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Pova was one of the few organic planets that had somehow managed to survive the dubious honour of orbiting close to the ancient remains of the Cybertronian Empire. It was purely organic, and had hardly changed at all in the last few billion years save for some new species evolving and new mountains forming along its lazy tectonic plates. But the sentient natives, the Povians, had a unique quirk of their biology that separated them from most other organics. They were more similar to Cybertronians than anything else, in that they were biologically immortal. The eldest Povians were easily millions of years old, some even reaching into the billions if they’d been lucky enough to avoid disease and injury. They had seen the Empire of Living Steel firsthand. They had watched its birth and its death in a single endless lifetime.
(Perhaps that was why they’d been left alone during its ravenous expansion, so that they could live on to tell the tales of its glory. Though, they weren’t at all talkative to the descendants of the Empire).
Impactor had only been on the planet of Pova for thirty klicks, and that was more than enough for him to decide that he hated the place.
[ BITTER WRECKER VETERAN IMPACTOR ]
[ インパクタ ]
He hated most organic worlds, but Pova was especially getting on his nerve nodes. He wasn’t even allowed to indulge his curiosity with the Povians. Even if certain peace treaties didn’t forbid him from speaking with any of them, they stubbornly remained in their underground villages and only ever emerged to throw knives and spears at any threats from above. Impactor had been greeted with a pike stuck in his leg as soon as he emerged from his ship, but whoever had attacked him with it had fled back home before he could even unveil his own weapon.
No wonder the damn creatures could live for so long, if they were really so cowardly.
According to Bulkhead, Earth was home to a similar kind of immortal creature. The Humans called them lobsters, water-dwelling things that lived within hard shells of chitin rather than steel. Their cells never aged, their DNA never withered, and they would never simply crumble away like other carbon-cursed organics. But most lobsters would still die someday; not just because of predators, or disease, or cold or heat, but because they never stopped growing. Their skin and organs would swell past the safe confines of their shell, and the lobster would have no choice but to shed their vital armour and grow a new layer. The sheer effort of this process could be enough to kill one of the creatures. But they had no choice. They couldn’t stop growing, and they couldn’t live without the protection of the shells that would, ironically, kill them one day if they managed to survive every other threat.
Impactor was reminded of the Empire once again. It hadn’t stopped growing until the Quintessons invaded. He’d never had the chance to see the exalted Imperial Age for himself, being a remnant of the far less mystical Age of Wrath. The Quintessons themselves had pulled him from the Well of All Sparks and set him right to relentless work, alongside the likes of Kup, and Ironhide, and Chromia and Ratchet and… so many others who’s names he couldn’t remember.
There weren’t many of them left from that generation now. Even those who survived the Quintesson slave factories and eventual uprising just ended up falling to Decepticons during the War.
So many of them had been Wreckers. And so many of them were now dead. Seaspray. Roadbuster. Whirl. Rotorstorm...
And, of course, the four corpses that had brought Impactor to this planet. Pyro, Fisitron, Topspin and Twintwist. They’d called themselves Team Ruination. And they’d ended up ruined. How fitting.
Impactor was the only Wrecker of them all left alive. Wheeljack didn’t count; because he wasn’t a Wrecker anymore, because he had no right to call himself one. Even so, he’d been invited to come along. Impactor had sent the message himself. Just in case Wheeljack had anything he wanted to say.
But, apparently, he was busy with his brat. The one that had gotten their team all killed. Four sparks sacrificed for one. As if having a child at all in a War wasn't selfish enough. Impactor had struggled not to break his commlink before he sent the acknowledgement ping.
He hated sparklings. He hated Decepticons, and Quintessons, and traitors and deserters and everyone else who had the privilege of surviving the War with something to show for it that wasn’t a scar. Practically unscathed, even with the energon soaking through their hands.
Most of all, in that moment, he fragging hated Pova. He knew he would, even when Kup had sent him the comm full of excitement and relief.
“We got them, Impactor. I swear to Primus, we finally fraggin’ got them. All of them. The nightmare is over. Meet us on Pova, you know where it is? We’ll drop ‘em off there and you can take ‘em back home.”
...The wait would be worth it, though. When Kup and Bulkhead brought the prisoners over for transfer. When Impactor finally had the chance to stand face-to-face with them. When he could see how scared they were, knowing they were at his mercy.
He covered his optics against the glare of one of the planet’s suns, seeing a familiar shadow passing over its light. Kup had stubbornly refused to upgrade his starship, the Hangover,even when the Wreckers had the resources to repair it, so you could see it falling apart from light years away. Whenever it landed somewhere, it was a miracle when it managed to take to the skies again. Whoever was at the controls (most likely Kup, unless he was passed out at the back) was having trouble navigating in the winds of the higher atmosphere, but as the ship jolted lower to the horizon it somehow managed to hit the ground without crashing.
Impactor waited until the loading ramp was deployed, keeping his optics out for any other native Povians who might jump out and try to attack again. But it seemed their curiosity had been satisfied by ambushing just one Cybertronian, so the shape that marched out form the ship was left alone as he approached.
“You look like slag.”
[ EXHAUSTED WRECKER VETERAN KUP ]
[ カップ ]
“And you look worse.” Despite the purpose of their meeting, Impactor couldn’t help but smile at his ancient friend’s jab. Kup grinned too around his cy-gar, and the clapped their hands together in the traditional no-nonsense Wrecker greeting.
“They give you much trouble?” Impactor asked, angling his optics over Kup’s shoulder to try and see where the prisoners were being held on the ship.
“They tried to.” Kup pulled the cy-gar from his mouth to shake it slightly. “But Bulkhead sure made himself useful.”
“Been practicin’ for five thousand years, Kup,” a voice said behind him, “I’m bound to be good at it by now.”
[ TRYING HIS BEST WRECKER BULKHEAD ]
[ バルクヘッド ]
Bulkhead had a buzzing chain in his hands that he pulled along, which was connected to a convoy of frames that had no choice but to follow him down the loading ramp.
“Keep moving,” he ordered as his heavy frame thudded on the ship’s ramp. “Heads down. Don’t give me an excuse to hurt you.”
‘Please give me an excuse,’ Impactor silently begged. ‘Please, please do.’
He recognised each mech as they came into view; Macabre, Ferak, Fang, Earthquake, Triton and Tornado. Each one was connected together by an electrified chain, which led between the stasis cuffs bolting their hands behind their backs. Each one did as they were told, keeping their optics glued to their peds. Each one had killed more of his friends than any other Decepticon.
[ SADISTIC DECEPTICON SQUADRON X ]
[ スコードロン X ]
“I thought there were seven of them.” Impactor heard his own voice as a hiss, as his optics lingered in the empty space where the seventh murderer should have been trussed up just like his fellow scum.
“Someone got Crosscut durin’ the War,” Kup told him.
“Pity.”
Either Kup didn’t hear the true depth of disappointment in Impactor’s vocaliser, or he just chose to ignore it. Considering he was the one who had asked Impactor to escort the Squadron to Cybertron, one had to assume that it was the latter.
“Thanks for the help anyway, Impactor. We gotta keep moving to Cygnus Seven. Someone reported the DJD’s ship hangin’ ‘round nearby. You sure you can handle them yourself?”
Impactor watched Bulkhead line up the prisoners one by one, akin to preparations for a firing squad. How fitting.
“Yeah,” he assured. “I got this.”
Kup nodded as he emptied the metal ash from his cy-gar once more, and handed over the key to the stasis cuffs. Impactor slipped it into his subspace with one hand while his other took the cuff chain from Bulkhead.
“I guess Jackie didn’t want to see this?” the younger Wrecker asked (then again, almost everyone was young in Impactor’s eyes).
“Probably did. But the kid’s got him occupied.” Impactor forced his teeth around that word- kid. Spawn. Distraction. Parasite.
“Right.” Bulkhead was looking away, not able to see how Impactor’s jaw clenched. “He’s spending just about every hour of the cycle with her. You ask me, I think getting thrown out the Wreckers was the best thing that ever happened to him.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Impactor could only agree on the caveat that Wheeljack joining in the first place was the worst thing to ever happen to the Wreckers. Maybe that was hyperbole, considering how many lives the prisoners kneeling before him had collectively taken. But at least Squadron X was expected to take lives. At least they killed with malice, fury, misguided loyalty to Megatron.
At least they did their fragging jobs.
“Well. You take care, Impactor.” Bulkhead patted him once on the shoulder, but Impactor didn’t feel it.
“You want some help gettin’ them on your ship?” Kup flicked his cy-gar towards the prisoners, not caring that some smouldering ash hit Fang’s ped.
“No need.” Impactor watched the ash melt through the top layer of armour, the grimace on Fang’s face.
[ MUTE BRUTE BAR BRAWLER FANG ]
[ ファング ]
He couldn’t cry out in pain, not since Impactor had personally destroyed his vocaliser during a fateful battle at Darkmount. Before everything went to slag.
Twintwist had even once done far worse to the Decepticon… and he’d ended up with his face peeled off and stuck onto his brother’s severed head. Impactor had struggled to identify which body was which.
“You guys better get going.” He gave it as a warning more than a suggestion, and he waited until the two mechs were far away, until the Hangover nothing more than another invisible star in the sky. The prisoners of Squadron X said nothing, as if they were waiting for him to make the first move. Or maybe they just knew there was no point in saying anything.
As if they knew exactly what Impactor was hoping for.
‘Give me an excuse to hurt you. Make my fragging day. Make me enjoy this even more than I already will.’
They wouldn’t even look at him. What cowards. What a disgrace, that these were the ones who had haunted the Wreckers were so long. He wouldn’t load them onto the ship just yet. There were stasis pods waiting in the cargo bay, to make the trip easy for him. Once the ‘Cons were in them, they’d be locked up until they reached Cybertron.
This was his only chance to talk. To see what they were made of, to hear what they’d say outside of Magnus’ courtroom.
“So.” Impactor pressed one knee to the dirt, kneeling in front of the most distinctive of the ‘Cons, the one who no one could forget once they saw him. “You’re the boogeymen of the Wreckers.”
Each of them flicked their chins up at various degrees. Only the one he was addressing, the one directly in front of him, dared to raise his horned helm with a fanged smile.
“Suppose so… and you’re Impactor. The dumbass who fell for the obvious bait.”
[ SUICIDAL SQUADRON LEADER MACABRE ]
[ マカーブレ ]
There was a clack as the emblems threaded around his neck jostled together. Autobot emblems, all of them pulled together into a mocking necklace. Each one torn from someone’s chest, just above the casing of their spark. Impactor wondered if the sparks were still alight when what they’d sworn to protect was ripped away. He wondered which ones belonged to his brothers. He wondered if he could choke Macabre with them, drawing the necklace chain so tight around his throat that it would cut right through his spinal strut.
“I’d behave yourselves if I was you. I can make the journey back to Cybertron very uncomfortable for you all.” Impactor relished the warning, knowing just those few simple words would save him mounds of paperwork. That was the only reason Wreckers ever gave warnings at all.
Someone scoffed, though there was no clack from Macabre’s neck this time.
“As if the journey matters.”
[ NIGHTMARE ENGINEER FERAK ]
[ フェラク ]
“Same thing’s gonna be waiting at the end of it. Few hundred thousand years in a stasis pod, then a pardon. Just like what everyone else got. I’m actually lookin’ forward to a nap like that.”
Ferak had been one of the Decepticon’s most prolific inventors, tinkerers, hardware hackers, whatever damn thing you wanted to call them. He’d created Chaotic Deathaxes, Semtex Cascading Warheads, the Nightmare Engine (which Kup had been a personal victim of, so Impactor was sure his old friend left some bruises on the mech), and all other manner of death machines. With so many accolades, he was basically the Wheeljack of the squadron…
Impactor suddenly wanted to punch him. Very, very, very hard.
“Really.” He stated the word only to prompt Ferak to boast some more about his supposed fate, so he could get the image of Wheeljack out of his head. But the rest of the squadron was apparently feeling rather brave, their vocalisers warming up to the prospect of needling their worst enemy.
“Yeah… after so long, killin’ you guys gets pretty boring.”
[ SUBMARINE WAR MACHINE TRITON ]
[ トライトン ]
It was ironic that one with such a limited aquatic alt-mode would felt so secure on such a barren planet as this. The only forms of water were lakes and rivers of molten metal- gallium, mercury, even some ponds of precious gold. They were supposedly leftovers of the Empire, the living metal literally raining down from the heavens to scar the landscape.
So many leftovers. So many remnants. So much mess, always for someone else to clean up.
“How many of us’ve you killed?” Impactor didn’t face Triton, or any one of the Decepticons shackled before him. Yet he could hear the submarine’s grin around his proud snarl.
“Dunno. I lost count around the hundred mark, myself.” He prompted giggles from the other murderers around him, even Fang let out a guttural bark of static from the vocaliser that was still bent in the shape of Impactor’s grip.
“But you remember me,” the old Wrecker said as he stood up in the dust. “You remember my team.”
“Sure do,” Macabre jumped back in, seizing the attention back for himself. “Ruination? More like ruined vacation.”
His awful pun earned racous laughter, especially from the bloated Earthquake kneeling right next to him. Though, Impactor didn’t even realise what the joke was until he went and explained it through the barks of his vocaliser.
“That’s why that other guy wasn’t around, right?”
[ REBEL SOUL EARTHQUAKE ]
[ アースクェイク ]
“Wheeljack, I think he was… yeah, he was off somewhere on a vacation. Didn’t even put a lock on the doors before he left!” Earthquake lived up to his name as the ground seemed to shake around him, as he laughed and quaked the universe-
Or maybe that was just Impactor’s head.
Spinning.
Everything was spinning.
His brothers were dead.
No one was immortal, not even mighty Cybertronians.
They were dead.
They were all dead.
Because of Squadron X, and Wheeljack, and the Decepticons, and Megatron...
And they all thought it was funny.
“Hey, where is he now? He gonna be at our trial? Wish us one last goodbye? Maybe we should thank him-!”
Macabre’s vocaliser screeched to a halt of static, interrupted by the sudden lurch of his frame. Impactor didn’t grab the necklace of Autobot trophies. Too obvious, too… disrespectful. No, he went for the second obvious handle- the horns.
Red, sharp, unwieldy, yet they fit perfectly in his scarred hands.
“Woah, woah, wh-wh-what’re you doing? Hey, you can’t-!”
Macabre’s protests were smothered by Impactor’s ped.
As it crashed down.
Then down again.
Down, and down, and down, until the face and skull beneath was shattered into pieces on the ground.
He never let go of the horns, not even when they broke off.
Impactor looked down at the jagged things, the red spears in his hands. He found them more fascinating than Macabre’s mangled face, the last pleas dribbling from the static mess of his vocaliser.
Then he turned to Earthquake, who was no longer laughing. No one was. They were too busy looking at their leader’s corpse, wondering if it was real, to do anything else.
While they wondered and slowly realised what was going to happen to them. Impactor turned the broken horns around in his grip, holding them like daggers-
“W-wait, wait, please, no-no no!”
Earthquake tried to fall back, away from the horns that plunged into his optics, right through the visor so pitifully covering them. He only assisted in driving the knives deeper into his skull, as the energon puddled down from his pierced head to the back of his throat. He gurgled through the leakage of fuel and cranial fluid, spluttering bubbles as Impactor kicked his chest plating until the seams were barely holding together. The plating came apart with nothing more than a wrench of the hands, and Impactor barely looked at the wretched spark within before he pulled it from the chamber. It crackled like an angry solar flare in his fist, one last defiant pulse before it faded into nothing.
Before it winked out, its glow hardly even matched the two suns in the sky. A spark that had already given up. How pathetic.
Fang offered the least amount of satisfaction in death. Impactor had already robbed him of his voice, unable to hear his true dying words. He was trying to crawl away, literally squirming across the ground with his arms behind his back. Impactor fired his harpoon at him, catching him in the spine and dragging him through the dirt to face his death like a true mech.
He kept the harpoon’s hook lodged in his back, using the cord that connected its hilt to his arm to form a garrote around Fang’s neck. There was no use in choking something that didn’t need to breathe, of course. But the cord was sharp metal, and the protoform around the neck was woefully weak. With enough strength, and pressure, with enough hatred for the bot around your hands…
Fang’s head popped off with a splurt of blue fuel, rolling lazily to one side. Impactor made sure the remaining three saw the spectacle. They’d already worn down their throats by screaming, pleading, protesting, bargaining. Anything they could think of that might spare them. Anything that might have worked on anyone other than Impactor.
“You can’t do this!” Triton was almost blubbering, indignant and desperate as Impactor dragged him to the edge of a molten metal river. “You’re an Autobot!”
“I was never an Autobot,” Impactor informed him, though he didn’t recognise the voice echoing in his throat. “I’m a Wrecker. And you’re a submarine. So go swim.”
He unlocked Triton’s cuffs, just to see him flail as he shoved the Decepticon into the river. Triton even tried to transform, as if he actually could swim in the liquid titanium, but revealing his internals via the process only made his death quicker as the heat fused his spark chamber to his chest, his fuel tanks to his endoskeleton, his spinal strut to his arms. Impactor ended up pulling him back out by the leg he was holding onto, throwing aside a corpse that looked more like a junkyard pile welded together.
Triton now looked like something Ferak would try and cobble together into a war machine. How ironic. But Impactor had wanted the so-called scientist’s demise to be something special, something worthy of a mech so similar to the likes of Wheeljack…
He pulled off a jagged strut from Triton’s still-burning corpse. He grabbed hold of Ferak by his horns- not nearly as impressive or useful as Macabre’s… and Macabre was dead. He’d killed him. He’d killed a lot of people. Why was that surprising?
He’d killed Squadron X. He was killing Squadron X. It was what he’d been waiting for, for so long. It was what Kup wanted him to do. Why else would he have asked Impactor to take them away?
It was what all the Wreckers wanted. It was what had to be done. It was the only way for the War to truly end. For the dead to finally be at peace…
Impactor found his hands covered in energon… his chin, and mouth, his glossa tasting sour. He’d started scraping Ferak’s protoform off his exoskeleton at some point. With his teeth. He didn’t remember doing that.
Ferak was already dead. His spark could be seen through gaps in the skeleton, and it was nothing more than a lump of coal. How long had Impactor been torturing him…?
Hopefully, for a long time. Hoepfully, Ferak suffered.
Only one was left now. The silent one. The one who probably thought he could get away from this.
[ PROFESSIONAL TRAITOR TORNADO ]
[ トルネード ]
“Wait, wait, please… p-please, wait, you don’t have to! You don’t have to do this, just please!”
He sounded so sure, for someone who was about to die. Hadn’t he seen what had happened to his friends? Did he really think anything could be done?
Impactor had to finish the job. No loose threads. No more ghosts. No more dead brothers.
“Listen to me, please, I-I-I can give you information!”
He pulled his harpoon in, held up his arm, preparing it to fire into Tornado’s chassis.
“I-I know things! About the Wreckers! About Wheeljack!”
Impactor stood over Tornado, the last surviving Wrecker killer, the last one who had seen his teammates alive. And he lowered his weapon.
“What do you know.”
It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t state it as one. It was an order that would not be disobeyed. Tornado had been scurrying back, worming his way across the dirt to get away from Impactor. Now he rolled himself so he was sitting up, with his face pointed away from the bodies strewn around.
“I know… I-I know who Wheeljack went off to see. Why he abandoned that squad to us… yeah. Yeah, I know all about it.” He was nodding furiously, as if he was convincing himself of it as well as trying to convince Impactor. It wasn’t working.
“Who.”
Tornado blinked, and he gulped as his optics darted to one side. Ferak’s half-skinned frame was next to him.
“Well… y-you gotta assure me I’m not gonna end up like… l-like those guys,” he stammered. “Then I’ll tell you everything.”
Impactor didn’t have time to be making deals. He let Tornado know this with the hook of his harpoon pressed against his chin.
“Who. Was it?”
Tornado’s vents were nothing but spastic gasps as he tried to lean back, away from the lethal point so close to his neck. “I-I-It was a Decepticon! A-A ‘Con femme!”
Impactor almost fired off the harpoon too soon.
A Decepticon…
Wheeljack had fraternised with the enemy.
During the War.
If Tornado was telling the truth.
There was every reason that he wouldn’t be. Decepticons would say anything to save their own sparks, and Tornado had nothing to lose.
But he must have known something. The whole squad had known Wheeljack was supposed to be at the base when they attacked. They’d managed to draw Impactor away with the fake distress call, but Wheeljack had left of his own accord. And the fact that he’d gone to see a femme, to pick up his spawn, was never made public knowledge. The records were open to Wreckers only.
Yet Tornado knew.
He knew who the spawn’s mother was. Who Wheeljack had left his team to die for.
He knew, because she was a fragging Decepticon.
“What... was her name?” Impactor let the jagged end of his weapon dig into Tornado’s chin, drawing a trickle of energon that was nothing compared to the pools now staining Pova’s dust.
“Let me…” Tornado dared to gulp when one wrong move would skewer his throat. “L-Let me out of the cuffs first.”
Impactor didn’t have the patience for negotiations. He pulled back the harpoon, so he could grab Tornado’s head with his other hand and slam it into the ground. The spot was sticky with Macabre’s blood, which had created a wide stain that almost reached Impactor’s own ship, and Impactor slammed Tornado’s head back down into it with each syllable that snarled from his vocaliser.
“What. Was. Her. NAME?!”
After the fifth impact, Tornado finally let the answer jolt out from his crushed skull.
"█████████! █████████, █████████, it w-was her! I swear, I swear on my spark and Primus and anything you want, it was her…!”
Impactor released Tornado’s head, leaving him in the dirt to whimper and weep. Not because he wanted to reward the Decepticon for his answer, but because the strength instantly fled from his hands.
“The… The ██████…?” The question hissed out even though he knew there was only one █████████. Hopefully there would only ever be one. She was a monster among a rabid zoo. She was pure evil among evil. She was a herald of Unicron himself.
And she was the mother of an Autobot brat.
“Y-yeah, yeah,” Tornado sniffed, “She… b-before she deserted, she… I knew she was seeing an Autobot- Wrecker! Not an Autobot, a Wrecker, s-sorry...”
Impactor paid no mind to the mistake or the stuttered correction. He was too concerned with trying to pry his digits apart from the furious fists that welded them together.
“And just how do you know this?”
“I-I was… she was in charge of █████████. Worked with Soundwave. I w-w-was in intelligence. I knew she was out to see someone. When we got sent after t-the Ruination team. We cleared the place. Downloaded data. They put me in charge… of going through communication logs. I saw who called Wheeljack. I recognised the frequency. It was her. I swear, I swear on my spark it was her…”
Tornado didn’t bother rolling himself upright again. He lay there on the ground, spilled over in his leader’s last drops of energon, letting loose the only form of life insurance he had. Impactor knew he wasn’t lying. He hated that he wasn’t lying.
“You never told anyone?” he asked.
“F-frag no, no… nothing to gain, everything to lose. She’d kill me if she found out… s-s-so I-I stayed quiet.”
So only three people in the universe now knew this dirty little secret. Wheeljack was one of them. █████████ would have been another, if she’d still been alive. Both likely wanted to take the secret to their graves.
Impactor contemplated granting Wheeljack’s wish for him. Or turning the secret into a scandal. Destroying Wheeljack’s already-tattered reputation. Ruining the brat’s life before it even began.
He couldn’t decide which option was more deserving.
“That was very illuminating, Tornado,” he drawled to the traitorous Decepticon, who was still trembling before him. “I have no choice but to thank you for being so honest… and let you go.”
He watched the Decepticon’s optics flash, just for a nanoklick, just the slightest glint of hope. Then he snatched it away by seizing Tornado by his throat, digging into the slight laceration left by the tip of his harpoon.
“W-what… wh-what are you doing…? I told you everything! That’s all I know, I swear!”
Impactor carried him to the edge of the cliff where he’d purposefully parked his ship. His peds were covered in fuel and optic fluid, and shards of Macabre’s face, and he trailed the debris of his anger behind him as he lifted Tornado over the edge of the sheer drop.
The Decepticon was a Seeker, so he should have been able to fly away from the drop without the cuffs in the way. But what waited below was not a chasm, or razor rocks, or even the mundane threat of gravity.
An ocean of molten gallium lapped silver waves against the outcrop. Impactor could feel the heat even from above. He was sure he could see Tornado’s flailing peds start to melt.
“I said I’d let you go,” the Wrecker reminded him. “And that was a promise.”
This time he left the cuffs on, as he let the last Wrecker killer plunge into the silver sea.
He tried to transform. He tried to save himself with his wings. But the heatwaves alone were enough to fry his systems, boil his T Cog into metal ether. He hit the gallium feet first, and sank into it so achingly slowly. He was burning first, his armour and protoform coalescing into the anonymous metallico around it, then he lost his balance and the metal flooded into his screaming mouth.
Like a lobster boiling in its shell.
Impactor only looked away when Tornado was nothing more than a few limbs sinking to the bottom of Pova’s crust.
He then looked at Ferak’s corpse.
‘You let Ruination die for a Decepticon.’
He looked at Triton’s fused remains.
‘You had a child with a Decepticon.’
He looked at Fang’s headless body.
‘You had a child with █████████.’
He looked at Earthquake’s hollow optics and chest.
‘You tried to defect… with █████████.’
And, finally, he looked at the unrecognisable mess of Macabre’s face. The one that had haunted him for so many centuries, now nothing more than wreckage under his foot, strewn across the surface of an organic world.
He was supposed to be happy.
He was supposed to be glad, relieved, Primus dammit he was supposed to be HAPPY.
But how, how, how could he? When he now knew what his brothers had died for?
When his moment of triumph and revenge and redemption had been so utterly ruined?
Impactor tore the chain of Autobot emblems from Macabre’s neck, almost crushed them in his energon-crusted hands. He cried, and cried, until the coolant almost washed away the fuel on his fingers, and he cried even more until there was no more coolant to shed.
The wrong people had died.
Not today. But so many other days.
The Senate wanted them all to forget. They wanted so badly to pretend that the Decepticons were no more. Because of people like Wheeljack… for people like Wheeljack.
Traitors. Deceivers. Decepticons in all but rank and badge.
█████████. █████████. He’d sparked a child with Megatron’s personal hunting hound, his chief interrogator and torture specialist. He’d brought that creature home, █████████’s parasite, thinking no one would care about the lives she had cost?
Impactor cared. The Wreckers cared. So he had dealt with Squadron X, once and for all, not just for Ruination but for all the other brothers they had slaughtered. Yet, when he returned to Cybertron, he’d be the only one who knew the whole disgusting truth. The traitor in their midsts, who’d been with them all along.
...Because he wouldn’t tell anyone Wheeljack’s secret. Only two people knew. But, one day, only one would know. And then everyone would know.
He didn’t want Wheeljack court martialed again. He didn’t even want him locked up.
He just wanted to hurt him.
And he would. One day.
Impactor boarded the Kiloton with his fist full of Autobot eulogies, leaving its stasis pods empty and Pova littered with the mess he’d made.
Let someone else clean it up for once.