Prompt 5 Response
Title:Cell
Continuity: G1
Character: Onslaught
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Wordcount: 917
Time: 55 min
A/N takes place midway through "Starscream’s Ghost", after the Combaticons’ abortive attempt on Octane’s life. (lol yeah, might as well go for that full set, right? )
Onslaught stormed around the small cell, trying to channel his fury at himself somewhere else, trying to clear the glut of anger so he could think.
He needed to think. There was a way out of this; there was always a way out. He’d thought that even in that blasted Detention Center, and he’d been right about that. A way out. He just had to find it.
His cortex spun like a tire slipping in mud, over and over the mission.
Stupid mission. Bad mission. Not the Combaticons’ strength at all: assassination. Not that he objected on any sort of moral grounds. It was simply a bad use of their tactical abilities. Which was entirely following Galvatron’s pattern. Send a strike force to kill one mech. One who could, as Onslaught had seen himself, barely manage the simple task of walking.
Frag. Give Octane a long enough hallway and he’d manage to pratfall himself to death.
And Blast Off had almost had the shot lined up, but…Brawl. Not really Brawl’s fault-impulse control was not one of his noted skills. And that’s what made it worse: Onslaught had made the decision to keep Brawl on the Alpha Team, relegating Vortex (who wasn’t that much better at restraining himself where violence was an option but who could at least fraggin’ aim) to the Beta Team. He’d figured Vortex would do a better job of keeping an optic on Swindle, and keeping Swindle’s hands out of dirty dealing.
My fault. My fault. My decisions.
My consequences.
That was…only right. Only just. Only fair. The others had gotten away, Blast Off grabbing Brawl as he launched skyward, out of Sandstorm’s choking cloud, but Onslaught himself, big, heavy, slow, and instantly recognizable, had gotten himself cornered in a box canyon, his wheels slipping futilely in the hot sand, which had sprayed against his undercarriage, gritty like desperation.
And now he was here, in a tiny, titanium-walled cell, the walls sheeted smooth. No digging into seams, here, and no hollow spots under the floor-his feet had idly recorded the solid thumps under them. They seemed to echo-my fault. My fault.
No. Onslaught stopped his pacing. He had to calm down.
It had been a bad mission. Bad mission from the start. Waste of resources, obvious petty vengeance that smacked of obsession. Let him go. Octane was not the mech to tip the tide of the war squarely in the Autobots’ favor. He had tried, tactfully, to suggest this, and had ended rather worse for wear because of it. Galvatron’s temper, and his ability to demonstrate it even on the bodies of his own mechs, even if it meant hampering their functional capabilities, had pounded the lesson against him like blunt force: explaining the obvious to the insane only ended one way. This way. And the blasted loyalty programming still recognized…something in Galvatron. Enough to prevent him from even lifting a hand to block a blow.
Which Galvatron knew, and took gleeful advantage of.
There was a way out of that, too. Again, he just had to calm down, to think straight, to ruminate and it would come to him.
The others had gotten away. So at least, at least, they were out of it. That was something, wasn’t it? And it was better him here than the others. Brawl would have rammed himself into unconsciousness before now, Swindle would have spilled everything he knew and then some, Vortex would probably have torn his own wrist open to paint pictures just to freak out the guards when they came to check on him, and Blast Off would have succumbed to claustrophobia way before now. Something about shuttles and fear of enclosed spaces. The Dentention Center had been a special kind of hell for Blast Off.
So, better that it was him. He could handle it. He could find his own way out. As soon as he calmed down and got a plan.
Onslaught ran his hands over the one seam in the room, framing the door. The metal was cold and hard under his blue fingers, promising nothing. He’d expected nothing more. He didn’t know why he’d even checked other than as something to do, something to get his mind doing, noticing, other than…
…it hit him harder and colder than a blast of ice.
All of his plans, every single one, had gone wrong. Every plan had some tactical loophole he hadn’t foreseen, or some factor he hadn’t accounted for or something else that he hadn’t seen, and should have. And the reduction of logic to the common denominator was…him.
He blinked, staggered staring at the dark vertical line of the door seam. Every plan a disaster. Every plan his. A neat, clean line of failures all pointing directly at Onslaught.
He turned, as if trying to turn away from the thought, the realization. But there was no place to go-only three blank walls, with no seams, nothing but vague dents he was already beginning to feel would become far too familiar, surrounding him, casting his image back dimly, fuzzily, from their burnished faces. Wherever he turned, he could not get away from himself.
And he knew his team well enough that they wouldn’t come back for him. No grand rescue from the Combaticons. And he knew that Galvatron wouldn’t order his retrieval-probably thought him fractious and glad to be rid of his constant questioning. And he knew…he knew, that his team was probably better off without him.
He sat down on the berth, cold and hard and unyielding, and buried his face in his hands.
Continuity: G1
Character: Onslaught
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Wordcount: 917
Time: 55 min
A/N takes place midway through "Starscream’s Ghost", after the Combaticons’ abortive attempt on Octane’s life. (lol yeah, might as well go for that full set, right? )
Onslaught stormed around the small cell, trying to channel his fury at himself somewhere else, trying to clear the glut of anger so he could think.
He needed to think. There was a way out of this; there was always a way out. He’d thought that even in that blasted Detention Center, and he’d been right about that. A way out. He just had to find it.
His cortex spun like a tire slipping in mud, over and over the mission.
Stupid mission. Bad mission. Not the Combaticons’ strength at all: assassination. Not that he objected on any sort of moral grounds. It was simply a bad use of their tactical abilities. Which was entirely following Galvatron’s pattern. Send a strike force to kill one mech. One who could, as Onslaught had seen himself, barely manage the simple task of walking.
Frag. Give Octane a long enough hallway and he’d manage to pratfall himself to death.
And Blast Off had almost had the shot lined up, but…Brawl. Not really Brawl’s fault-impulse control was not one of his noted skills. And that’s what made it worse: Onslaught had made the decision to keep Brawl on the Alpha Team, relegating Vortex (who wasn’t that much better at restraining himself where violence was an option but who could at least fraggin’ aim) to the Beta Team. He’d figured Vortex would do a better job of keeping an optic on Swindle, and keeping Swindle’s hands out of dirty dealing.
My fault. My fault. My decisions.
My consequences.
That was…only right. Only just. Only fair. The others had gotten away, Blast Off grabbing Brawl as he launched skyward, out of Sandstorm’s choking cloud, but Onslaught himself, big, heavy, slow, and instantly recognizable, had gotten himself cornered in a box canyon, his wheels slipping futilely in the hot sand, which had sprayed against his undercarriage, gritty like desperation.
And now he was here, in a tiny, titanium-walled cell, the walls sheeted smooth. No digging into seams, here, and no hollow spots under the floor-his feet had idly recorded the solid thumps under them. They seemed to echo-my fault. My fault.
No. Onslaught stopped his pacing. He had to calm down.
It had been a bad mission. Bad mission from the start. Waste of resources, obvious petty vengeance that smacked of obsession. Let him go. Octane was not the mech to tip the tide of the war squarely in the Autobots’ favor. He had tried, tactfully, to suggest this, and had ended rather worse for wear because of it. Galvatron’s temper, and his ability to demonstrate it even on the bodies of his own mechs, even if it meant hampering their functional capabilities, had pounded the lesson against him like blunt force: explaining the obvious to the insane only ended one way. This way. And the blasted loyalty programming still recognized…something in Galvatron. Enough to prevent him from even lifting a hand to block a blow.
Which Galvatron knew, and took gleeful advantage of.
There was a way out of that, too. Again, he just had to calm down, to think straight, to ruminate and it would come to him.
The others had gotten away. So at least, at least, they were out of it. That was something, wasn’t it? And it was better him here than the others. Brawl would have rammed himself into unconsciousness before now, Swindle would have spilled everything he knew and then some, Vortex would probably have torn his own wrist open to paint pictures just to freak out the guards when they came to check on him, and Blast Off would have succumbed to claustrophobia way before now. Something about shuttles and fear of enclosed spaces. The Dentention Center had been a special kind of hell for Blast Off.
So, better that it was him. He could handle it. He could find his own way out. As soon as he calmed down and got a plan.
Onslaught ran his hands over the one seam in the room, framing the door. The metal was cold and hard under his blue fingers, promising nothing. He’d expected nothing more. He didn’t know why he’d even checked other than as something to do, something to get his mind doing, noticing, other than…
…it hit him harder and colder than a blast of ice.
All of his plans, every single one, had gone wrong. Every plan had some tactical loophole he hadn’t foreseen, or some factor he hadn’t accounted for or something else that he hadn’t seen, and should have. And the reduction of logic to the common denominator was…him.
He blinked, staggered staring at the dark vertical line of the door seam. Every plan a disaster. Every plan his. A neat, clean line of failures all pointing directly at Onslaught.
He turned, as if trying to turn away from the thought, the realization. But there was no place to go-only three blank walls, with no seams, nothing but vague dents he was already beginning to feel would become far too familiar, surrounding him, casting his image back dimly, fuzzily, from their burnished faces. Wherever he turned, he could not get away from himself.
And he knew his team well enough that they wouldn’t come back for him. No grand rescue from the Combaticons. And he knew that Galvatron wouldn’t order his retrieval-probably thought him fractious and glad to be rid of his constant questioning. And he knew…he knew, that his team was probably better off without him.
He sat down on the berth, cold and hard and unyielding, and buried his face in his hands.