TFs: DARE TO BE STUPID

Best alt mode or BEST ALT MODE

 

hrrrrrrghhhhhhh

Spoiler

I finally remembered to post that prompt request thing to tumblr

First request, from a person I like, and who I've had multiple pleasant interactions with

'Cyclonus making good on that promise to kill Whirl'

........dang, friend, you're kind of harshing my fictional buzz here :C

Whirl is doing things he knoms are painful in the name of what he's pretty sure is the greater good. Tailgate and Cyclonus were locked in what was fixing to become a fatal holding pattern. Whirl is one of the most consistently pro-social people in the story, once you look past the deliberately obnoxious exterior. A major recurring theme is that he absorbs damage and danger for other people. He initiated the hurt here, in the name of stopping a future hurt that would be much worse, and completely unfixable. And now he's trying to help as much as he's able with the hurt that was still sustained.

Tailgate would have probably killed Cyclonus eventually if nobody had interfered, and Tailgate would have been completely shattered.

Please don't ask me to write Cyclonus ragefully killing Whirl :C

 

more like where's the pornographic spinoff

 

Spoiler

It came through! And apart from the cyclonus killing whirl prompt (no), one of my other prompts was..... I think it was about cyclonus being a flirty playa and trying to pick up UM? I'm honestly not sure. But not only did you prompt come through, it's one of the frontrunners in terms of appeal and/or coherency :p

 

Spoiler

In theory Tailgate was standing on the opposite side of the room, so that he wouldn't get a second dose. But we don't ever get told what the range for this thing is. Tailgate got the security team that shot Cyclonus, and they were at least somewhat at a distance.

There was also the thing Velocity and Ratchet discussed about the drop from the spark boost, and without being able to properly check, I thhhhink they were saying that the closer to the epicenter you were, the longer it took you to drop? I may be making that up. I'd been wondering if this may have been a gradually escalating thing that was at first, like, generic night terrors that Cyclonus thought he could deal with, until it kept getting worse and worse and whoops suddenly he's ripping your arm off and clawing his chest open.

And ANOTHER THING about kaput. I made a supercut of his (´≖ ‸ ≖｀) moments when I couldn't sleep last night, so I need to assemble and dump those online when I get home from work. He says (that cyclonus says) Tailgate has an abnormal spark. That's a flexible word, but it's got feelings of like.... birth defect to it. We saw with Tailgate and Skids that this was a trauma thing. Also, what happened to Skids's body? I don't trust Kaput around ANYONE right now XD

(also when he bends to pick Lug's flower, his wheel... splits in two??????? so he isn't even a proper unicycle man, he's like a person with two legs who walks exclusively by bunny hopping. And what does he transform into. The people deserve answers, JRO)

he's a unicycle giraffe man, who has to do the splits to drink from the watering hole, making him vulnerable to that apex predator, the robocrocodile

 

Spoiler: LL07

Also I would humbly like to posit: Rodimus and crew get picked up by Deathsaurus, because they're gallivanting around in his dead crewmember's corpse. Tailgate gets found by the Scavengers, because Misfire deserves answers about the Necrobot being real.

And even if Fangry buried the plot where Tailgate was, we don't see him do anything to the console Kaput was using to run his medical shenanigans. He could have destroyed it, and it would have been smart to destroy it, and maybe he did and it wasn't shown because of space. But those panels are framed very nicely to not show the place the console was, and that console had a niiiiice prominent microphone attached that would let Tailgate be like help if anyone were to try the thing out of curiosity.

 

Spoiler

Especially with Tailgate having just been very personally and viciously attacked by a decepticon (which.... he started, with a super excessive attack of his own) and having been locked in his own personal trauma hell. He gets to see these other decepticons, who.... god, I love these dorks.

But they're poor and just scraping by, the end of the war and being on the losing side are really contributing to that. They didn't join up with the winners after the fight was over, they fought for millions of years for what they believed in, then got left hanging out in the cold. They know the autobot atrocities Rewind wouldn't have bothered to show Tailgate. Misfire and Spinister don't have any specific trauma things we know about, Fulcrum was screwed over by decepticons (though it was because he was a noncombatant and ran from an autobot military attack), Crankcase was screwed over by [unaffiliated third party], Grimlock was screwed over by [unknown], though he sure spent time in an autobot prison before then. And Krok was HELLA screwed up by the Wreckers, the propaganda poster boys, and Whirl's old buddies. What Roadbuster did there was bad enough that even his commanders reprimanded him, and just look at all the other stuff they let slide.

Tailgate is still prone to black and white, good and evil thinking, even if he's a lot better than he used to be. He agreed with decepticon ideals in isolation, he just got hit in the face with vicious social pushback. He's all about that autobot life now, and he's dabbled in the casually-talking-about-the-'cons'-like-he-was-involved-himself at least once. And now Fangry. But the scavengers are impossible to hate, they're adorable, they're well-meaning DORKS who are just.... people. I really do need Tailgate to stick with them.

And depending what happens with his super strength and the night spasm things, if he gets out of that hole with his super strength and joins up with them, that gives the scavengers some actual serious firepower. They've got grimlock, who is... an erratically reliable bruiser. Krok is a competent officer, but he's an everyman soldier, like Hoist talked about being. Fulcrum is technically a soldier. Crankcase and Spinister are decent enough, but nothing special. Tailgate liking these guys and wanting to help them would give them a big boost.

Also all of these dorks are ridiculous wiki vandals, they NEED to be friends now.

 

WHOA HOLD ON A MOMENT

Spoiler

Don't open the coffin - The Necrobot's pods? Killmaster's pod in particular? Or just Fangry's :V

Don't let them take Skids - What happened to his corpse? Some of the death videos talked about what they wanted done with their bodies. We hear about Lug's funereal whatsit the necrobot did, and Anode is pissed because she wasn't religious, she stopped wearing a matrix. Skids wasn't religious and specifically stopped wearing a matrix.

Don't go to Delphi - I dunno if this could apply to the Necrobot's planet in general? Or maybe fooling around on alternate Cybertron (where.... we see glitch hanging out..... like Delphi.........). But random field trip leads to distressing consequences is a repeating theme in this comic.

Don't look in the basement - The necrobot had his pods in the basement. Is there anything else? Or heck, Tailgate is kind of in the basement of the planet :P Or. Even more than him, LUNA FRICKING TWO is in the basement of the planet.

This.... is interesting. I do sure know how to stretch a connection that barely even exists in the first place, but this is a bit more direct than I'd expected.

(also tailgate is sending an important message to strangers that have no reason to know he exists, via a remote communication thing. Like how he'll have to talk to whoever stumbles across his grave on the necroplanet.)