INTRODUCTORY NOTE: This story was not co-authored, but there's enough "alien influence" in it to warrant a brief acknowledgment. If not for a friend managing the near-impossible - partially changing my outlook on a character - this story would never have been written in its current form. Consider it my attempt to bridge the gap between two divergent perspectives.

* * *

[CHANGE OF DIRECTION? Yes, yes!
· The Revenge of Bruticus]

Cybertron: 4 million years B.P.

She ran, away from past glories which would never again be hers, and toward an empty future. An unequalled fighter, she had been the top female gladiator in the State Games, and well on her way to claiming the Division One title, when everything fell to ruin. The Games cancelled, the war against the Autobots taking up every available resource, she had lost the only life she'd ever known - saw her fondest dreams crumble to ashes within her grasp. Her team, her family, scattered to the winds - some dead, some vanished. She'd lost track. The anguish of losing them was still too raw to face.

She plunged onward into the darkness, instinctively seeking out the most hidden pathways through the ruined cityscape of the Nightwarrens, her agile, glossy-black quadrupedal form seeming to meld with the shadows themselves, her heavy hooked claws finding purchase on the unstable groundplates and propelling her onward. The scavengers who picked through these ruins, those that detected her at all, caught the occasional glint of glossy-black tentacles, the briefest flash of glowing-purple optics, and shied away from her in rightful terror. She was a predator now, a wild creature surviving on sheer instinct, quick to make the kill, quick to move on, driven by the despair of her existence. Would that she had simply lain down somewhere and died, she thought to herself - but somewhere in the distant reaches of her past she had been a Decepticon, and some core of inner strength would not allow that ultimate surrender. She would, as she had done since the close of the Games, seek out the fuel she needed to keep herself alive, and then keep going.

The whisperings in the ruins these days were of Megatron's glorious mission to the stars, and his subsequent traceless disappearance. Oh, she heard the rumors, in her travels, but would not allow them to affect her. Her life was a day-to-day barren contest of survival; the rest, she could never again regain. She told herself firmly that Megatron would surely return, because the alternative was too painful to contemplate; she had always taken comfort in knowing, regardless of how many others from her team were lost, that Megatron at least was out there somewhere and doing well for himself. He would be back, and would resume command, and everything would be back in order. What were the other Decepticons to her, after all - somewhere far away across this broken world, and all but nonentities to her? And yet, somewhere deep within herself she was a Decepticon still, and something tugged at her - some bit of nagging guilt, some sense of duty. She pushed it aside. Her task was to hunt and kill, to move on.

She ran.

* * *

He ran, away from past glories which would never again be his, and toward an empty future. He had reached the highest of all possible pinnacles, the culmination of all his dreams and struggles - he had been Supreme Commander, with a world at his feet, when everything fell to ruin. His back had been turned for barely a moment, it seemed, when that upstart warlord from Perihellia had gathered the Decepticon forces together and driven him from Polyhex. No, not driven, he corrected himself with merciless candor. He had fled. Like the most contemptible Autobot coward, like the most rattled shellshocked fighter who had lost his warrior's resolve and sought now only, at any cost, to escape with his life. The knowledge of that disgrace was still too painful to linger on for more than brief instants at a time.

It had driven him here, to the Nightwarrens, where none would recognize him and where he could keep moving in hopes of escaping his own memories. Those that scavenged among the ruins here, scattered out of his way, not because they knew who he had once been, but simply because they saw a large, powerful Transformer tearing through the dark alleyways, and had enough self-preservation instinct to get out of the way. He was a scavenger like they were, now, living off of that which he could overpower and wrest from the pathetic wrecks that shuffled through these ruins. Would that he had simply faced his end honorably, he thought to himself, or done the courageous thing and ended it himself to rob the usurper of his victory - but somewhere in the distant reaches of his past he had been a Decepticon, and some core of inner strength would not allow that ultimate surrender. He would, as he had done since his ousting from Polyhex, find the resources he needed to keep himself alive, and then keep going.

The whisperings in the ruins these days were of Megatron's glorious mission to the stars, and his subsequent traceless disappearance. Oh, he heard the rumors, in his travels, but would not allow them to affect him. What had it to do with him, after all - the deposed commander, the one who had no right any more to show himself? Any attempt at regaining his past glory would be ludicrous now, and he wished the Decepticons good riddance without their leader. And yet, somewhere deep within himself still he was a Decepticon, and something tugged at him - some bit of nagging guilt, some sense of duty, some task left improperly done and unfinished. He pushed it aside. His one duty now was to scrape survival out of the wreckage, to move on.

He ran.

* * *

The fuel canister lay on its side like a monstrous gutted beast, leaking its vital fluids into the dark ruins in faintly glowing rivulets of energon. Beyond the razorwire-rimmed intersection and throughout the bomb-scorched surrounding alleyways, small fires flickered up and died again in the aftermath of the attack. The scavengers were not well-armed, but they were legion, and by sheer force of numbers and with the strength of desperation, they had overwhelmed the convoy guards and driven them off into the night. What remained, was theirs: the broken fuel drum, grounded forever on its ill-fated trade route, its anti-grav attachments destroyed. The scavengers swarmed over its hull like a hive of insects gone mad with the scent of life-giving fuel.

But they were not the only ones to have caught wind of this prey. Something moved in the shadows, something swift and glossy-black and deadly; twin violet lights of optics flashing on in the darkness, the rumbling of a deep growl, the glint of a mass of thrashing tentacles. Those close enough to detect the danger, suddenly froze in place in mid-fuel-collection. Anxiously, the scavengers looked around. What they thought they had detected, was gone again ... or was it? A low warning growl sounded from the deepest shadows nearby.

The rest of the group, on the other side of the canister, was suddenly distracted as well, as a great squared-off looming shape towered out of the darkness. The shadowed face, framed in a deep blue polygonal helmet, was suddenly lit by the brimstone lights of burning yellow optics, and the glint of a heavy claw-hooked battle axe in the newcomer's hand raised an unmistakable silent threat.

If these ruins held true monsters, then these two shapes were their personification - the tentacled shadow, the massive warrior with the battle-axe. Each scavenger had heard some version of the tales. None had ever expected to encounter their living embodiment - not one at a time, and certainly never together at once. The terror was too much for these broken-down wrecks that barely clung to survival; some primal fear overcame even their desperate need for fuel, and as though on a communal signal, they scattered as one into the cold alleyways.

The tentacled shadow landed atop the leaking canister in one smooth bound, facing off against the looming warrior. Brilliant-purple optics flashed bright, gleaming-white serrated fangs glistened against the darkness of the reptilian face. She growled low in her throat, her crouched stance conveying a readiness to defend her claim at all costs, her thrashing tentacles lighting up with crackling sparks of blue electricity.

The warrior raised his battle-axe and approached, a form of chiseled steel in the darkness, his bulk blocking out the narrow slice of night sky in the alleyway behind him, his optics blazing determination and menace. He too would defend his claim, against this insolent creature or against any other. He raised the heavy axe with a powerful two-handed grip---

The light dancing through the tentacles brightened to a brilliant-blue corona that threw the form in their center into an eerie relief. The jaws gaped to offer a full view of their serrated armament; the creature crouched to spring-

In the crackling blue light they froze and regarded each other, some flicker of recognition dancing simultaneously through their minds and reflecting itself in their optics. While the raised axe remained poised to strike, and the thrashing tendrils remained powered to lance out their electric fire, something in their stance imperceptibly shifted, some invisible threshold passed, some sense of knife-edged tension detectably lowered a notch.

"I wouldn't do that," the warrior finally said, with a slight nod in the direction of the crackling tentacles. "If but one stray spark strikes this leaking canister, the whole street will go up in a fireball, and we both have nothing."

The gaping jaws snapped shut with a clang like a steel trap, a warning hiss emitting from between the bared teeth, but the electric-blue light from the tendrils slowly faded. The raised battle axe slowly lowered itself in accord. They stood regarding each other in the silent darkness for another long moment.

"I remember you," the warrior said then, almost too softly for something of his size and bulk, as though speaking from a far-away place and time, the vantage point of another life. "I saw you fight in the arena. Whiplash, isn't it?"

"*You* shut down the Games!" the tentacled reptilian beast spat back in response, contempt and fury lighting her optics again to brilliant-violet shards. "*You're* responsible! Lord Straxus, Decepticon Supreme Commander! Bah! I remember you too, from that day you condescended to grace us with your presence. What were we to you - an afternoon's entertainment? Did you forget that we had lives too, and dreams? I hear you forgot that about all your troops, used 'em as resources and nothing more. No wonder Megatron ran you out of Polyhex!"

Straxus flinched at the unexpected barrage of accusation. That day at the Polyhex Arena, when he'd seen Whiplash fight ... it hadn't been an auspicious occasion. One of the many memories he'd just as soon forget. That day had marked the beginning of his downfall, perhaps.

"I-I shut down the Games because of the war with the Autobots!" he protested. "We could no longer risk putting our energies into *sporting events* when there was a true enemy to be destroyed." Finding his confidence now, in rising anger, he added, "Would you have good Decepticon fighters continue to kill each other over titles, when those skills should be turned against our common foe?"

Now it was Whiplash's turn to be momentarily taken aback, as evidenced by a sudden flickering of the optics - but she recovered quickly, and countered, "Only the strong survive. That's the law of the Games. And that's the law of the battlefield too, isn't it? Would you rather send weaklings and cowards against the 'Bots? If you'd had any sense of vision, you'd have found a way to work the Games into a training ground for your battlefields. You know - vision. Like Megatron!"

"That will be enough about Megatron!" Straxus roared, and swung his axe in a sudden slashing motion toward the tentacled black beast. The heavy blade whooshed through empty air, parallel with the top of the fuel canister, as its target leapt instantly aside and dove into the shadows.

"I didn't see Megatron starting up the Games again after he took command!" Straxus shouted in the direction that Whiplash had disappeared. The reply was a deep growl from somewhere close by, rumbling with warning and resentment.

He forcibly relaxed his grip on the handle of his axe, trying to regain control of the fury that threatened to cloud his thinking. Whiplash had said too many things that stirred up the wrong memories. That day at the Polyhex Arena - the amphitheatre had been attacked by Autobots, hoping to take out the Decepticon leader and his top officials, all of whom had settled themselves in the balcony far above the crowds for an enjoyable day of gladiatorial bouts. He'd never seen the attack coming, had no advance warning at all. Suddenly explosions blossomed in the stands, one of them taking out the balcony supports and sending Straxus and his advisors plunging ignominiously into the crowd of spectators below. Some of those spectators turned out to be Autobots in disguise; suddenly they seemed to be everywhere. Caught totally unawares, and well out of practice in direct battle situations after his years in the stronghold of Polyhex, Straxus struggled to muster some control over himself and his startled troops - but it was one of the gladiators who rallied the Decepticons, both fighters and spectators, to repel the attack. Straxus remembered the image vividly, still - the powerful silver form offset against the roiling black smoke of the explosions, a gleaming scimitar raised in one hand and a massive fusion cannon linked to his other arm - a figure that seemed to command the attention of everyone around him, enemy or ally - a figure which plunged without hesitation into battle, and inspired the other Decepticons to do the same. By the time it was all over - and it happened quickly, though it seemed an eternity in subjective experience - Straxus remembered looking down at the silver gladiator from the heights of the stands. Their eyes met for a moment; Straxus was sure he saw contempt in the scarlet optics, as though the other were saying, "You failed. You are the past - I am the future. Prepare yourself, for I will rise against you." At the time, Straxus had shaken it off as mere overactive imagination. But he'd been right.

* * *

He knew Whiplash was circling somewhere just out of sight, keeping to the perimeter of the faintly starlit intersection, her watchful gaze ever on the canister of fuel. Now and again Straxus caught a flash of her purple optics, which almost instantly disappeared again. Meanwhile the drum continued slowly leaking its contents out onto the street, where it would be of no use to anybody.

He decided he'd rather have Whiplash in sight than lurking in the shadows, even if he had to make an unbecomingly conciliatory gesture. He had seen her fight in the arena, before that fateful Autobot attack, and he knew what she was capable of. "Come out!" he called, then consciously softening the imperious tone to something more reasonable, more conversational, he added, "There's enough here for both of us. No need to let it go to waste. I don't think either of us can afford it."

For a long moment there was no reply. Had she gone? Was she simply ignoring him? The next thing he knew, she had materialized silently out of the darkness, now in robot mode rather than in her reptilian quadruped form. In the build common to most female Transformers, she was of a far more slender design than her male counterparts, her body replete in the smooth curves that bespoke of a certain voluptuousness, and her height reaching just barely to Straxus' shoulder - but upon closer inspection there was nothing delicate about her appearance. She stood with the poised confidence of a trained warrior, her form retaining the same colors as her alt mode - a deep liquid gloss-black with only her optics and a Decepticon symbol of the same shade providing a splash of purple. The writhing mass of tentacles that sprouted from her back and shoulders were the only element the robot mode had in common with the quadruped; aside from that, her alt mode might as well have been a mystery. Yes, this was the gladiator Straxus remembered. She had stuck in his mind simply because it was unusual to see a female fighter reach the upper divisions in those days ... and of course, because she had been team-mate to Megatron.

She regarded him with open suspicion, her gaze flickering back and forth between the deposed leader and the rivulets of dripping fuel. She was likely hungry, Straxus realized - who knew how long she'd been travelling, how long since she'd last refueled? - but her instincts warned her to be cautious.

Was that really what he had become? Straxus wondered. A figure to be mistrusted, to be hated for decisions which he had felt were right at the time - to be remembered only for his mistakes? How much better it would have been, not to be remembered at all.

He turned toward the canister, quite deliberately turning his back to Whiplash. Even as he cupped his hands under the rivulet of energon and drank his fill, he half-expected to feel the slash of some bladed weapon into his back. But no attack came, and when he turned back toward Whiplash she was still there, not having moved a micron, except for the continuously-undulating tendrils. He stepped back and gestured wordlessly toward the canister. Again she remained still, as though evaluating. Then, with a last wary
glance toward Straxus, she moved to take her turn at the fuel.

Both of them temporarily satiated now, they moved apart in silence.

* * *

In the Nightwarrens the laws of survival were harsh, and one of those laws dictated that one never gave up something of value while one still had the strength to hold it, and it could still be useful. And few things were more useful, in these shattered and forsaken lands, than a whole canister of life-giving energon.

Like two predators remaining in the vicinity of the kill to feed repeatedly until it was completely consumed, Straxus and Whiplash took up guard posts on opposite sides of the intersection, the bulk of the storage drum stationed between them like a boundary line that neither would cross. In an unspoken way they remained aware of one anothers' activities: when one approached the canister to drink, the other would hang back, and vice versa; when one withdrew to take a few hours of rest (that light form of semi-sleep in dangerous surroundings where one never totally loses full awareness), the other's optics gleamed watchfully out of the shadows, keeping guard. They only acted in unison when the scavengers crept back onto the scene, in hopes that the two stronger robots had moved on. Straxus' imposing physical power and heavy axe-blade, and Whiplash's claws, teeth, and electric bolts, convinced them that the new ownership was still firmly in place.

Several days passed in this manner, but there came the time when the last trickle of fuel inevitably dried up. Whiplash, crouched by the side of the container, pressed her hands to the smooth surface and caught the last drops of energon, licking them off her fingers. She fell motionless for a moment, even the steady movement of her tentacles freezing for an instant as she contemplated the next step. The free ride was over. It was time to move on, to seek new prey.

A faint sound, an instinctive sense of something heavy and ominous behind her, warned her an instant before the great blade came swinging down above her. Immediately on her feet and on the defensive, her tentacles snapped forward and lit up with crackling blue light, even as Straxus' axe slashed its way deeply into the canister, cleaving the metal wall as though it were aluminum foil. The massive Decepticon used the curved blade as a crowbar to force the container open further, splitting it practically in half, then turned to Whiplash. "Now, what did I tell you about electric sparks around the energon?" he said, and if she hadn't known better, she could have sworn there was a hint of teasing amusement in his voice.

"Bastard," was her only reply, as she powered her tentacles back down.

Straxus seemed unbothered by her response, and instead indicated the sliced-open canister. "Some energon remains." Sure enough, a few puddles of the softly glowing pinkish liquid still pooled in the inside corners, accessible now through the sliced opening.

Whiplash gave Straxus a venomous glare and crouched down again, slipping inside. She opened a small storage panel in her side and removed three cubiform containers, with which she painstakingly scooped up enough energon to fill them. Sealing them carefully, she replaced the containers and closed the panel, which melded seamlessly into her side. Sidling back out of the storage drum, she left the remaining bit of energon, by unspoken agreement, for Straxus. It would be the last act in their tacit bargain to share the catch.

"Provisions for the future?" Straxus asked as Whiplash climbed back to her feet.

"Never hurts, does it?" she answered coolly. "What's it to you?"

It was the first time they'd spoken since their initial encounter, and there had certainly been no love lost between them - but now that they were about to go their separate ways, they lingered for a moment. If only in the knowledge that they would soon be on the run again, avoiding all others, with only their own personal demons for company.

"It makes no difference to me," Straxus said. "I only wonder ... why a fighter such as yourself would choose this scavenger's existence instead of offering your services to the Decepticon army. They would feed you, give you shelter - and, don't you have a responsibility to use your talents for a good cause?"

Whiplash reacted as though he'd touched an exposed neurocircuit with an arc-welder. "You're the last guy that oughtta talk about responsibility!" she hissed. "You barricaded yourself up in Polyhex and forgot there was a whole world out here. You forgot that your warriors put their trust in you, and deserved to be treated decent in return. You thought you were the only one with all the answers. You let everyone down."

Straxus felt the anger surge up in him again, and tightened his grip on his axe. He even took a threatening step forward, a reflex from the days in which he'd often used his imposing size and bulk for intimidation value. But Whiplash stood her ground and glared at him defiantly, her own outrage overriding any sense of caution. He struggled once again for control. He was angry because ... dammit, because she was right. And perhaps she was angry for the same reason.

"Yes I did," he replied evenly to her accusation. "So you see, I can't go back to the Decepticons. But you-"

"Who says?" she demanded. "Who says you have to crawl around out here in the ruins and run scavengers off their supply caches to survive? Who says you can't make your own future? Don't talk to me about responsibility, when you're hiding out here in the Nightwarrens and letting the rest of the planet go to hell!"

"As are you!" he pointed out. "With Megatron missing, the High Command in chaos, and every fighter needed - what do you think Megatron would say, if he knew that one of the finest warriors ever to come out of the State Games, had turned her back on her own kind?"

For a moment he truly did think she would attack him. For one frozen instant they faced each other down, Whiplash's tentacles thrashing wildly around her in agitation, Straxus braced for an impact and then Whiplash spun away and transformed in the same motion, vanishing into the shadows in one single leap.
Straxus slowly relaxed his grip on the hilt of his axe, and stared after her. For a moment the irrational thought went through his mind, to call her back - perhaps to apologize for being so harsh, perhaps for no other reason than that she was the first living being with whom he had exchanged more than three words in recent memory, never mind whether those words were hostile or companionable. But she was gone, long gone already, of that he was sure.

* * *

She ran, not even bothering to keep to the shadows this time, intent only on putting as much distance behind her as possible. On this whole vast planet, with one ruined city melding right into the next, how far could she really run to escape herself? And yet she would try.

How long she continued, she could not judge, but eventually she was forced to slow, then stop. Her joints and muscle cables ached from the exertion, and she found a protected niche under an avalanche of sheet-metal which remained from one of Cybertron's old transport-ways. Foolish, she cursed herself, to compound potential injury with the senseless burning of fuel. A tired, injured Transformer, out here in the ruins, was quickly a dead one - and while she did have her small supply of energon containers now, those were set aside strictly for emergencies. She would have to hunt again. All that lingering about the fuel canister had been for nothing.

Momentarily safe in her small dark enclosure, the unwelcome thoughts came to her: What would Megatron say? How many crimes of omission had she already committed? By what right could she show herself again, let alone expect food and shelter, when she had - in some cases very knowingly - refused to come forward when the Decepticons needed her? How many lives might have already been saved by her presence, had she been among her own kind rather than mourning some lost glory out here in the wreckage? And - was it too late to make amends?

No, she wouldn't get personally involved, of that much she was certain. She had already lost one family, for indeed her team had been her only family; she was not about to adopt another, only to see them inevitably come to some tragic end. But couldn't she, perhaps, offer her services in an indirect way? Killing Autobots on the Polyhex perimeter - now that was a possibility. The current leadership of the Decepticons surely had enough trouble keeping order just now, without having to worry about infiltrators. That was one task she was good at. Just until Megatron returned. They would never need to know she was there.

* * *

Straxus had consumed the last few drops of energon, and now rested one hand atop the shattered fuel canister. His gaze swept the dark, dead-silent street. Only a string of empty bodyshells, impaled like grisly flags of desolation which festooned the razorwire between the broken buildings, swayed and creaked softly as though in the wind - their lifeless optic sockets as dark as the surrounding cityscape. For a moment he had the sense of being the last living thing on the planet.

That was illusory, he knew - just beyond his range of vision, the scavengers clustered in their hiding places, waiting for him to depart. And there were Decepticons out there as well ... fellow Decepticons, and not all of them were in Polyhex. Perhaps some of them could use some guidance, some inspiration. Could he assist the Polyhex leadership by turning his attention to the Decepticons on the fringes? Where was it written, after all, that having botched his biggest chance to support the cause, he could never have another - even if on a smaller scale? Wouldn't it compile a second crime upon the first, if he refused to even try?

He thought back to his days before assuming the Decepticon leadership, before the days when he'd begun to take his power and prestige for granted. He'd once commanded great armies; he'd been an exceptional hand-to-hand fighter. He hadn't always been an armchair tyrant! Somewhere in the distant reaches of his past, he'd been successful, admired, respected. He'd taken Polyhex back from the Autobots, no less! He'd been a damn good commander once.

Perhaps it was time he looked into being one again.

The End