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"Vehicons 79992 through 80088, fit for duty."
Vehicon 80087's audio receptors onlined for the first time to those [Basic knowledge: words], then their visual receptors showed a large [Basic knowledge: door] moving up. Then the [Basic knowledge: platform? Basic knowledge: ground?] under their feet gave out. Then [Basic knowledge: gravity] took them, and they were [Action (passive): falling].
Hard-coded programming took over then, and [Basic knowledge: transformation] occurred. [Emotion: joy]/[Emotion: pride]/[Emotion: elation] washed over them.
Colorful, playful, rays of light went up to meet them, but none hit them. [Thought: lack of luck]? [Emotion: disappointment] [Warning! Unauthorized processor thread!]
Then they crashed on the [Basic knowledge: ground], and their processor went offline.
Vehicon 80087's audio receptors onlined for the second time to a persistent ping in their processor. Instinctively, they pinged back whatever that was. Then feet [Thought: someone else's feet] → [Thought: someone else was here] appeared in their field of vision. Someone ([Correction: someone else]) [Action (active): sighed], then words arrived in Vehicon 80087's audio receptors again.
"That's why I told them to give it more time, look at that, only one left of the entire batch. (Another sigh) What a waste."
Then something grabbed Vehicon 80087's arm, and they were hastily [Action (passive): picked up]. Something [Correction: hands] (Assumption: someone else's hands]?) clasped their shoulders, then [Action (passive): turned them around].
"At least make yourself useful and shoot the enemy!" the voice [Correction: someone else's voice] said next. Hard-coded programming heard the command, and Vehicon 80087's arms transformed into [Weapon: blasters]. Hard-coded programming targeted little red shapes in their field of vision, and hard-coded programming [Action (active): fired].
Vehicon 80087's memory of their first battle was spotty afterwards. The file was filled with sounds and sights that their brand-new processor hadn't had the time to sort through on the spot, then they hadn't had the time to analyze it later. Basic knowledge had gradually been consolidated with experience, and that made their [Error! thoughts] ([Warning! Unauthorized processor thread!]) more fluid.
The second voice they had heard, as well as the hands that had guided them to the fight after their crash, had belonged to [Acquired knowledge: Commander Starscream]. Commander Starscream was a [Basic knowledge (consolidated): high-ranking officer]. The little red shapes they had instinctively shot at were [Basic knowledge (consolidated): Autobot symbol, enemy]. Vehicon 80087, for their part, was [Basic knowledge (consolidated): a Vehicon trooper, expendable, cannon fodder]. That they had survived their first battle was a miracle, according to the [Acquired knowledge: medic] who had replaced their missing arm afterwards.
But because Vehicon 80087 hadn't been deactivated, they were put to [Acquired knowledge: work]. Vehicon 80087 wasn't a specialized one, so anyone ranking higher than them [Acquired knowledge: everyone] could give them orders to follow, as long as it didn't contradict higher orders [See acquired file: organizational chart of Decepticon command]. This, in turn, meant that Vehicon 80087, like every other surviving Vehicon, spent their time being sent into battle, or sent to [See acquired file: map of Decepticon bases], or sent to retrieve one or the other item or weapon or prisoner.
"Boring! Give us examples!"
"Alright, fine."
After their first battle, Vehicon 80087 was put into another squadron. That one had had less casualties, and as such, Decepticon command had deemed it useful to teach the whole unit how to get deactivated less. So Vehicon 80087 learned things like: how to target an enemy, who to listen to, when and how to salute an officer or a commander or [Basic knowledge: Lord Megatron himself] if they ever needed to, how to do basic maintenance on their own frame and when to go see a medic.
"Still boring."
One day, Vehicon 80087 was training with their new squadron when [Basic knowledge (consolidated): Commander Shockwave] had entered the room, looked at them, pointed at Vehicon 80087's two pretend-opponents, and said:
"You two, with me."
Vehicon 132682 and Vehicon 132579 had come back later that day, unable to see or communicate in any way, then they had deactivated during their next recharge cycle. Commander Shockwave had retrieved the two cold frames, and that was the last that Vehicon 80087 ever saw of Vehicon 132682 and Vehicon 132579.
"Why didn't Shockwave take you too?"
"I don't know. Just lucky, I guess."
Battle after battle, Vehicon 80087's squadron kept losing members. Expected casualties of war, their commanding officer kept saying, and new freshly-forged Vehicons kept arriving to fill the gaps in the formation.
In one specific battle [Acquired knowledge: battle of Tyger Pax], Vehicon 80087 was the only surviving Vehicon from their entire squadron. Not that they knew it at the time. No, at the time they had simply shot at Autobots, paying no mind to details like who or where. They had tried very hard to ignore the screams of their comrades all around themself. The colorful rays of light that had seemed so pretty and playful at their onlining now meant Autobots shooting at them, which was always a high risk of deactivation and a certainty of [Error! pain] [Warning! Unauthorized processor thread!].
The commanding officer had long stopped yelling orders, because a stray shot had blown up their head right in front of Vehicon 80087. For the rest of the battle they had a streak of the late commanding officer's energon on their head, and maybe also a little bit of circuits too. Then they had a streak of Vehicon 300216's energon on their shoulder, from when an Autobot had sliced through Vehicon 300216's main energon line. Then they had their hands full of Vehicon 300219's energon, from when they had tried to slow the spill from the hole in 300219's chest plate. Then they had their own energon on their frame, from when another Autobot had blown up their leg. And then they had stopped trying to guess whose energon was on their frame, because they had spent the rest of the battle crawling on the energon-soaked ground and there was no guessing whose it was.
It was only when they heard the army-wide ping for retreat that they stopped crawling around and stabbing downed Autobots. At this point, their frame was barely functioning, and their processor was more code errors than anything else. A medic had still, somehow, found them worth fixing.
When Vehicon 80087 finally left the medbay, with a new leg and new shoulders and neck joints, they learned that the rest of their squadron had been completely wiped out. So they were sent to yet another one.
Vehicon 80087's new assignment was aboard the Nemesis. A high honor, according to their new [Acquired knowledge: colleagues], because it meant taking orders directly from Decepticon high command. Vehicon 80087 immediately saw the difference.
Incompetence, here, didn't mean a second explanation or a second chance, but immediate punishment. Some other Vehicons (mostly the late Vehicons 372012, 382014 and 392013) privately found it cruel. Vehicon 80087 was simply [Error! grateful] that officers' expectations were clearly defined. When Commander Starscream ordered them to shoot at Autobots, he meant the Autobots, not their transport. When Lord Megatron commanded that the bridge be empty while he was taking a call, Vehicon 80087 had quickly learned to slip out of the room faster than most. When Commander Soundwave pointed at a Vehicon to follow, Vehicon 80087 knew that questions shouldn't be asked. In their own [Error! thoughts] ([Warning! Unauthorized processor thread!]) that they wouldn't voice, they were [Error! glad] that Commander Shockwave had stayed on Cybertron.
And then, one duty cycle that had begun like any other, the Autobots had crashed on a little blue planet. So of course, Lord Megatron had followed.
"Was that…?"
Earth, as the local organic population called it, was a planet of very little interest for the Decepticon cause. Or at least, that was what Vehicon 80087 had hear Commander Starscream loudly complain about. Then they had stayed out of the way when Lord Megatron had reminded Commander Starscream of who was leading the Decepticon army, and they had slipped away before Commander Starscream took his [Acquired knowledge: anger] out of some poor Vehicon. Vehicon 80087 later took the late Vehicon 401010's stash of long-expired energon goodies.
"Well, yeah, it's not like they were going to do anything with it anymore."
"Exactly."
But Earth actually had some interest for the Decepticon cause. Vehicon 80087 understood that when Commander Soundwave brought them to a cave and ordered them to start digging. It was long and arduous work, but when their drill had exploded on an energon crystal, Commander Soundwave had used an audio clip of someone saying Good job.
"…You're lying."
"I swear on 401010's energon goodies, that's true."
"No. No way. Soundwave never says good job to anyone."
"Well he did that time!"
"…Wait, how long after arrival on Earth was that?"
"Let me think. …A few months, maybe?"
"There you have it. He must have been delirious from the lack of energon."
"Ssh!"
"What! He's not gonna hear!"
"Still!"
"Hey, maybe 80087 was delirious too. Who's to say they're not taking their desire for reality?"
"…Seriously?"
The discovery of energon on Earth meant that Vehicon 80087 could eat again ("So could everyone else…"), and also that the search for the Autobots could resume. But soon enough, said Autobots simply began showing up at Decepticon mines.
"Those thieves. They could have mined themselves if they wanted to eat."
The mining work gained a new layer of peril: not only was the ground highly susceptible to caving in, and the newer Vehicons highly liable to dangerously mishandle their tools-
"That was one time-!"
-now Autobots, smaller and quieter, could also attack out of nowhere. More than once, Vehicon 80087 saw entire groups of Vehicons be deactivated in a mine battle, most often their own.
Luckily, there was other work too, like fighting Autobots above ground. That was every Vehicon's preferred posting, because at least they knew where the enemy was. But here too, Autobots, although much less numerous and apparently always on the edge of starvation, somehow got the upper hand frequently. Often enough that Lord Megatron and Commander Starscream were seething about it, and taking it out on Vehicons who weren't disappearing as fast as Vehicon 80087.
And then Commander Starscream finally killed an Autobot, but Lord Megatron wasn't even here to see it.
And then the little blue two-wheeler hit Vehicon 80087 in the head during a battle, and while their self-repair worked, they completely missed Unicron's awakening.
After that, things went back to normal, or as normal as they could be after Lord Megatron had decided to focus efforts on Dark Energon. Vehicon 80087 [Error! didn't like] Dark Energon. The stuff just didn't feel right. But Lord Megatron was Lord Megatron, so Vehicon 80087 obeyed when they were ordered to move heavy crates of it or stand guard near it, and they kept quiet as the energy threatened to weaken them irreparably.
It was only luck that made Commander Soundwave require their presence on the battlefield before Lord Megatron could order them near the Dark Energon one time too many. Vehicon 80087 found that they welcomed the risk of deactivation that logically followed their assault on the Prime and his strongest remaining warriors, if it meant that they'd deactivate as themself.
"…"
"Yeah, you're right, that's not very interesting."
Afterwards, Vehicon 80087 was one of the almost-casualties on Cybertron, when the Autobots used one of their stolen relics to obliterate an entire contingent of them. Then they were one of the almost-casualties when Commander Shockwave appeared to still be functioning, and also to have once again violated the laws of nature and revived an uncontrollable monster. That one then promptly put them in the medbay for weeks. As it turned out, being almost eaten by a Predacon was not only bad for their productivity, but also [Error! extremely painful] [Warning! Unauthorized processor thread!].
(Half their limbs missing, vision compromised, audio receptors disabled, [Error! pain receptors screaming in Error! Error!] [Warning! Unauthorized processor thread!], energon burning in their lines-) [Warning! Memory file corrupted!]
(At some point, Vehicon 80087 had to wonder if their continuous survival of the most unsurvivable incidents was more a blessing [Warning! Unauthorized processor thread!] or a- [Warni-])
Blam!
The conversation was cut short when the door to the Vehicons quarters opened violently, and Commander Starscream walked in like he owned the place. Well, he did, sometimes. When Lord Megatron was absent.
"You, you, you and you," Commander Starscream pointed at Vehicons 80087, 401089, 401592 and 401164, very clearly choosing Vehicons at random, "report to Shockwave's lab."
A shiver descended on the others' spinal struts. Vehicon 80087 tried their best not to show their own [Error! fear] [Warning! Unauthorized processor thread!].
"Yes, sir," they saluted, and once more they walked to their deactivation.