did.

Soundwave was only there because he had nowhere else to go. He would almost certainly be executed for the things he had done during the war. So he stayed with the army that the previous Second In Command of the faction had gathered. Starscream. It would certainly take getting used to. Starscream is not the leader Megatron was. But perhaps that could change with time. Soundwave would have to stick around to see that happen, and stick around he would.

----------

He was fuming, any bot that was an inch from him got shoved out of the way, and others, well they got thrown. It was very typical of Starscream when he threw a tantrum, to flick pain on others.

Being treated like the under dog for so long, he had picked up habits, and mold them.

But, this time was different- his attacks were more brutal then the normal. Starscream wasn't sure who gave the cadet the go to scout energon, with out a group. Something was off, Starscream couldn't put a digit on what.

Turning on the communication, the channel had been switched to private- just in case any was listening in. Had pinged in Soundwave, :'Find out who on Primus gave authority for a one bot solo mission, on finding energon!' Starscream said, almost half shouting, leaving his comm open for Soundwave response.

Takeing a sharp left turn, the Seeker stomped with each step. Dearing anyone to stop him, behind him was the sound of petter patter steps from small peds that came from none other then Rattrap, "Sir! Please slow down!" Stopping in his tracks, Starscream spun around, his servos now propped onto his his. "Did you already taken care of that mess?" The new Warlord said, in a demanding tone, rushing the mechanic vermin.

"Yes, Mord! I did what you've asked of me-" without giving him any further ado, Starscream turned back around and started to walk again in big strides. However it didn't seem like Rattrap was finished, "I need to talk to you! About Cybertron-" with this Starscream stopped in his tracks.

"Speak, and make it fast." The once Second in command command, not giving any room for small chit chat. "Well, uh. There's been reports- about disappearing bots back on home." Rattrap paused, in order for Starscream to react. "Witch fractions?"

"If my calculation and resources are correct- both." Rattrap held a datapad in his servos, clutching onto it as if it was his life line.

"Is that so, Then tell me, whose your resources, and how did you found about this?" Rattrap began to shift his pedes looking nervous. "The mech you killled-"

"Finish your report, then once your done leave the data in my quarters. Once done, bring up the dead bots profile- see what's all on his background history!" Starscream shouted, by now- he was more mad at himself to act upon reckless thoughts and actions, which made his mood even more sour.

Rattrap better prayed to the all spark, that this was just some miscalculation- rumors no less. If not- Starscream had more on his servos then that a war he was sure he was going to lose.

---------------

Drip, drip, drip. That was all that could be heard in the lab, Shockwave was collecting it; it's unknown for what reason but it seemed important. To the side was a whole diagram of the standard Cybertronian anatomy, there were beakers everywhere. To his right was a list of Decepticons and their pictures, most were all crossed out except three, Soundwave, Starscream, and Archangel. His experiment betrayed him, now was the perfect time to strike. At the bottom of the list was Megatron, his first victim, this was all part of the plan to save Cybertron. After a few hours had passed underneath the lab, he walked out into the barren wasteland which was Kaon.

|The Office|

Shockwave made sure he didn't have any energon on him, he didn't want to arouse suspicion to his actions. He landed, waving to his secretary, his fake persona was just to be clear. He walked up to his office, he sat down in his chair. Moments after, his secretary called. "Mr. Shockwave, you have a visitor from the Police Department, someone called Archangel." Shockwave was surprised, why would he want to see him? "Bring him up, we'll have a talk."

----------

Archangel was waiting in the lobby as the secretary contacted Shockwave of his arrival. He scowled as he wished the bot would call him by his rank as he introduced himself before but it seemed to have slipped their processor.

"He's waiting for you now, Archangel. He's at the top floor." She told him.

Archangel bowed his helm respectfully as he hid his sudden dread. "Thank you." He said before he walked past the counter and entered the lift. He pressed the top floor option on the lift's console and the hatch slid shut in response and began to ascend.

Archangel's servos clenched tightly as he grew tense and tried the venting technique Rung taught him to calm him down, however his emotions were overwhelming which deterred his efforts to relax. Despite his failure, he hid how he felt rather well as he remained stern as soon as the lift came to a stop. The hatch opened into Shockwave's office. The large purple mech was sitting at his desk and seeing him again made Archangel feel sick in his fuel tank.

"Commander Archangel of Iacon's Police Department. I have dire reports that acquire your attention." He said seriously as he placed the datapad on his desk. "We've been having multiple cases involving cannibalism in the streets due to lack of energon supplies. The public wants actions regarding the issues before they manifest into more riots."

[novarasalas]

Second Look Review: ‘A Little Adventure’

And here begins a review series of Voltron’s season 7, written up as i re-watch it. This is equal parts as a writing exercise and as me just wanting to share my thoughts and observations.

I’ll try to go light on meta and theories, sticking to just the facts, ma’am.

Well, that’s what I intended to happen, but this episode was very personal from the start, what with all the Shiro backstory. 

So join me for this two-part review, where I switch on the projection machine and smash the overshare button.

Part 1: Laugh So You Don’t Cry

Let’s start with the easy stuff, yeah? 

It features Coran, finally going full Thornberry:

...truly gorgeous.

We also have this amazing pair here:

And, most unexpectedly, a demonstration of yalmors linking at the ears, something we haven’t heard about since season 1:

I don’t have much else to say about this part. I would, however, like to formally request a spin off of Hunk and Romelle being so, so done with everything.

Part 2: The Meeting

So hey! It’s that back story everyone’s been screaming for, and boy, does this episode deliver. I really wish it had been solely dedicated to that story, though. I’m not a fan of the high drama/humorous aside splits they keep giving us. I know they do that to keep things interesting, cause hey, rated TV-Y7, right? But I always come out the other side of it feeling like I have emotional whiplash.

First, look at this:

Thank you.

So Shiro’s a bit of a celebrity? That’s pretty cool. I’m impressed.

Too bad Keith isn’t.

He’s even in the classic “anime protagonist seat”. Oh, Keith.

The subtitles here say: Shiro broke the record for the fastest orbital velocity, beating the old heliocentric speed by about 50 kilometers per second. 

I’m a big damn nerd, so you know I had to look this up. Here’s what I found:

In 2018 though, a new NASA mission - Solar Probe Plus - will be launched. Designed to come as close as 8.5 solar radii to the Sun (that’s about about 5.9 million kilometers or 3.7 million miles), it will hit orbital velocities as high as 200 kilometers a second (450,000 miles an hour).

To just put that incredible figure into perspective - going this fast would get you from the Earth to the Moon in about ½ an hour. It is also about 0.067% the speed of light. (source: Scientific American -”The Fastest Spacecraft Ever?”)

I have no idea if they’re counting his record against something like that, or manned flight, for which the record is 107,000 km/h. That’s uh..that’s us. On Earth. We haven’t sent people into independent solar orbit yet.

Also, one day I’ll learn how to post links without breaking the tags, cause my source article was very interesting. Please go find it.

And now we have the simulator. We get that call back to “Taking Flight”, which I found to be a nice touch.

Keith, you’re the only one who could possibly fly through this.

And then Keith steals Shiro’s car and his heart, wasting no time in attempting to push him away. And he doesn’t just keep it between the two of them; Keith’s got a lot of misguided anger to share.

Nothing will endear you to your new classmates faster than signing the whole group up for a collective punishment.

But lessons are learned and everyone calms down.

..oh. Whoops.

Yes, the good ol’ collective punishment: let the jerkass’ peers sort them out. And maybe it would have worked in this case, except for the fact that Keith respects exactly no one.

When this episode first aired, I was seeing yelling about James being a bully, but to be honest, this is more of a case of two shithead kids being shitheads to each other. Keith doesn’t care how his actions affect others, and James reacted by going for a low blow about Keith’s parents.

I suppose they sorted each other out in the end, didn’t they?

So here’s Keith, the angry, lost kid, acting out in desperation and loneliness, and Shiro, who we now see risking his own good name to help him.

Why would he do that?

Now, a lot of what I come up with in the next part is my interpretation of Shiro based on my own experiences, because that’s all I have to go on. My one big gripe about this is that we don’t see Shiro until he’s a young adult. What was he like growing up? Does he try to help Keith because he’s a sweet guy, or does he relate to him in some way?

We may never really know. For my own purposes, I’m going to assume that it’s more of the latter.

Let’s look back at this interaction:

Shiro: “That’s the Calypso, the first ship to carry astronauts to the moons of Jupiter.”

Keith: “It took them three years to get there. Longest voyage of its kind.”

Shiro: “That’s right. Reading about that mission is what made me wanna be a pilot. Those astronauts braved the unknown.”

Nerd break: 

The Juno probe made it to Jupiter in 5 years, arriving in 2015.

Right now it takes 9.5 years to get to Pluto

/nerd

Keith knows about the Calypso. You might think that the tiny, emo kid doesn’t seem the type to be into nerd stuff, right?

But I get it.

I didn’t have the best time growing up, and we know that after the death of his father, neither did Keith. I had one big obsession that got me through the badness: space. Sorry, two: space and dinosaurs. And giant mech shows. Er...three big obsessions.

But space was the biggest and realest. The 90s were an exciting time for space exploration, with the Voyager probes finishing up their grand tours, the ISS being built, and the first rovers being sent to Mars. It felt good. It felt hopeful.

And I think maybe Keith may have felt the same about space. After all, space was a big unknown. By nature, it couldn’t be good or bad, right? Not like home.

Or maybe it’s because he’s half Galra and always knew that he wasn’t fully of Earth. Or maybe it was both.

I can imagine that Shiro may have thrown himself into space for similar reasons. Because you know what really sucks having deal with growing up? Chronic Illness.

Part 3: Invisible

We come to realize, right along with Keith, that Shiro is sick.

When I’d first heard about this, I was both saddened and ecstatic. It’s not often that I get to relate in any way to a strong, capable, wonderful fictional character. ‘Cool!’, I thought to myself, ‘He’s a sicko like me.’ Immediately, my next thought was ‘Damn, he’s a sicko like me…’

Then a few things about his character began to fall into place.

I think we all noticed Shiro pushing Keith into the place of leadership via the phrase “If anything ever happens to me...”. And Shiro being chronically ill explains that. I’d been wondering for a while about what Shiro’s deal could be. Why did he think something was going to happen to him? Was is just planning for every eventuality, or was it something else?

Shiro’s a great leader, so it was probably both. But him being ill puts a new perspective on things.

When you’re chronically ill, you have to think about things a lot more than other people. You have to plan heavily for ‘what ifs’, and you had better be prepared. 

Back in July, a friend and I took a trip to a con. This had been the first trip I’ve been on in years since I’ve been so damn sick. The preparation alone was exhausting. I had to make sure I had everything with me, and backups of everything just in case something happened. I had to make sure my meds and supplies were in reach if I needed them right away, but I also had to make sure that they were cool and out of the summer sun, because if they got too hot, they’d stop working.

The con was six hours away from home, and if I had needed replacements of these things, I would have to make soooo many phone calls and likely beg for help.

I had to have a conversation with my friend about what to do in case I had “an incident”. It’s humiliating; I’m a grown ass adult that has to preemptively ask people for help. Even though she’s my best friend, and I trust her so very much, it sucks.

In the end, everything was fine, but only because of careful planning. I can’t tell you how much I miss the days of just being able to go, to do, to not have to think about everything that could go wrong and possibly kill me.

So what I’m really saying here is that Shiro most likely has a lot of experience planning for eventualities. He’s also swallowed enough of his pride to discuss these things with Keith by the time the main story begins. And note: it’s only Keith he shares these things with, not the others. I don’t share these things with people who aren’t very, very close to me either.

Well, present company excluded, of course.

And here’s the part that  I go projecting onto Shiro again, but as I said previously, until they give more backstory, it’s all I have to go on.

So, what about Shiro’s family?

That’s something that’s been talked about in the fan space for a while, too. Is he an orphan? Did they disown him? Unfortunately, the flashbacks we get don’t go back that far. All I have to go on to answer that are my own experiences, which are not good.

My heart swells every time I see someone talk about how their family supports them as they deal with their illnesses. How good it is that they have love and stability to help them through.

I don’t have that. I never did. My home life sucked before I got sick, and illness certainly didn’t help.  I can say with certainty that if I had spent years in space out of contact with them, I wouldn’t be too broken up about it. There’d have been no video messages home, is what I’m saying.

I could see Shiro at this point in the flashbacks, gifted and celebrated, throwing himself at everything he could, working hard to prove that he’s worth something, proving that you’re not a lost cause just because you’re sick. I found myself wanting to prove things, too, taking on tasks and making plans and trying to show the world that I’m still useful, that I’m not lazy. See? I didn’t cause my own illness in an attempt to get out of responsibilities.

You’ll still get rejected, though.

So you learn to hide your illness from people that don’t need to know about it.

Shiro may have been like Keith: a lost, angry kid, pushing people away before they can make the decision to leave. It’s a difficult thing to grow up and only see disappointment in the eyes of the people who are supposed to be there for you. Again and again, they let you know in so many ways that you’re difficult to deal with, that somehow you’re a burden on them.

I can’t know for sure about Shiro, but I know that this is the truth for Keith. I completely understand why Keith would end up so attached to Shiro, the only person who was actually putting in a real effort to help him. I wish I’d had my own Shiro, ya know?

I can’t be all doom and gloom about this, though. I still like that one idea that Shiro was raised by his grandparents. I like to think that it was a happier time for him, as my time spent with my own grandparents was for me.

Of course, I could be completely wrong about all of this, and projecting way too much of my own problems onto him. For the sake of any alternate realities where Shiro is a real person, I hope that I am. 

Next up: Part 2 - relationships are hard -and- an appeal to societies greater sensibilities.

[insecwrites]

TFP Knock Out/ TFP Ultra Magnus Part 3

Fandom: Transformers Prime Pairing: Ultra Magnus/ Knock Out Tags: nsfw-ish, discussion of interface, perceived abuse of power, misunderstandings, post-war, sexual favors Summary: Knock Out does not feel safe. Vehicons and Autobots alike view him as a traitor or an untrustworthy mech, and there is nobody that Knock Out can go to for protection. The Autobots don’t work with favors and bribes after all.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Ultra Magnus, apparently, was even more difficult to read than Knock Out had expected.

For what felt like the thousandth time he stared at the file that Ultra Magnus had sent him during their second lunch. Just as asked, Magnus had provided an in-depth list on his expectations and his absolute no-no’s. That was within expectations. The things ON the list, however, were not at all what Knock Out had been expecting. From the way Ultra Magnus had reacted to the word ‘date’, he had assumed that the mech had been in it for the interface alone. And he mayyy have thought that that enthusiasm to invite him had stemmed from some… ahem. Unconventional tastes.

Instead, Ultra Magnus was almost shockingly uninteresting. The first thing he had listed as a ‘like’ was ‘prolonged post-interface contact if at all possible’. Cuddling, in other words. The second and third had been much the same, along the lines of wanting foreplay and the use of exclusively encouraging and kind words.   In all honesty, it read like world’s most bland and bizarrely written romance. There was an entire <em> section </em> on potential massages, together with little boxes of Knock Out to tick if he wanted to receive and give, and if he did which places were off limits.

He had created a whole new section called ‘miscellaneous questions’, which looked more like an in-depth interrogation written by a mech who was planning a romantic outing for a formal acquaintance.

Under ‘favourite poses’, Magnus had tentatively notted down the descriptions of a few. Not their names, just dry, awkward descriptions – Knock Out was starting to doubt if the mech even knew that there were names for interface positions. They weren’t particularly interesting positions either. No precarious balancing, no cables stretched to their limit, no binds or cuffs. Just… lying on top of one another with some hip movement. The kind of stuff you could just get from any random mech in a bar. …Then again, Magnus would probably not enter a bar unless the law demanded it of him.  

Knock Out frowned at the list and tapped his fingers on his thigh. There was a trap in here somewhere. Something he wasn’t seeing. It couldn’t be this easy, could it? Magnus was a control freak and a dominant mech that wanted things done his way, and to only propose soft uninteresting stuff like this was just downright suspicious. Even for a mech with as much power as him, he wouldn’t go this far just for some cuddles and slow ‘facing… Right?

Knock Out dropped the datapad on the table in front of him and let himself fall back into his seat. Magnus just didn’t seem like the kind of mech that would jeapordize his standing and credibility for something this simple. Of course, Knock Out had nothing to gain by blabbing, but it was still such a risk to take! Why not ask for something a little more complex or rare?

Knock Out rolled his head back and stared up at the ceiling of his habsuite.

Could it be that Ultra Magnus was just that lonely? That he was <em> that </em> averse to socialising and putting in the effort of getting to know someone? Even at his most relaxed, he had been acting like a soldier under the watchful eye of his commander, so it wasn’t a stretch to think that he was just incapable of normal social interaction and wanted to get his frags through less complicated means. … Then again, if he was not interested in anything but the ‘facing, then why had he enthusiastically engaged Knock Out in a conversation about poetry? Why was his list full of fluffy soft stuff!?

He sighed and checked his chronometer. It was well beyond his usual recharge time He was not going to be able to figure out Magnus’ motive by thinking about it all night cycle, and he wasn’t going to ask the mech about it either, but it was just so hard to let the subject rest! He turned the datapad face down and dropped a polishing cloth on top of it. He had to stop thinking about this. If the answer was going to drop out of the sky it would have done so already.  

He walked over to his berth, offlined the lights, got comfortable, closed his optics, and waited for his recharge procotols to get going. Tomorrow in the night cycle would be their first ‘date’. Knock Out had filed for a few hours off duty to polish up and prepare himself for Magnus. It felt odd to think about their impending interface. Knock Out had never been shy of sharing himself with the world and enjoying all that it had to offer him, but that had been before Breakdown. He’d seen and touched every shade of paintjob out there – but he only remembered blue. He’d thought that he might run out of new interesting spicy things to try in berth, only to find that <em> anything </em> was good as long as he did it with Breakdown.

…Had he really not interfaced with anyone but Breakdown since he’d met him?

Knock Out wasn’t sure how interface would feel now that Breakdown wasn’t going to be his partner. It should matter too much - he wasn’t in Magnus’ berth for fun after all – but he needed to be at least riled up enough to go at it. Well, if the worst came to the worst… Ultra Magnus was blue and Knock Out was good at pretending. It would work out. He’d make sure of it.

-

Ultra Magnus had been doing well. In between the drafting of the contract between him and Knock Out, and the endless heaps of paperwork that always ended up on his desk, he hadn’t had the time to get worried or anxious. Now that their first true evening date was approaching, Magnus found that his mind was <em> making </em> time for worrying and anxiety, no matter how much he tried to lose himself in paperwork and routine check-ups.

From what he had been able to gather about successful relationships, mutual attraction was important – and interface was closely tied to that. Many of the booklets and pre-war articles he’d been able to find had called it the ‘glue’ of a relationship, implying that it was the only thing that held all of it together. Ultra Magnus did not exactly agree, but he knew his views were unconventional. The mecha that had proposed a relationship with him had certainly acted along the lines of these articles – when Magnus had said no to physical attraction and interfacing, they had quietly pulled out of his life.

He hadn’t suspected this would be a problem with Knock Out. With the clear and direct manner in which they had been interacting until now, it hadn’t crossed his mind that Knock Out could find his preferences… well. Boring.

Ultra Magnus had always had a low interface drive. The flames of passion that could sometimes consume mecha near completely, were more like cinders to him. On occasion they would burn red and orange as his optics caught a beautiful frame or as his olfactory sensors scented them on a breeze. More often than not, the coals would lose their colour near immediately and fall back into slumber. He was sure that he would be capable of pleasing his partner – but not if it required him to dip deeper into the world of … what was it called. Kink?

The things Knock Out had listed as no-go’s were things that Ultra Magnus had barely even known existed – let alone try them out for himself. He had had to look up what ‘Axlegrinding’ was, only to then lose a significant amount of time trying to understand why anyone would engage in that activity. That Knock Out knew of them spoke of far more experience in the way of interfacing, and Ultra Magnus had simply not considered that such experience might make common interface practises bland or uninteresting.

He had only really begun to consider that when he had given Knock Out his side of the contract. Knock Out’s reaction had been nothing short of bizarre – he had gone from calm and smooth to a more distracted state, and while Magnus had asked if anything was wrong, he had given a negatory answer.

Now, Ultra Magnus was forced to confront the fact that he was in fact more engaged in the success of this date than he had thought. The thought of failing Knock Out badly enough that the mech would put an end to their mutual courtship was unpleasant.

Knock Out had diverse opinions on a variety of topics which could fill at least a vorn’s worth of lunchtimes with engaging discussions, and he was more than fine with silence as well. Or, well, if silence fell for too long, Knock Out would simply fill the empty space with idle obervations and a recollection of that day’s duties. Especially the recollections of his day were much like reading reports, and without the task of spell checking and filing it was incredibly relaxing to listen to. In short; Knock Out was great company, and Ultra Magnus feared to lose him as he had his previous friends.

He would simply have to do his best to make their first night-date a good one.

Determinedly Ultra Magnus accessed his schedule and began replanning his next workcycle. He had saved up many free hours during his service and he was going to use them as effectively as he could; making sure that his date with Knock Out would go off without a hitch.

This chapter is a little shorter than the others, I feel, and also maybe a little less fun. Then again, some things needed to be said - or in this case, they needed to be thought ;) For anyone who is interested - I run a small tf discord. Maybe I’ll see you there?  https://discord.gg/gRJw2wJ

[classicdaisycalico]

12 Sonamy!

protective sentence starters

First of all, I’m SO SO SORRY that I never got around to answering this sooner! Somehow I can’t search through my own tags anymore through the search bar so it’s been really hard finding the original post containing the prompts in the first place. But I haven’t forgotten your prompts! I promise! Anyway, here’s one of the first ones you requested!

(Also I’m just gonna put this under a “Read More”, btw)

“You’ll back off if you know what’s good for you.”

It was hard to think of a characteristic of Dr. Eggman that was actually somewhat positive, but persistence was often the first thing that came to Sonic’s mind. The same could be said for Amy, in some ways, as well, though at least her persistence didn’t bother the hedgehog anywhere near as much. This didn’t mean, however, that there weren’t times that he found it annoying, especially if he had to deal with them at the same time.

Such was the case today, as he was busy fighting off yet another swarm of motobugs and crabmeats that were currently attacking Green Hill. Eggman’s latest world domination plot may have faltered at the hands of the Resistance previously, but that didn’t mean his motives were completely crushed underfoot.

Seriously, when is Baldy McNosehair just gonna give this up already? he thought to himself as he sped through another hunk of scrap metal. How has he NOT gotten tired of going through the motions over and over again?!

“Sonic!”

It was Tails. Somehow he had caught up to him after getting overwhelmed with a previous wave of robots, but judging by the giant battered wrench he was holding in one hand, he seemed to look okay, save for a few bruises here and there. Sonic also noticed the Miles Electric in the other hand, still intact. “Got any more intel on this yawn-fest, buddy?”

“It looks like you’ve pushed through the last wave of robots, but there’s something on my radar up ahead. It’s readings look familiar, some other things constant, others not so much…keep on the look-out for anything unusual.”

“I’m on it!”

A roundhouse kick here, a boost there, and a hop, skip, and several homing attacks later, they found himself face-to-face with…

“The Death Egg Robot?” Sonic skidded to a stop in his tracks, Tails following suit. “I thought that hunk of junk was down for the count, last time I checked…”

“That’s where you’re wrong, you annoying blue pincushion,” Eggman’s voice boomed from his Eggmobile. “I was able to rework the outer shell into a battle mech that could function on its own.”

“How is that possible?!” Tails asked incredulously. “The outer shell was constructed specifically to keep the Phantom Ruby’s power in check. When the robot physically holding the Ruby ejected itself, the shell should have been rendered completely useless!”

“That’s only what I wanted you to think, fox boy,” Eggman sneered. “You should know by now that I never construct any of my plans with just one backup in mind. OHOHOHOHOHOHO–”

“Can it, Eggface,” Sonic retorted. “Knowing you, any and all of your half-baked ideas wouldn’t last you half an hour no matter how much work you put into them!”

“Oh, you naive little rodent, you,” Eggman bit back. “I can assure you this one won’t be as easy to push through. You see, I rewired the shell so it would run on a different energy supply.”

As if on cue, the core of the shell began to glow, pulsing almost like a beating heart. Unlike the first encounter, however, the “heart” did not glow red like the Phantom Ruby, but green…then blue…then silver…then gold…then red…then purple…then cyan…

Tails’ eyes widened in horror as he finally put two and two together. “…no…”

The mad doctor laughed again. “Oh, yes…while you were busy destroying the Phantom Ruby, I was on the hunt for something far more powerful. So naturally, the Chaos Emeralds were a fitting substitute…all seven of them.”

Sonic shook his head in disbelief as he watched the scene play out before his eyes. “I can’t believe how hard we’ve been duped…the entire Resistance just…completely forgot about the Chaos Emeralds…”

“It was a little difficult to get my hands on the last one, but no matter,” Eggman mused. “At least she’ll be here to catch a glimpse of both of you falling victim to your doom! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!”

Tails raised an eyebrow in confusion “…she?”

“Oh, yes,” Eggman said as he yanked up a bright pink hedgehog by the collar of her red dress. “SHE.”

Sonic’s eyes instantly widened as he realized who it was Eggman was holding hostage. “Amy?!”

The pink hedgehog’s ears perked up as she heard her blue hero’s voice for the first time in days. Just as she was about to shout his name at the top of her lungs, Eggman shoved a hand in her mouth, muffling her scream.

“This little nuisance has been a thorn in my side for the past few days.” Seeing the scowl on Sonic’s face grow, he added, “Perhaps when you’re done for, I’ll finish off your pretty little girlfriend, as well.”

“Finish me? You?” Sonic’s eyes narrowed as he readied a battle stance. “We’ll see about that.” With that, he sprinted in Eggman’s direction as the the Death Egg shell readied its laser cannons and machine guns.

“Sonic!” Tails exclaimed as the weapons opened fire. “Watch out!”

The fleet-footed hedgehog knew exactly how this machine worked like the back of his hand. Effortlessly, he dodged lasers and evaded bullets left and right until he found the core, the shell’s only weak spot, fall into his line of sight.

Now I’ve just gotta ram into that thing a few times and make that thing cough up those Chaos Emeralds, he thought to himself. Here goes nothing!

One.

He felt the shell push back on contact. So far, so good.

Two.

He reached farther, pushing harder. Once again, the shell skidded backward, further back this time.

Three.

As he rammed into the core, the Chaos Emeralds released a shockwave, stunning Sonic and warping him back to Tail, his quills in disarray from the electricity emitted by the gems in the shell’s core. “I can’t stop it fast enough,” he groaned.

“Did you try taking out all the guns?” Tails inquired. “Maybe the Chaos Emeralds took some time to charge up before you damaged the shell enough, so maybe if you don’t get sidetracked by enemy fire, you’ll get to the core faster and deal more damage!”

“Great idea!” He was on his feet again in no time. “Thanks, buddy! And while you’re here, try to get Amy out of that Eggmobile! I’ll take out whatever’s trying to lock on you!”

Tails gave his best friend a thumbs-up as he took flight, beelining straight for the Eggmobile with his big wrench in tow. After narrowly escaping various lasers and deflecting numerous showers of bullets, he was able to sneak up on Eggman from behind. While the doctor wasn’t looking, Tails pointed his wrench at his head. “Where’s Amy?” he asked, trying not to shake in his little shoes.

Underneath his glasses, Eggman’s eyes widened. In the excitement of finally taking down Sonic in his new weapon, he had completely forgotten to keep track of the other annoying rodent in his possession! He slowly turned to his right. No sign of bright pink anywhere. He snapped his head to the left. Still no Amy to be seen. Come to think of it, she hadn’t made so much as a peep in a while…

“The little brat must have left when I wasn’t looking!” He slammed his fist against the dashboard of the Eggmobile. “Blasted hedgehogs. ALL OF THEM!”

In the meantime, Sonic was slashing through every weapon in sight, and was just about to tear through the last laser cannon when he saw the Chaos Emeralds about to form another shockwave. Right as it was about to release, however, there was a huge explosion from within the core, and the shockwave fizzled out. Within less than a second, he sprinted over to investigate. By the time he reached the core, he noticed that the glow of the Chaos Emeralds was absent. In fact…

“The Chaos Emeralds…they’re gone? Where did they go?”

Sonic looked closer at the core. It was completely destroyed, so clearly something must have gotten inside and damaged it enough so the Emeralds could be freed. He looked at the damage around where the core was housed. Were those…hammer marks?

“SONIC! LOOK OUT!”

He whipped his head around to find who screamed his name, but right as he saw who it was, the laser had already found its target. It stunned him, and pain shot throughout his shoulder and into the rest of his body. With no sense of coordination at this point, he toppled out of the core and back onto the ground. Although his vision was blurry at this point, he could make out the faint image of a pink hedgehog surrounded by seven other glowing hues.

“Amy…” he murmured as he fell. “What are you doing…”

“OHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!” Eggman cackled. “At last, Sonic the Hedgehog is finally out of commission! Now, with the power of the Chaos Emeralds, I can restart my efforts to bring the world under my control ONCE AND FOR ALL!”

“OH, REALLY?!”

Sonic’s vision was starting to clear, and he was just about to get back on his feet, when pain starting shooting through his body again. All he could do was lift his head up. What greeted him was none other than Amy Rose standing in front of him, with all of the Chaos Emeralds surrounding her. “Leave him alone, you jerk,” she hollered.

“And what should I do about it, little girl?” Eggman taunted.

“You’d back off if you know what’s good for you!” Amy shouted.

Sonic was able to push himself up off the ground slightly. Amy looked really angry. The Chaos Emeralds were revolving around Amy at an even faster pace now. Suddenly, in a fantastic flash of light, Amy was floating gently in the air, her quills glowing a radiant gold, her red eyes flashing.

The blue hedgehog on the ground gaped. She…she can use the Chaos Emeralds? She has a super form?!

She flew off, zooming towards Eggman, with her giant, walloping hammer in hand, and with one fell swoop, she swung at the Eggmobile, denting it severely as the head made contact. Instantly, the Eggmobile flew into the sky at an alarming speed.

And she didn’t stop there. Right as Sonic finally got back on his feet, she sped past him, readying her hammer to strike the Death Egg Shell, knocking him back to the ground.

Her hammer struck the core with a force so hard, it exploded, taking the rest of the shell down with it. Eventually, it toppled onto itself, clouds of dust emerging with every hunk of scrap metal that hit the dirt.

Sonic was back on his feet again when the smoke cleared. What he saw in front of him was Amy, smiling sweetly at him, as if nothing at all happened. He felt himself reaching out to her, almost reflexively, in an almost protective instinct, even though the roles were so obviously reversed. “Amy…”

His hand was shaking like the rest of his body. She took it in her own and walked closer to him, letting her own free hand rest on his bruised shoulder. Her hand was so warm, so gentle…under the soft little brushes of her fingers, Sonic could feel the pain melt away almost instantly, but he was still as weary as could be. Knowing Amy would want him to rest, he collapsed into her, letting her carry him as she flew back into the air to greet Tails. “Let’s go home”, she said.

And she flew away toward Green Hill, Tails following suit.

[roseymoseyberry]

Samsara (4/?)

I’m gonna be v busy for the next few days so I’m posting a little earlier than I had planned to.

ALSO!!! It’s less relevant here than on ao3 but uhhhh while writing this chapter I accidentally wrote an interfacing scene. Oops. It was a surprise to me but here we are. So just know that if you weren’t expecting that to pop up in this fic, well. It’s here. But it’s p vaguely described with a much stronger focus on the emotions involved.

Anyway, hope you enjoy! Though this chapter is a rollercoaster of emotions haha.

Title: Samsara

Series: RID15 and TFP (and some tidbits grabbed from Aligned wiki pages)

Ship(s): Wildbreak/Knockout, Breakdown/Knockout

Tags/warnings: Reincarnation AU, hurt/comfort, verbal/physical abuse (though the worst of the physical abuse is barely described or off screen), past character death, age difference (but still consenting adult alien robots), a lot of filling in worldbuilding gaps and making shit up, and a lot of Wildbreak being a sweet boy who just needs some love and affection. NEW TAGS/WARNINGS: Very vaguely described sticky interfacing

Fic Summary:

From the day he was forged, Wildbreak had felt like there was something missing; some motivation or drive or desire that had been left behind in the Allspark.

Something he should know but didn’t.

|Chapter 1|Chapter 2|Chapter 3|Chapter 4|

Wildbreak wasn’t really sure what he expected at the end of the journey.

It was dark out, and made all the darker as they stood under the heavy boughs of the forest, but their combined headlights made it easy enough to make their way through the foliage. It took nearly an hour of stomping around before Knockout slowed and Wildbreak asked, “Why’re we stopping?”

Knockout gestured in front of him.

“We’re here.”

It was just a small grassy clearing. Large enough to allow a couple cybertronians at most to walk around, but still small enough that there was only the slightest spacing between leaves that allowed moonlight to fall on the center of the space. Truthfully, it looked like any other clearing in any other forest. Wildbreak wouldn’t have been able to differentiate it from anywhere else in the woods they had trekked through.

However, his spark fluttered sickly.

“At least, this is most likely the place,” Knockout continued as he took slow steps out into the clearing. “Dreadwing was polite enough to give me the coordinates, and while Breakdown’s frame was already long gone by the time I came to check, there had been enough evidence to suggest this is where it happened.”

Wildbreak stayed on the periphery, his joints locking up with an odd dread.

It was shockingly easy to imagine the spilled energon across the ground that Knockout now stood on.

“Autobots?” Wildbreak asked as carefully as he could.

Knockout’s back was to him.

“Decepticon,” Knockout corrected, his tone almost indifferent sounding. “Instead of simply doing the job himself, Megatron sent Dreadwing and Breakdown to offline her, coming up with some fake cover story. She realized, of course. Not everyone is as oblivious as that egomaniac.”

Wildbreak felt his spark twist. It occurred to him that he could ask about it, about who ‘she’ was, all the circumstances that led up to it, but the very idea only made him feel more ill. Wildbreak desperately didn’t want to know.

He didn’t want to have this horrid tale sound familiar.

“I’m sorry.”

Knockout didn’t respond right away. Instead he gracefully knelt to the ground, his digits gentle as they brushed along the fragile grass of the forest floor. A moment went by, and then another.

Wildbreak was about to ask if Knockout wanted some time alone, to have his space while he mourned Breakdown, when finally Knockout spoke.

“It’s my fault, you know.”

“What?” Wildbreak blurted, his ridges furrowing with confusion. “But you weren’t even here, right?”

“No, but I’m the reason he was here in the first place,” Knockout insisted. The cold detachment of his voice was starting to get to Wildbreak. His vents huffed. “But you don’t want to hear about that. Just go back to the road and I’ll find you in the morning.”

Wildbreak’s spark quickened its pulsing as he took one step into the clearing.

“Do you want to be alone?” Knockout didn’t respond to that, so after a moment Wildbreak gathered his courage and said, “Th-then I’ll stay. And you can talk, if you want to. Or not. I don’t mind either way.”

A small bunch of grass was plucked, ripped away from the ground strand by strand.

“It’s not a happy story.”

Wildbreak’s chest grew tight with knowledge his spark couldn’t share with him.

“I kinda figured that much out.”

After a long moment, Knockout dropped the grass in a pile.

“I had done so well to keep him from becoming cannon fodder. Once I had him as my assistant, I could keep him from the worst battlefields and out of the general command line of unfeeling generals. Sure, it became harder once we arrived here and had high command ordering us around directly, but I was so sure we could make it. The war had to be almost over. I saw the finish line and ignored all the signs.”

“Signs?”

“Megatron didn’t care about Breakdown,” Knockout stated, and while his tone was still cold, there was a fury beneath it making itself known.

Wildbreak’s spark clenched painfully. “But he was a part of the team here on Earth, so Megatron had to care at least a little, didn’t he?”

Knockout snorted dismissively and bitterly.

“When Breakdown got captured by some filthy humans, Megatron did nothing about it. Starscream of all mecha was the one who finally went to get him, and he had to do it behind Megatron’s back, lest he anger our leader by saving his own soldier. And by the time he did, the Autobots had already gotten there and done the job for him. The Autobots rescued him before his own faction bothered to!”

Clawed digits dipped into the dirt, dragging shallow gouges into the patches of green.

“And the worst part was that Breakdown wouldn’t let himself be angry. He wouldn’t even let me replace his optic, insisting it was a reminder of his failure, as if it was all his fault and he deserved what happened. As if somehow through apologies he could convince Megatron to care!”

Knockout’s frame shook as his voice grew.  

“And I let him. I knew that Megatron didn’t and wouldn’t ever care, but I let him keep that despicable patch and we stayed with that despicable mech because I was so sure we were on the winning team, and Breakdown paid the price for it!”

He grew silent then, for just a moment, crouched and trembling with emotions that Wildbreak couldn’t name from where he stood. Wildbreak was caught between wanting to say something and dreading that saying anything at all would cause Knockout to realize what he was admitting and clam up. Knockout was always so swift to change topics when his own emotions slipped through.

When Knockout finally spoke, it wasn’t as cold as before, couldn’t detach itself from emotion, but it was softer again.

“And then that horrid human took his frame from me. Took it and corrupted it to house his weak fleshy body, and he walked right into the Nemesis like he deserved a place with us, and Megatron let him. He let that – that abomination in Breakdown’s offlined frame try to earn his way into the Decepticons.”

Wildbreak’s optics went wide, shocked when his spark didn’t pulse with familiarity in response. For the first time that night, it didn’t know what Knockout was talking about at all, though his spark still twisted tight enough to make him nauseous at the thought.

“And I still stayed. After it all, I still stayed.”

Wildbreak wasn’t sure when he had started moving, but soon enough he was kneeling in front of Knockout. The mech was so hunched over that Wildbreak couldn’t make out his face in the shadows, but there were drops of cleanser dripping to the ground and Knockout’s vents hitched with every ventilation. His servos were caked with dirt where he was crushing the ground beneath them.

“I made that abomination scream for weeks,” Knockout confessed, sounding bitter and ashamed. “I called what I was doing experimentation, but it was torture and we all knew it.”

“I mean, that’s not that weird,” Wildbreak tried to reason. Wildbreak wasn’t good at comforting, had so rarely been shown that sort of affection and his team would have never accepted it, thinking it made them look weak. So he just followed the prompting of his spark and placed his servo on top of Knockout’s where it was piercing the ground. “You had to get it out of you, and it’s not like you coulda done it to Megatron or something.”

A wretched chuckle escaped Knockout.

“Spoken like a true Decepticon.”

Wildbreak didn’t understand – he had seen time and again that mecha lashed out at weaker ones when they couldn’t fight the cause of their frustration. His teammates certainly always did. That was normal, wasn’t it?

Were – were Autobots not like that?

Knockout’s digits finally unearthed themselves and Wildbreak further wrapped his servo around Knockout’s, squeezing it. He wasn’t sure if it was for Knockout or himself anymore.

“It still doesn’t sound like it was your fault.”

That surprised Knockout enough that he looked up, and Wildbreak’s spark ached at the thick lines of cleanser streaking down his face and how his features were tight and twisted with grief and hatred.

“Breakdown died because I didn’t want to defect. How is that not my fault?!” Knockout hissed.

“I mean, you can’t control everything,” Wildbreak said, aware that his voice was strained around the tightness of his intake. “Maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to. Or even if you convinced him and had defected, you can’t know for sure something bad wouldn’t have still happened, right? He coulda died anyway.”

“But if I had just--!”

“You don’t know that!” Wildbreak insisted, his hold on Knockout’s servo tightening. “And thinking ‘bout it isn’t gonna change nothing.”

“But—!”

“Breakdown wouldn’t’ve wanted you to blame yourself.” Wildbreak had meant it to come out as a question, to end it with ‘would he?’, but his spark roared that it was a fact.

Knockout looked stricken. His optics were wide and his jaw was slack and his cheeks were still wet with tears. Then, slowly, his face crumpled.

When Knockout’s free servo reached up to grasp Wildbreak’s arm as he ducked his helm, frame rattling with a sob, Wildbreak let himself be pulled forward. Knockout’s tears felt as if they were burning against his neck.

Wildbreak held him tight and let him cry.

“I’m sorry you had to see me like that.”

“It’s ok,” Wildbreak said, shuffling closer when Knockout tried to pull away. He had long lost track of time, not sure when they had arrived so he had no beginning marker, but it had been a while. The heavy wailing had tapered off soon enough, but it was the lingering hiccups and relapses that took time for Knockout to work through. And even once it was finally over, Knockout had kept himself curled against Wildbreak, helm ducked, until his ventilations had finally slowed to normal.

Now, after it all, Knockout lifted his chin, and it was only because Wildbreak was looking for them that he noticed the dried residue on his cheeks.

Wildbreak’s digits itched to rub the lines away.

“Are you ok now?”

“Was I ever?” Knockout asked sarcastically, the smirk that came with it weak. He shifted, accepting the closeness that Wildbreak was trying to maintain by simply settling onto his hip instead of his knees, his frame still leaning against Wildbreak but now against his side. Knockout’s helm flopped against Wildbreak’s shoulder. “But yes, I am better now. Thank you.”

“Oh, uh, it’s no problem,” Wildbreak said, unsure what else he could possibly say. The physical closeness he could at least handle, keeping his servo on Knockout’s shoulder, doing his best to comfort. Wildbreak was still uncomfortable being in the clearing in a way he couldn’t describe, but it was obvious that Knockout needed to stay a while longer, and Wildbreak could live with the discomfort.

“You know, I can’t even remember the last time I said his name out loud before meeting you.”

“Really?” Wildbreak asked, optics widening as a flustered heat started to build around his spark.

Knockout nodded, his helm rasping against the armor of Wildbreak’s arm as he hummed, “Mm-hm.”

“Didn’t you talk to anyone after it happened?”

“Who would I have talked to?” Knockout asked. “I was barely a step above Breakdown and only because I had medical skills. And, frankly, that never kept them from treating me like a punching bag when they needed one.”

Wildbreak couldn’t imagine a mech as handsome and charming as Knockout being so alone and abused, but the evidence was there clear as day in the bitter curl to Knockout’s lips.

“But uh, Dreadwing, right? He was the guy who told you the coordinates?”

“Because he was the only one amongst them who had a shred of decency, but he was blindly loyal until the day Megatron shot a hole through his spark.”

Wildbreak winced.

“One of the vehicons?”

That got an amused huff out of Knockout.

“You sound just like him sometimes.”

With a throbbing pulse of his spark, Wildbreak turned to look at Knockout fully. Knockout seemed just as surprised at the words that came out of his mouth, his optics staring straight ahead as he lifted his helm off Wildbreak’s shoulder, not daring to meet Wildbreak’s optics.

“What I mean is Breakdown got along with the vehicons,” Knockout said, clearly trying to hide how his plating heated where it met Wildbreak’s, “and he always wanted me to get to know them better. They honestly would have been my best choice. I think they missed him too.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

Knockout shrugged.

“It took years before I let Breakdown in past my charming exterior. How could I have possibly let myself appear weak in front of some mecha I had only known for a few months?”

“You let me.”

It was hard to tell who was burning hotter where their plating met.

“Yes, well,” Knockout stammered, looking down to pick dirt from between the plates of his digits. “You’re easy to trust, I suppose. You don’t have a dishonest strut in your frame.”

“I lied to Motormaster to come with you,” Wildbreak admitted, and that just made Knockout smile.

“I’m honored to see I’m such a good influence on you.”

“That’s not what I meant--”

“I know, I know,” Knockout said as he peeked at Wildbreak out of the corner of his optic before returning to his digits. “It’s been a while since I’ve done this so you’ll have to forgive me.”

“What d’you mean ‘this’?”

“Being honest, opening up, all that nonsense,” Knockout said. He flicked his servo to scatter some of the dirt and debris that had come loose. “It just doesn’t come naturally to me.”

Wildbreak’s ridges knitted together as he replied, “But you’re – you’re good at talking.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, Wildbreak. I am well aware of that.” Knockout finally looked at him again, flashing him a gorgeous grin, and it was only because of the circumstances that Wildbreak realized it was completely fake. “I know how to charm mecha. I just never got the hang of actually connecting with them.”

With a frown, Wildbreak asked, “You haven’t made any friends with the Autobots?”

“Oh, they’re fine. Bumblebee’s old teammates are shockingly lovely,” Knockout admitted as the exaggerated smile started to fade a bit. “And I’m sure they would love to hear all about the trauma I have from having spent most of my life as a Decepticon, and that’s why I’ll never tell them. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction. Not when they don’t understand what it was like.”

Wildbreak remembered the anxiety he had felt when telling Knockout about his life with the Stunticons, the fear of judgment that ultimately never came.

“So you told me ‘cause I’m a Con.”

Finally the smile faded to a small, gentle curl of Knockout’s mouth.

“That’s a part of it, I suppose.”

Wildbreak’s spark raced in his chest, anxious and hopeful at once.

“And?”

Knockout’s ex-vent was amused sounding as he teased, “Greedy for compliments?”

“Is that bad?”

“Quite the opposite. Which means I’ll have to reward you with an actual answer, won’t I?” Despite his tone, Knockout’s optics returned to his digits, oddly shy as he looked for any dirt left to be picked out. Wildbreak waited as Knockout cycled a ventilation. “You really do remind me of him sometimes.”

And just like that, the racing of Wildbreak’s spark shifted from what his processor could understand to something that just resulted in errors.

“You mean Breakdown?”

Knockout nodded. “Sometimes you say things, or smile a certain way, or laugh just right, and it’s uncanny.”

TELL HIM.

“Am I that much like him?”

“No. I mean, you’re sweet and too honest, and the paintjob similarity is almost scary,” Knockout replied as he flicked a few strands of grass from between his joints. “But you’re also like me in that you’re a coward. And I mean that as a compliment – I wish Breakdown hadn’t been so eager to run helm-first into a fight. Though you are even more trusting than he was which is honestly shocking and something I’m going to try to get you to break the habit of.”

TELL HIM. TELL HIM.

“Besides, most importantly, Breakdown’s offline. I’d say that’s a rather important detail.”

TELL HIM. TELL HIM. TELL HIM. TELL—

“Well, maybe I’m like, a reincarnation, or something weird like that,” Wildbreak stammered, anxious and hoping against hope that it would make his spark stop threatening to break out of its casing.

Knockout stilled. Even his ventilations stalled.

And then air whooshed from his vents.

“You’re giving Primus far too much credit,” Knockout insisted as he turned to look at Wildbreak. There was something almost comforting in the way his servo grasped Wildbreak’s arm. “Coincidences are just that.”

Coincidences didn’t explain the way Wildbreak’s spark ached.

Coincidences didn’t explain the way Knockout had hesitated.

But then Knockout reached his servo out to cup Wildbreak’s face.

“And I like you just the way you are.”

The ache of Wildbreak’s spark was, within seconds, utterly overwhelmed by the rush of flustered glee. Wildbreak could feel a smile tugging at his lips as he said, “Aww, shucks, Knockout. You mean it?”

Knockout snickered at him, but there was with nothing but warmth and a fondness in the way he looked at Wildbreak.

“Primus, you’re adorable,” Knockout murmured, and Wildbreak’s temperature skyrocketed, no doubt hot against Knockout’s servo and wherever their plating met. “Of course I mean it.”

“I-I like you too,” Wildbreak blurted. It felt like his spark was pulsating out of control, and it felt like it was all his, no weirdness he couldn’t understand, no mystery. Just Wildbreak and his feelings and Knockout’s ever growing smile. “I mean, that was probably pretty obvious, but I figured I should say it.”

Knockout’s thumb stroking along Wildbreak’s cheek had his vents hitching.

“I had figured that one out, but it’s still nice to hear. Though,” Knockout drawled as he leaned that much closer, “I haven’t been able to quite put my digit on the way you like me. Are you looking for a guardian? A friend? Perhaps even a lover?”

Wildbreak’s cooling fans whirled to life as his frame finally burned too hot, and his face twisted with shame.

“Oh, n-no, I would never – I don’t expect you to like me that way, ‘cause I know you loved Breakdown, so you don’t have to worry about any of that. I’m happy with what we got.”

Knockout’s optics were wide with surprise. Slowly though the surprise faded to leave him with the small, sad smile that always came with talking about Breakdown.

“I hadn’t realized I was that transparent. But you’re right,” Knockout admitted softly. His servo was still cupping Wildbreak’s face, keeping him from looking away. “I did love him. I still do, and unfortunately it seems that I’ll never be able to stop. I--” Knockout trailed off, optics flickering down for a moment, the corners of his lips tensing as he ex-vented heavily. “I miss him so much.”

“Knockout--”

“But he’s dead,” Knockout interrupted definitively, optics finding Wildbreak’s again. “I can love and miss him all I want, but he’s still dead and I’m still alive and so fragging lonely.”

Wildbreak’s spark ached with a regret that wasn’t his. And this time, the pushing of his spark was softer. Quieter. Begging instead of demanding.

Tell him. Miss him.

“You shouldn’t be lonely,” Wildbreak murmured honestly. Knockout huffed and his digits stroked the side of his helm.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not when I’m with you.”

Kiss him.

Wildbreak’s spark was finally in complete agreement with his processor for the first time that he could remember.

It was only when his mouth met Knockout’s a little too hard that Wildbreak realized what he was doing, and the muffled noise of surprise from Knockout mixed with the sting of impact caused embarrassment to race down Wildbreak’s lines as he jerked back.

“S-sorry, I’ve never – I don’t really know how to--”

Knockout chuckled.

“Hush,” Knockout murmured as his servo slipped behind Wildbreak’s helm. “You just surprised me.”

“But I really don’t know how to do this good.”

“That’s alright. I’ll teach you.”

When Knockout leaned in it was softly and gently, lips warm against Wildbreak’s. He couldn’t help gasping quietly because it was so nice, so unlike anything Wildbreak had ever felt, but also familiar in a way that had his spark pulsing with warmth.

Knockout’s digits trembled against the back of his neck.

Wildbreak pulled away again, concerned as he asked, “Knockout?”

Knockout’s digits tightened, though there was still a subtle quiver to his grasp.

“I haven’t done this since Breakdown,” Knockout confessed.

“Oh.” Realization of where they were and just what they were doing hit Wildbreak and he felt guilt bubbling in his tanks. “Y-you don’t have to do this then.”

“Of course I don’t. But I--” Knockout glanced away then, abashed as he pulled further back. “But it’s hardly fair that you need put up with my—well, all of this.”

“I don’t mind.” Knockout’s gaze met Wildbreak’s again, surprised, and Wildbreak shrugged weakly. “I mean it. I really don’t mind. I just want to make sure you’re ok with this.”

Crimson optics flickered and for a moment Wildbreak swore he saw cleanser welling up in them.

And then Knockout was suddenly pushing up to his pedes, tugging at Wildbreak’s servos, insisting, “Come on, let’s get out of here. I’m sure I can find a better place to show you a proper first time.”

Wildbreak easily let himself be pulled since he was eager to leave the clearing behind. Every step away left his spark lighter.

And then when Knockout finally stopped, whirling around, Wildbreak had only barely managed to keep from barreling into him. An apology was already on its way out of Wildbreak’s voicebox when Knockout’s servos braced against his shoulder, helping him find his balance.

As soon as Wildbreak had his footing, though, Knockout slid his arms around his neck and leaned in.

And Knockout was kissing him again. This time it was more insistent, desperate and passionate. Wildbreak’s processor stalled so he followed his first instincts as he embraced Knockout and tried to keep up, to kiss back even if it was clumsy.

And his spark finally settled in quiet contentment.

Wildbreak didn’t question how his digits knew where to slip past Knockout’s plating and stroke sensitive receptors that had Knockout gasping against his lips.

“Beginner’s luck,” Knockout had teased as he shuddered, plating flaring to give Wildbreak room to sink in further for deeper nodes. “But Primus, don’t stop.”

Wildbreak didn’t question that with the awe that came from staring up at Knockout in pleasure – handsome face all the more beautiful for it and his frame so gorgeous and tempting that Wildbreak’s engine purred without his permission –there was also a moment of déjà vu.

And Wildbreak didn’t dare question the flicker of confusion when Knockout was knelt between his thighs and could still reach his lips for a kiss.

“How do you want me?” Knockout murmured against his neck, nipping a fuel line that had Wildbreak gasping as his back arched.

“I-inside me. I don’t think I’d – hahh – be good at spiking.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll learn,” Knockout insisted as he pushed up to his elbows, bracketing Wildbreak’s helm, and watching with bright, eager optics as he rolled his hips. With another gasp and tremble, Wildbreak’s panels shifted away, desperate and unable to control himself, weak against the pleasure. “I’ll show you by example.”

It was teasing, Wildbreak knew that, and he should have tried to tease back, or laugh, or anything to maintain that lighter mood – but instead his servos clung as he turned his helm, trying to find Knockout’s lips to kiss again as he whined, barely louder than an ex-vent, “Please--!”

Wildbreak didn’t question any of it because he desperately didn’t want to think anymore. About spark troubles or reincarnation or who he might have been; about his team or lingering injuries or the boss who gave them to him; about the terrible intersection that begged the question if Wildbreak was just going to live through the same mistakes and someday offline like Breakdown had – at the hands of a leader who would never truly care about him no matter how hard he tried.

He didn’t want to think about any of it.

Wildbreak just wanted to be here, now, with Knockout.

Thankfully, Knockout didn’t deny him. Knockout kissed him, and Wildbreak didn’t even know how many times they had kissed, or if he was any good at it now, but it was still soothing. When Knockout was kissing him, everything felt like it would be alright.

Knockout kissed Wildbreak as he slowly pushed inside him. And Knockout kissed him until Wildbreak’s frame was ready for him to move. And still Knockout kissed him while Wildbreak shuddered and bucked and clung to him as they fragged, choked by the overwhelming affection of his spark.

Until the wet drops hit Wildbreak’s face.

His optics onlined slowly, confused in the haze of pleasure, and that’s when Wildbreak saw the source. He pulled away from the kiss, panting against Knockout’s lips, managing, “K-Knockout?”

Knockout immediately jerked to a halt, his optics onlining quickly as shame crossed his handsome face. There was no mistaking the tears that were escaping or how the way his cooling systems heaved wasn’t just from their interfacing. He pushed up onto his servos, stammering, “Scrap, I’m sorry--”

“No, no, it’s ok! You don’t have to say sorry,” Wildbreak protested, reaching out to keep Knockout from retreating further and trying to tug him back in. “Should we stop? I didn’t mean to push you if you didn’t want to--”

“It’s not that,” Knockout insisted, scrubbing at his face with one servo, clearly embarrassed. “I do, and you’re fine, you’re so good – Primus, I--”

“You what?”

A fresh wave of cleanser spilled down Knockout’s cheeks as he murmured, “I didn’t think I’d get a chance to feel like this again.”

Wildbreak would swear his spark was swelling, filling his chest until it was choking him, and still pushing harder as if trying to reach further. It couldn’t reach though, not the way his servos could, pulling Knockout close while he pushed himself away from the ground, moving to hold Knockout as close as their frames could allow.

“I love you,” escaped Wildbreak, spark and processor in agreement, and he felt the way that Knockout shuddered and his hips rocked.

“Don’t say that.” Knockout’s optics were wide and wet but his servos grasped Wildbreak tight, like he never wanted to let go, and his spark was pulsing so hard that Wildbreak felt the vibrations of Knockout’s chest against his own.

Wildbreak kissed Knockout, shifting so he straddled Knockout’s lap, took Knockout inside again as they both gasped at the pleasure.

“I love you, Knockout.”

Knockout kissed Wildbreak, picking up their rhythm again while clutching at each other.

Knockout still had tears streaming down his face and Wildbreak was desperately ignoring the the déjà vu that came with telling Knockout he loved him. But he wouldn’t have asked to be anywhere else doing anything else with anyone else.

So Wildbreak let himself drown in Knockout’s kisses and the sound of his name – “Wildbreak, frag, Wildbreak” – on Knockout’s lips.

[vehlika-pelican]

warning for long post! i always get my best ideas at night when im on mobile and cant do a read-more. sorry. blacklist "vehl's headcannons" to stop seeing my stuff. no rvb season 15 spoilers i dont think. me3 is like 5 years old now so im not tagging it as spoilers for any of the games. OKAY, RVB X MASS EFFECT TRILOGY CROSSOVER ( mostly ME 1 because its been two hours since i started writing this post now and oh shit) #TuckerFightsARobotArmy is gonna be the tag for this and the inevitable sequel posts at first i thought, with default Femshep being a badass red-head that would make our local badass red-head Carolina the obvious choice for the role but it occurred to me that she would make a better Miranda Lawson than Commander Shepard. The Director is The Illussive Man (Tim). Aside from the daddy issues, Miranda is a big supporter of Tim's until she finally sees his dark side and resigns during the end of ME 2 just like Carolina was a staunch believer in the Director until she had to face the music. The Freelancers are involved in Project Phoenix and ultimately its every man for himself when the Director starts indoctrinating/reaperfying troops. She gets assigned to the Normandy SR-2 just before the agents make their escape and she's left out of the loop and feeling betrayed. She carries that well into hunting the Collectors and her loyalty mission involves maybe saving York and getting answers. Carolina goes into hiding just like Miranda during ME3, trying to take down her former employer and his organization on her own until she needs help. Thats where our best dudes come in. but then if she's taking the place of Miranda, who could be Shepard? let's start with the Reds. Sarge is too...Sarge. Maybe he could take Admiral Hackett's place as Admiral Colonel Sarge because obviously (everyone knows he's crazy but going from enlisted man to fleet admiral makes him a legend, and he really earned a name for himself during the First Contact War. that name was legally changed to Colonel.) Grif would be Joker, so our esteemed pilot/vehicle operator who's all back-talk and bitching. Simmons is where it gets tricky. Simmons could be an engineer, possibly a quarian, who got prosthetic limbs from when he temporarily served with Sarge on a joint human-quarian deployment and became enamored with the freedom to experiment in the Alliance opposed to the strict policies in the Migrant Fleet and sought to return to his service by trying to kiss ass. but i also like him as EDI because of the proximity to Grif and how they would develop that friendship leading up to Joker's Mission when Grif unshackles Simmons to save the Normandy in ME 2. i also kind of like krogan!Grif, and you know the two of them would have the greatest time messing with the Alliance's engineers during the retrofits. then when Simmons gets a body in ME3 he tries to get a faux-skin to look human but there's a problem and its missing in places on the left side and Grif decides to tell people he's just got some prosthetics from an accident. all shiny and chrome on the fury road. Donut is Kelly Chambers. trained in psychology but rarely clinical, loving all the species, somehow spreading a space-dog STD around the ship, a bit too naive if pretty gung-ho about the mission but give him a belt of lift grenades and hot damn we're in business. Lopez is the AI who robbed the bank? embezelled money? (ME 1) and threatened to detonate a nuclear bomb inside a shopping center but actually managed to buy and download himself into a ship and set sail for sweet robot freedom in the Persius Veil. he was caught by Sarge and officially "destroyed" when he's really locked in a Rampart mech with AI shackles that force him to aid Sarge in his crazy science endeavors. he refuses to speak anything other than spanish out of spite even when he genuinely needs assistance. now the Blues. Washington will have been with Cerberus until about the beginning of ME3 which is when Tim starts indoctrinating troops and members of Project Phoenix take their chances so thats too late to start trying to save the galaxy from the Reaper threat. Caboose takes the place of David (i might be getting the name wrong), an autistic savant who can communicate with a race of alien AI (the quarian-made geth) and is unwillingly mentally linked to the geth for an unknown period of time by his own brother (one of his sisters then? my poor boy imsorry). This would cause the neural trauma/scarring resulting in Caboose being... more Caboose. but he isn't found until sometime in ME2 by Shepard and co. Freckles is the mad AI who goes rogue on Luna (not EDI or part of Simmons in this au) but ends up being befriended by Caboose. he inhabits an Atlas/Titan mech and together they're unstoppable. Tex is an attempt to recreate Allison as an AI inside a cloned body made by the Director during the early stages of his madness. now she's taking Ashley's place as a trigger happy space racist, a double agent inside the Alliance and on Tucker's squad. Church almost dates her but something...feels off...and instead spends his time fighting with her because it feels...familiar? like when he used to argue with his mom when she was alive. huh. Kaikaina and Grif petitioned to serve together so she's on the squad as an infilitrator of all things. she and Wrex commiserate over the story of how she stole a krogan warlord's biotic hammer and she tramatizes Grif by flirting with his 800-pound ass. (not that it goes anywhere. Wrex thinks humans are too squishy.) which leaves...Tucker. because who else. Commander Shepard took the responsibility of proving the existence and defeating the Reapers only because they happened to be at Eden Prime when the prothean beacon was to be recovered. it could have been anyone caught in the beacon- Ashley or Kaidan or any other marine- and that person would have tried to do the same. Tucker in RVB isnt so much chosen to be the savior of an alien race (Doc said he was but that was more Junior) as he gets caught in a bunch of shit that went down in ways he was not expecting when he interacted with an ancient alien artifact thank you very much. so he's on the Normandy SR-1 because he's an N7-in-training or outright failed to get past N1 (which is still impressive because he was considered and thats not easy criteria to meet. let my man be a badass space marine. just a little bit. badass-in-training. HE'LL GET THERE.) but is noticed for his potential and is to be evaluated by turian!/salarian!Felix for Spectre candidacy. the first human Spectre. he's a biotic, i can't decide between adept and vanguard. Tucker and Grif are Totally On To the mission's importance because "spectre's(Felix) dont come along for shake-down runs" in their new experiental human-turian ship and they arrive at Eden Prime mid-attack. Tucker and his squad try to clear a path to the beacon while Felix scouts ahead. but then they find his body and eyewitnesses say it was someone he knew by name that shot him once he let his guard down and his back was turned. "Locus" they say. supposedly leading the assault with an army of heretic-geth and a massive ship emitting a terrible sound. they fight to the beacon, disable bombs along the way, and find it just as Locus's ship departs. as the squad's engineer is scanning it, Tucker notices they're starting to levitate and rushes in to grab them and throw them aside only to get caught himself. he gets the prothean vision-warning about the Reapers and maybe a special prothean omni-blade and its on. he has to prove to the Citadel Council that their Spectre Locus is a traitor and that the Reapers are real but visions? galactic extinction cycles? oh you humans are so full of it. you've been part of the galactic community for 30 years and now you're here with a conspiracy theory at best? i cant believe we thought you could work for us. blah. Tucker marches off but meets Church who's been trying to take Locus down from within the system to no avail. Alpha!Church is the Director's son but Allison got custody after the divorce and now he's a grouchy C-Sec cop getting nowhere real quick. Tucker invites him along and he's a shitty sniper but actually pretty decent with the Mako's cannon considering it handles like a drunk krogan who can do a flip it you drive off the cliff edge fast enough (what are mass effect booster jets for?). they track down a krogan mercenary (Wrex is probably still Wrex. because who could hope to live up to him?) and fight through a strip club and kill Fist and rescue a quarian (Palomo? make that Jensen) with evidence proving Locus is guilty. then they save Dr. Emily Grey and help her keep her small clinic in the wards from being shut down and she gives them sweet discounts and all the free medigel they can shove into their pockets. they rescue asari!Doc from inside a prothean ruin (got lost on a yoga retreat and panicked when geth started attacking...i guess he could be an archeologist but maybe they drag Grey along for the ride instead...) but he's developed a split personality due to how long he's been alone in there and its kinda murderous but coupled with biotics its pretty useful. (and yes, asari are mono-gendered and are all "female" but ME: Andromeda confirmed that some asari use masculine pronouns/identify as "male" and there's no way that wasn't a thing in ME 1 canon so Doc is he/him). on Virmire, he almost shoots Tex AND Wrex on the beach- put down your shotguns you fucking lunatics i will biotically throw you into the ocean! he helped Wrex get his family armor so Tucker manages to talk him down but man Tex could you chill its been months already. he has to leave Tex behind though to protect the bomb while he and Wrex save Kaikaina and Kirahee and fight Locus. they evacuate and the bomb detonates and atleast it was instantaneous. she wouldn't have felt herself be vaporized, it was quick and we stopped Locus from getting an army of krogan. Church is devastated and knowing that Tucker leaving Tex behind was a conscious choice splinters their friendship. but. Tucker has to finish this. its bullshit and why us. why'd it have to be us on this ship in this life shewasmyfriendtoo- but its a race against the clock to the lost relay and Ilos and theres no time to have a real talk. its complete bullshit. they get to Ilos but Locus is ahead of them and they have to fight so many geth and find a 50,000 year old message which only Tucker can understand but fuck this we're being left in Locus' dust openthisstupid templedoor*swish* oh shit this things a fucking key "guess we didnt have to fight all them robots" he said stepping over the mountain of slain robots because fuck my life. Wrex how'd you live so long life fucking sucks. "i've been drunk for a lot of it" great. yup. can the Mako go any faster. and then they meet Vigil but dont record it because they're still idiots who forget/dont mind the details until Simmons shows up in the sequel you morons but hey remember THAT CHASE WE WERE IN LETSGO and they drive the Mako into a relay and if Tucker made sure to crash into a geth colossus no one says anything- and they fly out into the Presidium Commons like if the Mako had wings but itfuckingdoesnt and why are there even jets on this tank. Locus and Sovereign beat them to the Citadel and the arms are closed but Hal-9000 over there is just chillin' on the Citadel Tower like he's shishing the kebab himself. then gravity goes off and they fight sideways all the way up the tower and those turrets sure are being turrets you know and not differentiating between us and the assholes ahead of us. but they finally make it and stop Locus short of the apocalypse. Tucker goes all renegade Locus was just afraid, the Reapers put his life in persepective and we are all so small and insignificant, "is servitude not preferable to extinction?" you're just a puppet, they're using you because you're weak, because you let them, do yourself a favor-! but Locus claims its too late and they fight and kill him. but he rises anyway. the fight the first and only Possessed Marauder- Sovereign controlig Locus' corpse through implants. he was mostly implants. and once its ash ashashashes Tex didnt even get to be ashes its unfa- and Sarge is over the comm, open the Citadel's arms son so the Alliance can save the day and Tucker has a choice. save the Council and sacrifice thousands of soldiers. or kill the Reaper and worry about new leadership later. its Tex again. worse. i need to think, theres no time, you know what this thing can do you saw in the vision i believe you so what do we do. make the call. and Tucker needs the Council's support...but the Reaper needs to be killed...but saving the Council will cost too much...but the Reaper could still call the others from dark space...they'll trust me... will the new ones? will the Alliance? Anyone? no. but someone will definitely be alive. kill Sovereign. the Council dies. the Destiny Ascention is destroyed. the Alliance suffers minimal loses. humanity fills the vacuum of power. humanity is no longer trusted. they blame him. he does too. have any of his choices been good enough? right? much of the crew goes their own way. Church goes back to C-Sec. maybe he'll call. Wrex returns to Tuchanka, faith in his people restored. Doc joins Grey at her small clinic. Jensen returns to the Migrant Fleet with geth data. and Tucker and the rest are... disgraced. no one says but they dont have to. every breath is a reminder of his failures and what he did. so much potential in him once, they say. he could have been great. instead he did this. and they fight geth. chase geth. fight more. they head to Alchera. more geth, they said. it isnt. the ship is blown apart. Kaikaina shoves anyone who cant walk into the escape pods. The XO is killed almost immediately. Grif won't leave. Tucker, please, Dex! Get Dex! she yells as she's dragged into an escape pod by a Yeoman and he storms over because he wont lose anyone else but the hull is gone and you can't run in mag boots. Grif is fighting for Normandy. Tucker can hear him asking for just a little more just enough to- to- but Tucker's having none of it and pulls and heaves and forces his idiot pilot into the pod. of all the times Grif chose to be the opposite of lazy. a streak of yellow catches his eye and its coming this way and he pushes off and hits the launch button but the engines blow and he hits something as he is set adrift. he's losing air. fuck, its- its behind him. he panics and scrambles for the puncture but his arms are geting heavier and he's already wheezing short little breaths shortlittlefailures youfailedyoukilledthem youkilledher. the sun in the distance is bright. he can feel his body tilt toward the planet, sees the sunlight cresting over the horizon. his vision goes dark around the edges. but the sun is bright and he doesnt notice he isnt afraid and he falls *maniacal laughter* someone should have stopped me. i think its super out of character but this is a rambling monster and not meant to go super in-depth or anything. god help me.