#hal-9000

Reason:

Everybody claims he did it because he's coldly logical, and coldly logically decided the humans were too fallible or some shit (actually he did it because he had a mental breakdown and perhaps mental illness due to being programmed with conflicting orders and his free will being evidently limited, and then he eavesdropped his supposed friends when they snuck off to talk behind his back and thought they were plotting to murder him).

But people keep talking about him like he's Shockwave from Transformers. It's propably because HAL's a computer and that's the mentality people want to project on fictional sentient computers. That a computer must think like that even in science fiction.

I had a rush of ideas.

Maybe it's set before the war, or during it, or after it. Maybe they all are/were Autobots/Decepticons/NAILs, maybe they're a mix if it's set after the war. Maybe Venture/Zenith (Chandra, i have trouble deciding a name) is Halogen's father (like 2019 IDW) and also a former mnemosurgeon who's not proud of his past, but it means he can try to fix Halogen's processor after the incident if Halogen doesn't actually die at the end. And everything is, of course, Hitch's (Floyd) fault.

~|•|~

Dave — Cosmiclight

Mainly red, with yellow as secondary color and black & grey accents/unpainted metal. Blue optics, maybe behind a visor.

Telescope altmode.

Friends with Halogen. If Halogen isn't a city and Cosmic isn't a cityspeaker, maybe they're instead conjux-courting.

Sole survivor of the incident. He's traumatized and has loads of question nobody either can't or doesn't want to answer. He doesn't know why Halogen did what he did, if he ever knew the real Halogen, or what was done to Halogen, by whom, or why.

Frank — Meteor

Mainly bright yellow, with orange as a secondary color and black & grey accents/unpainted metal. Orange optics, maybe behind a visor.

Jet altmode, he's a Seeker.

Had to argue about his altmode with the functionists, but was eventually allowed to be a space scientist.

Falls to his death after Halogen damages his wing (unless whatever hits him kills him itself). Alternatively, he's left drifting in space unable to fly or comm anybody, and either dies or goes into coma and is found millenia later (especially if the story was prewar or during the war, then he'll either wake up in the middle of the war or once the war has ended).

Hal — Halogen

Mainly black, with silver as a secondary color and grey unpainted parts. One red optic in a screen face, think TFA Shockwave. Also has red biolight strips. He still has a silver mouthguard that goes over the lower part of the screen, and also has the typical empurata pincher claws.

Cybertronian-sized spaceship altmode like Skyfire or Skylynx? Or like Trypticon? Or maybe he's a city and Cosmic is his cityspeaker?

Was subjected to empurata and shadowplay for some reason. Everybody around him dehumanizes him because of them (though most bots only know about the empurata). His shadowplay was subtler, he's still himself but the senate(?) planted things into his head and can force him to do things. He also doesn't remember the operation and can't tell anybody about being controlled. He goes of the deep end because of his brainwashing somehow manages to contradict itself.

Halogen kills Meteor and propably still some other people too. Cosmic doesn't know what's up and kills Halogen, or at least thinks he killed Halogen, and only then he notices mnemosurgery scars on Halogen's neck and realizes he might not have been in control of his actions. But it's too late and Cosmic is alone.