“I’ll get to it, sorry, I am a long stories lover kind of girl.”
“Or how about me?” Gronius said, slapping his hands into his pumped up chest.
“Alright, go on then.”
Axis said. All things considered she was enjoying the conversation, but she felt it was starting to dragon on a little.
“Pall, I like you and all, but you wouldn’t exactly be my first pick for a leader.”
Thundercracker said in a deadpan tone.
“Anyway, at this point this experimental, super powerful weapon got created, called the SHASC. Gronius, who at that point was being pushed to a depressive state by the Maximals and some constant failings, including one of the most embarrassing failures of capturing Qingour, was given one more chance, and was elected along with other Maximals to get the SHASC from the producer to Maxima Prime’s OOC: Remember her? Remember? top scientists. On their way the convoy was attacked by Qingour and a new Minicon partner, killed everybody except Gronius (that got critically injured), and then left with the SHASC.”
“Why not?!” Gronius said, partly let down and partly feeling betrayed.
OOC: I do in fact remember her. She’s actually been the canon Prime for New Horizons for a long while now.
“Okay…”
Axis said.
“Pal, you’re a great fighter. One of the best in our rank. But fightin’ skill isn’t all it takes to lead. A good leader needs certain… Qualities. Qualities which you just don’t have. Just off the top of my head I know you’re pretty insensitive when you ain’t careful. Now I’m not sayin’ that’s a bad thing. But it just don’t make for a good leader. That’s all.”
OOC: Phew. I remember you at some point saying that you don’t want to give her the Prime title, so I was unsure when I wrote it down.
“In the end, while the Maximals were busy butting head like they always do at SHASC, Gronius and I found a lead to Qingour and to his team, the Slayercons. We found them, fought them, Gronius single-handedly defeated their combined form, but Qingour, who was already planning to to backstab the Slayercons took the SHASC and a ship and left the planet before the ToI would catch him. We got on the ship, fought him (which resulted in the ship accidentally going on light speed), and eventually got rid of him. However, we lightspeeded out way into an asteroid belt, which completely destroyed our ship.”
“Who dare to insinuate that I—” Gronius angrily started before suddenly calming himself down.
OOC: Yep. I’ve worked most of the four into NH. Maxima is the current Prime, and Autonicus and Diacon were co-council members, the leaders of Cybertron after the Great War, but before the Maximal Uprising.
“Wait, then how did you survive?”
“I overheard you sayin’ somethin’ about the new kid not survivin’ a week, in front of his lady-bird friend, while he was in critical in the medic’s office. If that ain’t the definition of insensitive I don’t know what is.”
“I was thrown into stasis, and Gronius was lucky enough to not be hit by any of the asteroids. Qingour, however, was hit in the chest by one and got killed. After a while we crashlanded on the Vex planet, and we were caught and thrown into the arena. At first we constantly tried to escape, but we were always being captured and thrown back into the arena. Gronius continued tho, claiming that he was always this close of getting away. By the end of it I stopped believing him.”
Gronius sighed.
“You Thundercracker? You of all people are judging me?”
Backbreaker was listening silently as Gronius and Thundercracker bicker. He smiles faintly as the Decepticon suggests that he could be a leader; even if he didn’t believe it himself, he was flattered, all the same.
“Bop-za-bwoop?” chirps Oddball. The burnt-orange bot had drifted over to Spotlight, and was leaning close to the bot.
“Funny. Seems like a farcy to the bot I’ve met today.”
“I ain’t judgin’ anythin’! All I’m sayin’ is that behavior like that don’t make for a good leader. I’ve seen first hand how a small group like this can fall to pieces when you put the wrong bot in charge.”
“He continued trying to escape till the day he became famous in the arena. That morning he tried once again to leave, and reportedly he was only a few steps away of jumping into a shuttle and flying away, before he was caught by the guards. I can only imagine what he was feeling. Apparently, Iota was done with this deal, and threw him in the arena in front of Skywarp, which at that point was big in the ranks. Gronius defeated him to everybody’s surprise (including mine, I’ll admit). From that day on he fights at least once per day, getting very popular in the ranks of the viewers. He slowly got used to the arena and realised that he doesn’t want to go back on Cybertron, that back there nobody cares about him, while here everybody does, for the better or for the worse.”
“Tell me, would you follow me?”
“Hmph. I’d like to see him try and fight Grimlock. See if mister big-shot would still act all high and mighty then.”
Axis muttered angrily. She was speaking more to herself than to Wildsong, but made no real attempt to make sure she didn’t hear.
“Personally, yes. But if we were tryin’ to find a leader for all the prisoners here on some hypothetical space colony, I’d say we got some better candidates to consider.”
“Nobody is foolish enough to fight Grimlock.”
“No! I refuse to let anybody else rule over us! I will do my best to get into the graces of every single bot in this arena, and I’ll be their leader!”
“Then he doesn’t have any slagging business talking about Maximus the way he did!”
Axis said angrily.
“That ain’t exactly somethin’ a good leader says neither.”
Thundercracker said under his breath.
“Maximus is just one of the long line of newcomers that thought they could beat the champion.”
“Cyclonus! Come over here!” he said, calling for his friend and ignoring Thundercracker.
“It doesn’t matter! He went out there and put himself in danger, not just for himself, but for everybody here! The least Gronius could do is show a modicum of respect, but nooo. He has to be some self important glitch head who thinks he runs the joint, all because he beat a higher ranked decepticon, once. He can frag off for all I care. With an attitude like his, it’s a mastery how he ever got any kind of respect around here.”
Axis was starting to get angry, and began to raise her voice. Loud enough for the others in the room to hear.
Cyclonus gets up and walks over to the Predacon. Demolishor followed close behind.
“He beat many higher ups many times.”
“Guys, I have only one question.”
“Oh right. Like I have any reason to believe you. You’re his sister for crying out loud! I bet he never even beat Skywarp to begin with!”
“And what might that be?”
Demolishor asked.
But before Gronius could reply, he could hear the fiery bird-bot shouting from across the room.
“Hey big shot! Eat slag!”
And was then hit in the back of the head with a half eaten energon cube.
Song watched her unfazed.
Gronius slid out of the range of the cube.
“I’m talking to you smelt head! You think you’re so tough? How about you get over here and I’ll kick your aft!”
“This isn’t gonna end well.”
Said Demolishor.
Nearby, Backbreaker groans as he slowly pulls himself to his feet.
“Here we go…” he grumbles.