#fumes

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Mirage remembers his pre-war life and his bygone friendship with a bot named Exhaust, whose demise pushed Mirage to join the Autobots…

As I roll past the black spires in my invisibility mode, the flashbacks seize me again. I catapulted back into simpler times, when the cities were brighter and my life was on a golden track. I was an athlete then, a real sportbot. Used to be engaged in plenty of racing and professional turbo-fox hunting. I pushed my physical performance in both vehicle and robot modes to the limits, demonstrating myself as one of the best bots on wheels or with a rocket-dart hunting rifle in their servos. I made a fortune on it too, more CPK units than I could spend. The money opened the doors into high life for me, I was in elite circles of society. You would not have found me chatting over drinks with commoners or enjoying the expensive shows sitting next to Constructobot or something. No, my friends were members of commercial guilds, tycoons, renowned artists, sports stars or pop-idols. Among that crowd was one with whom I enjoyed being the most

His name was Exhaust. He was really wealthy too, the CEO of Marlboor Dynamic, a company that specialised in body-modificators and exotic upgrades ( often acquired off-world ). We met one cycle at some lavish party, I don’t really remember now. All that matters is that he was my best friend. We’ve had our differences or disagreements but we always knew we could count on each other. We shared many good memories together…but now every time I try to remember them, they slowly fade away, overshadowed by the memory of how our ways were separated forever…

It began seemingly innocently, I guess. On our regular turbo-fox hunt, Exhaust told me about the lucrative strategic alliance that he decided to agree to make with the Master Consortium. He said they’ll pool their shared resources on some hi-tech projects in exchange for mutual benefits. I didn’t listen too hard, it all bored me back then. I was a naive, fun-loving fool. Also, I had no way of knowing that the Master Consortium was a front for the growing Decepticon movement, led by Scorponok. His bunch of shadowy companies clandestinely inserted themselves into chosen spheres of our society, seeking to accumulate influence, weapons, enforcers and, ultimately, total control of Cybertron. When our little entertaining hunt ended and Exhaust returned home to finalize the deal, unknown to me, his fate was already sealed

I was unaware of the whole thing for most of the time until nearly the end, so I had to piece all the events together afterward, long after all went down into the waste dump. First, there were subtle signs. I recall how Exhaust changed inwardly. More worried, serious, picked up the habit of chain smoking. He grew to need more than a dozen cy-gars per cycle. He kept blaming it on stress from the job and metal fatigue. He almost didn’t lie. His “ partners “ made him do some less-than-savory deeds for them, some very frightening stuff behind closed laboratory doors. See, Scorponok was something of a visionary, the pursuer of the next step in Cybertronian evolution. That’s why his Consortium made an alliance with Marlboor Dynamic. To have more assets to experiment with on live subjects. Few survived the ordeals, but no rumors escaped the walls of that building

I believe Exhaust understood how much trouble he got himself into very quickly. They were very dangerous bots ; he couldn’t just refuse or defy them. He needed to toe the line with them. So, he made a mask for himself. A suave, confident facade with which he tried to disguise his fear of failing or wronging them. In the end, it didn’t work on me, so it obviously failed to prevent the bots who ran the Master Consortium from seeing right through him. They looked at Exhaust and deemed him unfit, predicting that he’ll likely snap under the pressure. So, suddenly, my friend became a very expendable asset

Soon, the first blow came. Thanks to some complicated legal machinations, the C-Kar Technologies, subsidiary of the Master Consortium, absorbed the Marlboor Dynamic into itself, leaving Exhaust as the former CEO of the company that he founded himself and ran for thousands of stellar cycles ! That utterly devastated him. I talked to him in Maccadam’s soon after this. He was distraught and drank himself into grief, telling how he’ll never forget how Ego, CEO of C-Kar Technologies, along with his lackey, Starscream, officially threw him out of his own office. As he was leaving, Exhaust told me, Ego made himself comfortable in the chair while Starscream watched Exhaust. He told me that his actuators froze up from the brief sadistic grin she gave him…

That’s what you get for partnering with the people who call themselves Decepticons

Exhaust planned to go, recover what he can and sever any connections with them. It was a foolish move, suicidal even. I think he knew that, so that night he gave me his final gift : the invisibility mod that he managed to keep to himself. He said it was his way to thank me for being such a good friend, always willing to listen. I accepted it, then he left the oil house…

Now, with him being just an expendable and easily-replaceable pawn, the Decepticons chose to put Exhaust to their use as the next test subject. They made him disappear, as if in some accident…but I knew he didn’t just disappear. By this time, I wasn’t such a naive playbot as I was thirty stellar cycles ago. I knew if I wanted to find Exhaust, I must search in the place that once was known as Marlboor Dynamic…

Sneaking in was relatively unchallenging, all thanks to the invisibility mod that allowed me to slip by the guards. They were the strange kind of bots that I haven’t seen yet : uniformed purple-colored body-models built to be flying war machines. My fortune wasn’t with me as although, as always, I was in peak physical condition, I wasn’t trained for confrontational situations : unarmed, confused, scared. Luckily for me, as flybots almost detected my presence, the Autobots commenced their raid on the facility. Unbeknownst to me, I thrust myself right in the middle of one of the first battle scenes of the nascent, full-on Great War. As it turns out, a secret conflict between Scorponok’s cabal of underground schemers and Fort Max’s peacekeeping special squad had been going on for quite some time. The society at large wasn’t aware of where it will go…at least not yet…

Back then I didn’t know these things and frankly didn’t want to learn why bots shot at each other and exploded stuff around me. All I wanted was to find Exhaust. And I did find him. In ensuring chaos and distraction from my invisible self, I made my way to the lab where few surviving test subjects were held. I won’t try to recall what I saw of other poor bots who perished on surgical tables or in hibernation tubes. I freed Exhaust from his tank ; he was half-conscious, I tried to bring him back online. It kinda worked and we almost had a conversation, ready to walk away under the protection of my invisible field…but it was too late for Exhaust. The Decepticons performed the experiment on his chassis, which was supposed to turn him into a super-soldier, granting him the ability to switch his body from solid state to gaseous and back, transforming into “ living smoke “. Quantize, they called it. Unfortunately, it was the raw prototype and Exhaust couldn’t hold his body together for long. He gradually dissipated away right into my servos…until my friend was no more…

The next few megacycles were blurry for me ; all I remember is screaming, laser blasts, some Autobots busting into the lab. I got roped into helping save another victim with Warpath. We two dragged out a Decepticon grunt named Fumes. Different experiments were conducted on him, resulting in him possessing two alt-modes, helicopter and jet. I heard the poor glitch died two gigacycles later, the strain on T-cog was too much…

Before the Autobot subcommander, Hardhead, could speak to me, I turned up my invisibility and got away. I…I needed to be alone. So, I spent the night drinking heavily at Maccadam’s, trying to drown my sorrow. I was miserable as a rusted crankcase when Autobots found me. The bot named Getaway explained to me that now since I had involved myself in that mess, I was in the Decepticons’ crosshairs. They would search for me high and low until my head would be unscrewed from my shoulders. He offered me Autobot protection and the opportunity to fight back Decepticon menace if I wanted to…

What choice did I have ?

I become an Autobot

In my new role as a spy and intelligence gatherer, I learned to fight hard battles against the Master Consortium, but without warning everything changed. One cycle Scorponok fell off all radars. He just disappeared. Some say he and his clique departed off-world to scout alien worlds, looking for new ways for Cybertronians to reach the new heights of their potential. Fort Max and his most loyal lieutenants went after him. Some of us thought the peace had finally returned. We were fools. With Scorponok’s absence, a new Decepticon leader took the reins of the remaining faction. Megatron. And he was way worse than Scorponok ever was. The cities were leveled as rebranded, more openly-brutal Decepticons marched across Cybertron, aiming to bring the planet to its knees. Autobots responded in suit. Optimus Prime of Iacon took the leadership and retaliated. And as war escalated more, more and more, eventually, our world turned into drained of energy husk, ruined, lifeless…