“No no, that was Sherma Bridge,” Backbreaker corrects him. “The Battle of Thunderhead Pass happened later. Way different.”
The simulation staggers backward as one of its eyes is shot out. It emits a pre-recorded cry of pain in a close-enough imitation of Backbreaker’s voice, bringing its free hand up to its face.
“Makes sense. That reminds me. Do you know where the good ol doc is? I’ve been looking for him.”
“Well then tell me about it!”
Maxinus said eagerly. Axis smiled and rolled her eyes. She was happy to see him so excited, but all this war nonsense sounded the same to her.
“cough no idea, he just had to go.”
Backbreaker looks up at the ceiling, recalling the events of the battle.
“The Battle of Thunderhead Pass happened a few millennia (OOC: I don’t know how long the war lasted in this universe) into the war,” he remembers. “It was just before I got captured by bounty hunters and shipped here.”
“Well the next time you see him, let him know I need to talk to him. I have some upgrades in mind, and I cant do it without the doc’s help.”
The blue sports-car bot pulled out a piece of paper, with a crude drawing of a resigned version of himself.
OOC: Imagine this design
With the artistic sophistication of something Sokka would design.
Maximus looked with wide eyed fascination, waiting for him to go on.
OOC: The war lasted for 4 million years, as most fiction has it. However, very few lasted from start to finish like Backbreaker did. Most of the war era bots alive today were born during the war. Hotshot, Railfire, Bumblebee, as some examples. There are some exceptions of course, but most bots who saw the begining of the war, didn’t make it to the end.
“Well… good luck I suppose? You’ll have to get in line though.”
“Why’s that? I thought the doc bot patched you up.”
“I need a better cough energon pump. This one is a cough rush-job replacement” she explains.
“Oh. Yeah, I’d say that’s probably a bigger priority than my upgrades.”
“Some 'Con scientist named Thunderwing got the bright idea to try and make himself some kinda ‘biomechanical exoskeleton’ or whatever,” Backbreaker continues, frowning. “They tried explaining it during the debrief, but I wasn’t paying attention. Anyway, Thunderwing spends a decade or two putting this thing together, harvesting biomass from organic creatures and grafting it onto this spare chassis he had, and when he puts it on for the first time- whaddya know! He goes bat-slag insane.”
“That sounds disgusting.”
Maximus remarked. Though still fascinated all the same.
“He wasn’t much of a looker, yeah,” Backbreaker agrees, chuckling.
“As a partial organic myself, I can tell you its not that bad.”
Axis cut in.
“I didn’t mean-… what I was trying to say was-” Backbreaker stutters, afraid he’d accidentally said something offensive.
“Relax. It’s fine. I’m messing with you.”
Axis said with a bit of a laugh.
“If I remember right, the exoskeleton you’re talking about is pretender tech. Which was what us maximals and predacons were based on. At least in part. So it makes sense that the first go at a technorganic construct would be a mess.”
“And a mess it was,” Backbreaker says with a nod. "A darn powerful mess, too. The 'Cons tried to contain Thunderwing after he went nuts, but they couldn’t hold him. He leveled six blocks of Kaon and went on a rampage, eventually coming to Thunderhead, where my battalion had been trading bullets with the Decepticons for about a month.
“See, at first, we thought he was there as reinforcements for the 'Cons. He was big, loud, and was packing enough heavy weapons to bring down a titan. We thought we were done for, but then he started tearing into his own guys.”
“Sounds terrifying.”
Maximus remarked.
“Scarier than the time I fought a driller-worm.”
“It got worse,” Backbreaker continues. "pretty soon, Thunderwing started going after everything that moved. My battalion and the 'Cons we were fighting stopped shooting at each other and threw pretty much everything we had at him, but all it did was make him angrier. Me and a few other bigger bots were eventually ordered by the commanders on both sides to cover our retreat, until command could send in Omega Supreme or something else that could put Thunderwing down.
“Aaaand that’s when I made what is, to date, possibly my stupidest decision of my life- and I’ve been around a while, you understand.”
“What did you do?!”
Maximus said, practically on the edge of his seat. Both figuratively and literally.
“I threw a rock at him,” Backbreaker says with a smile. “Told him to pick on someone his own size- never mind the fact he was nearly three times my height, and this was before the Vex shrunk me down.”
