#sixshot transformers

“Ship upon us! Three knots off th’ port, bearing the crimson flag!” Scope cried from the crow’s nest, the call piercing the sea-bluster, travelling down to Scourge. Not two weeks out from the Strait of Epsilon. Lucky them, Scourge thought, and whistled his crew to order, sending them scrambling for their preparations. For all the chaos it was, this was just routine, as comfortable as rising at the break of day.

Finding ships to plunder was an educated guess at best, and blind luck at worst. Typically, most of the treasure fleets followed a general route; the fastest or shortest passage across the Sea of Cybertron where the winds blew sturdy and consistent. Royal fleets were often the most consistent along these routes, the most prolific of which came outbound from Cybertron and the hegemony of Master. But to catch a ship along the route was difficult, for no pirate could accurately tell when a ship was bound to make a rendezvous: none of Scourge’s former masters had ever been quite so on the nose, much less Scourge himself.

The best any captain could do was patrol across well-sailed water, looking for a hit. Sometimes an unlucky crew could go weeks without so much as spying another ship- other times, they came as quick as rain. It was all one could do to be ready when a hit finally appeared on the horizon, for it might be the only one they came across for whoever knew how long. 

This vessel in their sights was not a very wieldy one–a galleon, perhaps, quite a ways larger than their own ship, and slower by tenfold. What they did have going for them was a decently robust cannon system, however, as The Fleeting Sweep cut through the seas towards them, and the first of the shots rang out from across the gap. 

“Damn, they bite back.” Spindrift noted, hauling his last crate of harpoons onto the deck. “Should I go back for the pyrotechnics? We could set their sails ablaze, leave ‘em sitting ducks.”

“And risk their cargo blazing with ‘em? Absolutely not.” Scourge huffed. “We’ll take them on just fine without; once we clear their cannon-range, they won’t even be able to lick us ‘fore we have them boarded. Scope! How many men aboard?”

 “Maybe a dozen? They weave like minnows!”

“A dozen! Somebody on Cybertron’s been playin’ risky. That’s hardly more than us on a ship twice our size!”

The Fleeting Sweep swung across the waters, the merchant ship now almost dead ahead as it attempted to evade, but to no avail. Merchant ships were always a game of risk and reward, mostly on the merchant’s end; if a company wished to save on the cost of labor and transportation, they cut back the crew and cannons, or sent out bigger ships. It meant they could run more cargo per voyage and dole out less pay, but it also meant braving the mercy of the seas with less to defend themselves with- which made them slow, easy prey for a captain that had tangled with the Kraken for fifteen years at sea. For what was cannonfire in the face of monstrous tentacles? And what was twelve men to a leviathan a hundred times the size?

The harpoons, tied down by rope this time, whistled across the gap between ships as The Fleeting Sweep soared into the boarding range of the ship, and each spearpoint found its mark within the sturdy shipwood, anchoring the vessels together. As quickly as they had drawn close, Nightbird was up the mast with the rope ladder, hurling it to tangle over the ship’s railing and then throwing herself from the vessel to the victim herself, sword brandished at the sailors approaching to interlope, buying enough time for her crew to shimmy up with their swords. 

“Ahoy, dear merchants! So kind of you to share the festivities with our humble crew!” Scourge jeered, swinging himself over the railing, eyeing the captain and the flintlock wrapped around the man’s hand, crew in tow. So the company hadn’t left them so unarmed, he thought. “Drop them weapons now, and ye might still make it home to yer families in one piece!”

“Eat blackpowder, you charlatans!” The captain snarled, and the Sweeps scattered as the shot of the flintlock rang across the deck, and the tempo of battle swung into score. 

Scourge made his beeline for the captain first, weaving around his crew and the noise of the sailors as one, two, three more shots zipped across the deck, missing their marks. The fools, he thought: blackpowder flintlocks were only really good for cross-ship shooting. At a close range, they missed wildly and took far too long to refill. 

The captain knew this, of course, and dove back behind the mast, stuffing another pellet-bag into the barrel, the muzzle flipping up to aim directly for the pirate’s chest as he lunged. Scourge swung just as the trigger was pulled, the lead charge barrelling straight towards his frame, and then with a flick of the wrist, deflected harmlessly by the blade. 

Not nearly as cool as cutting the pellet in half, Scourge thought, cutting the useless firearm right out of the captain’s hands with an auxiliary slash of the cuirass. Wine-hued blood bloomed from the slice, and the man yelped as his left hand raced to save what was left of the right. That was enough of that–he wouldn’t be a threat any longer. Just like the rest of the crew, still engaged with his own men, whom were hardly standing a chance. The cracks of gunshot had died down to the slashing of sword-metal against metal, but close-range combat was still not enough. Not for a crew as weathered as his. 

“Hah! What a thrill!” Swashbuckle cheered, hammering the pommel of his sword over the head of one of his victims. “I haven’t had a proper brawl like this in furever!”

“Surely ye mean a mere fortnight,” Spindrift called back, yanking the sword out of another’s hands with the tip of his blade. “For all ye ever fancy is picking fights, brother!”

“But I wouldn’t pick fights if it weren’t always so fun. A shame it must end so quick-”

“-but now comes the real fun!” Scabbard crowed, throwing his sword to the side. His skirmish had concluded in his victory, though he was bleeding from his shoulder, but it couldn’t matter less as his eyes turned to Nightbird, scurrying across the deck to pull open the hatch. With the crew now defeated, it was time to claim their spoils of war. “I’ll load the loots, while you all secure the crew!”

“Like hell we shall, you hardly fought!” Sliver yelled back, racing across the deck to beat him to the chase. She threw herself down the step-ladder as Nightbird wrenched the trap door open, landing with a tremendous crash as the rest of her brothers piled in like dogs. 

“And none of ye’ll watch the crew?” Scourge called after them, leisurely strolling across the deck, kicking weapons out of reach of the groaning sailors. “Damn ye greedy lot.”

It wasn’t much of a big deal. By the time half the downed men came to, they would all be but a speckle in the breeze, their spoils stolen. But still, somebody needed to play look-out, and today it was his turn. He chuckled as he watched his siblings raced back up the hatch, one by one just like ants, carrying a box apiece, Nightbird bringing up the rear. She’d donned herself in a new headscarf.

“You found something ya like?” 

She nodded, and held up a chest filled with similar draperies, all presumably silk by the look of them. Formalwear for the equinox, he noted. Those would sell at a lovely price in any of the warmer ports down south. 

“Good eye. Bring it down!” He approved, and she turned to scurry off with the chest- but not before he stopped her and selected a piece for himself, a lovely lavender cowl. An indulgent little festival gift for himself, he said inwardly. And he did quite like the color.

“You- you bastards’ll pay with your heads for this,” Scourge turned his head to the sound of the raspy voice of the captain, barely standing on his two legs as he grasped his ruined hand. “If not today, then before the winter ends, when the Prime has you strung up for your treacherous thieving…”

“I can assure ye that my crimes are for a quite noble cause.” Scourge chuckled grimly, watching his crew race back for seconds amidst the bodies. “And if I were any other captain, perhaps I’d kill ye and your crew, but I’ve really not got the mind to clean more blood off my boots.”

“And what could a thief know about nobility when it is my family that will starve this coming winter?”

“Well, that really isn’t my problem, but yer always welcome to try and take the cargo ba- hm. Hold that word.” Scourge halted the thought with the appearance of something new in his peripheral. Far in the distance on the horizon lay the telltale sparkle of another set of sails. Of course, it was also up to blind luck if another ship were to come across an altercation like this, and not just an anterior convoy ship, or one of the company’s assigned guardian vessels, but another interloper altogether. 

Which was to say, other pirates.

The ship looked almost mercantile at a glance–relatively fancy, hardly a speedy build, and maybe twice their size from that distance–the only indication of shady intention being the lack of a national flag atop the main mast. He squinted harder. That was no nation’s trade fleet vessel. The bold figurehead strapped to the bow slowly lurched into the line of sight–an angel with a wolf’s head. The dreaded brig known as the Wing-Wolf.

“Sixshot. Just our luck that he’s come to scavenge what we started,” Scourge growled. He whistled to his crew, all between ships and cargo-loading, and pointed to the horizon. “We’ve found ourselves in treacherous waters. Load up what we can; we’re getting clear before those fools can come plunder us any further.”

It was nothing they hadn’t seen–or dealt with–before. Scourge and his siblings had stood plenty of ground against their fellow privateers from the day they started on their first smuggling rig. From the patchwork fleets of Rum-Maj the Barrel-Scraper down south near Junk, to the late menace of Turmoil, back before his capture by the Cybertron Navy: they’d dealt with many a varied threat. The last crew they had worked for had been especially notorious for their provocations; being aboard that vessel had taught them enough about how to deal with such challenges. 

But Sixshot was a different breed of nasty. While most privateers, Scourge included, tended to steer clear of a needless fight, Sixshot was more of an ambitious bully, clearly one who’d heard too many tales about the late Pirate King in his youth. As such, he seemed intent less on the profits of privateering and more on establishing his dominance upon these waters, surveilling the waters like a shark to sink and slash any poor fool that came across him. And what he lacked in experience, he made up for in sheer numbers with his crew, his Sea-Wolves.

And numbers he really did have. They were almost fifty in number, maybe more, from the last time they had confronted Sixshot, and the captain was always taking on more. Though perhaps it was the drastic mortality rate that drove the necessity of such across his conquests. But even a knave with a sword was a dangerous one.

Scourge could almost hear the cackling of that dreaded crew on the western breeze as his brothers abandoned the cargo hold, leaping up the stepladder and back onto The Fleeting Sweep, the harpoons cut loose from the merchant ship just as they heard the enemy’s own hooks whistle from across the ships. Sixshot, thankfully, had gone for the easier steal. 

“They’ve not noticed us, methinks. Set sail!” His men scrambled to action, hoisting the sails into position and catching the breeze, disappearing into the mist. The Fleeting Sweep caught wind in its billows, picking up speed, just as the first round of the cannonshots rang out from across the gap.

They’d been spotted after all.

There was a terrible cracking of wood as the top of the main mast splintered, falling on its side, the sail coming down with it. Scourge spat a curse–Sixshot hadn’t just taken the other ship, but had the manpower to bring it to arms as well. The dreaded cannonball had made its mark, at last, taking their main method of escape with it, and now even the merchant ship, with its large and cumbersome size, could catch right up to them with ease. 

Not that it mattered, because Sixshot’s ship itself was still on the move, rounding the merchant vessel to intercept their bow and box them in on two sides. And even as they tugged at the rigging, imploring the crippled sloop to turn tail and flee in the opposite direction, the shadow of the glittering Wing-Wolf towered over them all too soon, their white-helmed captain peering down over the deck at the floundering privateers from amongst a crowd of jeering deckhands, his imposing frame draped in exotic violets and teals.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the life-raft of privateer wannabes!” Sixshot laughed, brandishing his rapier from above, unfazed by Scourge’s snarling expression. “Don’t mind if we do, do ya?”

“Just try it, and see where your head ends up!” Scourge growled, slashing his cuirass towards the invading captain. 

“We’ll try, alright!” Sixshot met his gaze, malice glittering in his eyes, and threw himself from ship to sloop, catching his blade on the sails to slow his fall. “My Wolves, come and get your prey!”

At the call of the order, hell broke loose its chains, and the Sweeps retreated to the far side of the ship- for their invaders threw themselves like hailstones, charging to wreak havoc across their dear ship.

“The loots!” Scabbard cried out. “They’ll plunder what we so rightfully stole!”

“They can’t take it from us ‘less they have a way back up to their own boat,” Scope replied. “Which means-”

“They’ll be comin’ for our heads first, so we beat ‘em to their own. Leave none alive, Sweeps!” 

With the swing of the sword towards the oncoming interlopers, he led the charge, his cuirass poised for the blight himself, slicing down towards Sixshot’s own frame as the rival captain met him head-on.

“Oh, I don’t wanna have to kill ya crew. But it don’t mean tha’ I won’t!” The invader met his blade with a clang of steel, and thrust forward with his rapier, aiming for the vitals. 

“Like ye weren’t the one to raid us?” Scourge parried his blow cleanly, stepping back on the deck to create space and feint to the side, Sixshot’s left. The arrogant buccaneer was strong with his rapier, but weak with his non-dominant side. He just needed to stay low and keep clear of the gleaming blade. “What do you want anyways? Other than my boot up your arse?”

“Same thing I’ve always wanted, Scourge, the whole wide sea fer me!” Sixshot crowed, his sword plunging through the space Scourge’s torso had just occupied. “And perhaps the rest of that ship’s loot would do too!”

Scourge replied with a firm kick to his knee, sending him stumbling back. In that moment, he managed a glimpse of the rest of his ship and the chaos unfolding across, as Nightbird flung herself across the rolling deck, booting a goon away from her left and into Swashbuckle’s giddy slashing while she fended off another two attackers, hammering down against her cuirass in rapid tandem. They were bigger than her, and bested her in strength, but she still had one hand to play at- and that was her nimbleness.

Quick as a fox, she whirled around in her step, ducking as she slashed her blade out at both of her attackers at once from below, narrowly clipping one. The wounded invader yelped as blood gushed from his thigh, just in time for Scabbard to step back from his own battle and body-check him over the railing. In perfect response, Nightbird stepped in tandem, covering her comrade’s own blind spot and meeting his attackers with her sword. The opposing man’s saber bounced off her own, missing the Sweep’s shoulder by a mile. This attacker wasn’t as brutish as the other, and she took him on in Scabbard’s place as he took hers, the both of them exchanging steel blow-by-blow. 

It wasn’t long till her beady eye spied the opening she had been looking for. Her opponent leaving his side open, Nightbird swept his leg, knocking the pirate off their feet and slicing them open. The exchange was over, and just in time for her to bring her blade up, bracing as another pirate flew across the widening ship gaps, slamming her sword down on her own with a bone-tingling CLANG. 

“Not bad!” The impact of the blow sent Nightbird staggering back, buckling her knees and forcing her into retreat. Her new opponent was one-eyed and dressed in purple, and more aggressive than the others. She did not let up after her first strike, slicing through the empty air as Nightbird scrambled to dodge and exploit, scanning for openings. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, shame that it won’t be there much longer!”

Nightbird responded with a low sweep with the sword and a quite rude gesture with her hands. The instigator scrunched her face in offense and parried, pushing forward and forcing her to scramble back further. 

“Not the talking type? Pirate got your tongue?” She mocked, miming the cutting of a tongue with her free hand. Nightbird responded merely with the one thing more appropriate, lunging forth with a slash to the face. The lady in purple swiped her sword out of the way, but not before the tip nicked her cheek, drawing a trickle of crimson. But it did not deter her, as she leapt forward, pushing into the first mate’s melee range, intent on getting too close for her to flee and cutting her down as she tried. 

Nightbird fled the brazen attack, darting back to the stairs of the ship’s helm, exchanging steel every few steps as she was forced onto the defensive–and body-checked as one of Swashbuckle’s victims was thrown into her, her balance capsized, and she rolled to the ground, barely missing being sliced by her own weapon.

Her opponent swang down, giddy with animosity, and there was the crude thunk of steel through flesh. But it was the body of her own comrade that she pierced as her blade connected, the chest of the fallen pirate shielding Nightbird for just the moment she needed to regrasp her blade, and fly up the stairs, but not fast enough. The glint of the blade struck like a snake, slicing her across the calf, her attacker quick on her heels still.

“Oh, do keep running! You make this a fun hunt!” She cackled, the sword spraying ruby droplets across the deck, Nightbird almost bowling over from the surprise of agony shooting up her left leg. There was no more running from this. She backed up, and backed up further, and found her back hitting the railing of the stern of the ship. If she didn’t end this quickly or retreat to the others, she would find more of her blood spilled across the deck of this ship. And she had no intent on letting that happen again.

Hopping on one leg now, she raised her cuirass once more, meeting the lady’s with a noisy clack. Immediately, she pushed forward, closing the gap before her attacker could press in, and this time slammed her knee against the stomach of the she-wolf, drawing up a pained retch and sending her flying back, sword flailing up and out of the way. 

Finally, the opening she had sought, and she took it without a moment’s thought, her sword slicing down in a clean arc and severing her sword hand at the wrist, disabling her for good.

Blood splattered down her front as the wail escaped her defeated foe, sinking to her knees in a feeble attempt to reclaim blood and hand. Nightbird brought her sword up to finish the job, and in the instant before she could–was struck aside by another foe. 

Tumbling back to the deck, she scrambled to her weapon as the new attacker made for her head, Sliver on his heels right behind him, and the threat of the woman was lost as one battle traded for another.

– 

So his own crew was faring fine. It was Scourge himself who was struggling the greatest by his glimpse at things, between strikes at Sixshot and the clumsy dodges of slicing metal aimed straight for his neck and his heart. He nearly slipped, his back-steps scrabbling in spilled blood, giving his enemy the perfect opening to cut his shoulder, tearing a bloody gash into his new cowl. Scourge growled in frustration, the captain across from him snickering in mockery, though the man wore his fair share of wounds himself. 

“What rags y’wear, ya washed-up wreck! Surely y’should care for yer silks more!” Sixshot called to him, puffing out his chest and angling another blow for his chest. 

“As if your own garb hasn’t been torn to shreds, you louse!”

“Watch who y’call a louse, louse!” Sixshot snapped back. Scourge gave him the middle finger, just as another idea popped into his head.

If he really wanted this thorn in his side gone, he had to strike where it would truly hurt Sixshot the most: his pride. And what greater pride in the sea was there but a man’s ship?

Right as it stood now, the Wing-Wolf had not grappled to their ship to board, but had merely made a very close pass by their near-unmoving vessel. And now it was fighting the winds to circle back for another round, and another delivery of brutish buccaneers to fight. But between both these vessels and the merchant ship which they had so quickly taken command of, there wasn’t yet enough crew to deal with a real catastrophe…

“Nightbird, charges! Quickly!” Scourge cried, imploring his fastest runner to make for the lower hold. He darted away from Sixshot, throwing himself over a deckside crate to slash away her enemies, giving her the cover she needed to run for it. Well, as quickly as she could, as the trail of blood behind her suggested. “As many as you can carry!”

“Fool! Y’really think ya’ve got the time to fire back at my craft? We’ll keep you fools far out of reach of yer own cannons yet! My Wolves, set their powder alight!” 

“Heh, cannons? And whoever said a mite about cannons?” Scourge snickered. Almost right on cue, his first mate sprung up from the hatch behind him, her arms clutched full of fireworks. Scourge flung his sword to the side, hand outreached to receive the paper packaging of gunpowder as the flint and steel revealed itself in his other hand. 

“Huh- no! NO!” Sixshot’s face fell from behind veil of his cowl, in the most satisfying change of tides Scourge had felt all day. The brute lunged forth, thrusting his rapier out to hinder his enemy, just in time to meet his blade against Spindrift’s, as Scourge’s wrist flicked out with the flint and set a spark to the wick of the pyrotechnic, and with all his might, hurled it across the gap in the ships.

There was a moment of terrified anticipation between the two captains as the wind, in all its grace, carried the paper explosive across the breeze. And then, the world burst into color and flame with a furious CRACK.

The explosion was enough to throw the visions of all who witnessed it into blank-white turmoil, but the effect was immediate: the shouts and screaming began even before Scourge’s vision could return to witness it for himself. Aboard the gilded Wing-Wolf, the shrapnel of red-and-pink flame had found its nest within her gleaming sails, and the embers had started to catch.

“What have you done?” Sixshot dropped his sword, running to the railing without even a second thought to his own safety. Now the choice was his: stay and fight on this tiny vessel, or try and put out the fire onboard his own. But if he had any reservations about staying to finish the deed, he never expressed them. Swashbuckle took the blind opportunity to run in and shove him by the shoulders, toppling the man overboard.

“There! That’ll take care of that!”

“You fool!” Scourge cried. “The brute can swim!”

“Oh, can he? Well, find me a flintlock n’ I can load him full o’ lead, then.”

“No, to hell with him now.” Scourge replied, taking another firework from Nightbird’s hands and lighting it. “We need to flee his damned crew before they take the hint and set us ablaze in favor. Quickly, the buntlines, trim the sails the best ye can, and throw these damned Wolves off my deck!”

With a nod and a leap to action, the Sweeps all scattered to position, as he hurled the second rocket towards the merchant ship. That would be enough of a diversion to get them the distance they needed and cut the day’s losses. And stunned as they were, the remaining pirates standing, blinded by the noise and the light, were none to keen to stay put.

One by one, as Sweep after Sweep charged their reclaimed ship, the leaderless invaders hopped deck, splashing into the sea below, the waters filling with bodies and blood.

—

Clearing Sixshot’s range was not difficult, even with crippled sails, when the winds blew favorably–a much-needed silver lining to a plunder gone sour. And now, all that remained of the day’s skirmishes was the clean-up. Of the scraping of blood and remaining bodies off the top deck. Scourge really was not in the mood to clean up Sixshot’s final mess for him today, but dried blood was even more of a pain to scrape away the next morning after. And it stunk, too.

Sixshot’s bloodied lackey groaned in plea uselessly as he hoisted the body over the railing, dumping the man into the inky seas below with a thick plunk. He found it hard to have remorse for the dying man who had helped ruin his day, but there was some regret all the same.

He would’ve made for some excellent Kraken-bait if he weren’t so close to death.

It was like this every face-off with Sixshot, leaving a trail of crimson in his wake. He seemed almost as terrible for his own men’s fates as he did for other crews, to everybody’s detriment but his own. Why any sea-starved knave would follow the man was beyond him.

“Captain, look!” The cry of a voice from behind him snapped him from his irritated trance. Scabbard waved him over, bloodied rag swinging in Nightbird’s direction, where she was dragging a figure to its feet. 

This one actually happened to be conscious enough to move on her own. She’d been gotten quite nastily with a bloodied stump where her hand should be, but she’d had enough coherence to tie it off with a knot of rope to save her own life. Nightbird herself was jostling her by the shoulders, pulling her arms back- not that she was in any condition to fight- and wrapping her up in the rope Swashbuckle had just tossed her. 

“Ay, this one’s fit enough to stand.” Scope remarked. “It really is a waste to have a broad like her overboarded, ain’t it?”

“She and her horrid captain have laid waste to our ship, and she oughta repay that debt with her life.” Sliver scowled. “So, what should we do with her, Scourge?”

“Ah, Scourge, is it? I recognize you.” She huffed softly, staring him down as Nightbird dragged her to stand before the captain. “I’ve heard of you and your brutes of brothers.”

“We ain’t much of a dirty secret around these seas, miss. Of course you’ve heard of the Scourge of the seas.” Scourge growled, waving a painted talon in her face. “Now, you can choose to die now, or die in-”

“Not for that, idiot. I know of your old master.” She cut him off, like he hadn’t even started his last sentence. “My father worked his crew. Once. A long time ago. He spoke to me of a set of six brothers amongst his shipmates. But I wonder if you remember him?”

“Yer father, huh?” Scourge squinted. If this was a bid for survival, she at least had an interesting approach to it–after all, it only had been a decade and a half since. But she did look somewhat familiar, somehow, somewhere. The patch over her left eye fluttered in the wind, against her stonelike, haughty facade. “So remind me, girl, what was his name?”

She seemed unaffected by his prodding, returning his gaze with an aloof sigh. “I should’ve figured you wouldn’t remember. But I suppose it has been a long time since you both served Captain Galvatron.”

As per my last rant (see Cyclonus and Exarchon: Beginning and End), I mentioned that Cyclonus was useless to the narrative outside of being a handy tool to destroy Exarchon. And I love the guy, but I stand by this fact. I wish he was more dimensional, more useful to the narrative. He has all the things he needs to be a compelling character, but it simply isn't used!

He starts out as a broken character, aimless in the new world order after the War of the Threefold Spark, and has lots of motives for revenge. Pyra Magna indirectly caused the death of his lover, Sixshot blew up the Memorial Crater- and while he did go after these two, he never followed through on killing either of them like he intended. You want to know one easy crackpot way to make him matter to the narrative? Let him kill one of them. Both of them, even!

Without Sixshot in the story, Megatron loses a powerful lieutenant and that could easily shake some of the power balance in the Decepticon ranks. He's the leader of the Rise and (probably) instrumental to the operations of the rising Decepticon movement. Pyra Magna is a massively influential leader and general in the past war and served to be a counter to Strika, the Decepticon general- and she was released from prison for the breaking of the amnesty. While We Were Not Meant To Be Darkness was handled pretty beautifully in my opinion, (yay for Paragon!) imagine what would've happened if her actions had caught up to her and Cyclonus had actually gone through with killing her? What turmoil would that have caused the Autobots?

Additionally, by killing either of these figureheads, it puts a massive target on Cyclonus's back- dragging him into the conflict in the same way it all started. It would give him the opportunity to be forced to align with one side or another- bringing Sixshot Pyra Magna's head would have venerated him among the Decepticons, and killing Sixshot would... do something, I'm sure. I'm not sure.

But that's just in terms of the broad narrative events. What about his own personal development? His arc is about healing and moving on from the war, and killing Exarchon was an incredibly lazy way to go about it. He needs to learn to move on in another way.

He makes some progress- when he finally lets Paragon into his mind, allowing him to see the lover whom he couldn't bear to think about after 2000 years, and even more so during We Were Not Meant To Be Darkness when he spares Pyra Magna (even if most of that was Paragon's doing.) Or was it? Did it have to be? What if it was his own doing? Killing major characters aside, if he had taken anything from sparing his biggest enemy at the time, it could've been a major development point. Acknowledging that settling a score wouldn't help him, but would simply cause more issues. Realizing that this isn't the way he wants to move on. Paragon's deeds ring in his processor as he realizes this isn't what Paragon would have wanted, either. What would his friends want for him?

And Provoke. Provoke 'lives'. Let's take Exarchon out of the picture for a moment, and just say that she lived, it's her in that body. That adds an entirely new facet to his character as he finds someone to live for. (This is also a lazy addition by just dropping a character into his life to fix him, but hear me out.) You see how clingy he is to her in the subsequent issues. The two could easily bounce off each other as Provoke adjusts to the new life she's been thrown into, while Cyclonus stays firmly stuck in the past.

Could you imagine what it would do to his character if Provoke got herself involved with the current affairs? Joining the Ascenticons/Decepticons, or aligning with the Autobots, or immediately taking off for the front lines of a conflict she just woke up into, and putting herself into danger. That would drag Cyclonus into the mix for sure. And it would force him to realize that even she, a relic of the war, has moved on from it. It's time for him to find a new purpose.