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See, those people over on LJ keep giving me prompts. Mostly for smut, but sometimes, I can actually do canon compliant stuff. Lucky, lucky you, I share one with you now.

Probably only makes sense if you've been following LSOTW.

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What have I become? Kick Off asked himself, staring at the hand that had held severed head of Borehole. His twelfth battle. Twelve. Such a small number to have wrought such a change in me. But such a large number, a huge amount, when measured in sparks guttered out, energon spilt, futures laid waste.

Who was this? What was his name? Kick Off didn’t even remember. Number twelve. He’d become so invested, so enthralled with that, that he’d laid everything on that number. He’d remembered it a few kliks ago, when the energon was still hot on his armor, when the sparks were still flying. Now…just number twelve. Just the one who had gotten him his reward.

His reward. Did he want…anything anymore? Freedom was the rumor: twelve victories and Overlord let you go, released you from this brutal madhouse. No more combats. No more hunts. No more of Overlord’s ‘whimsical’ violence, his amused cruelties. But what good would it do him? What good was freedom to him now? What good is freedom if you’re trapped in your own brutality? If you hate what you’ve had to become to earn it?

Still splattered with number twelve’s life-fluid, he entered Overlord’s chamber. Numb. Barely able to anticipate, to consider the future, because he was still so stuck in the immediate past.

Overlord draped on a chair, just as he had in the small arena. His posture was carefully arranged. He did have an art to him; deliberate insult, deliberate insolence.

“Victor,” he said, blandly, and Kick Off wondered if that was because Overlord had forgotten his name as well. The fact that he and this…monster might have anything in common set his tanks roiling.

“Overlord.” Kick Off did a quick glance of the room: spare, empty, anonymous. As though its inhabitant had no identity. One large, hollow space, filled with shadows. In its own way, a perfect representation of Overlord.

Overlord leaned forward, his mouth expressive, mobile, framed by the cheekplates of his helm. He seemed to be fighting between a snarl and a smile. “You have fought hard for me.” He purred the prepositional phrase. ‘For me’. Coopting Kick Off’s violence as a tribute to himself. “You have earned a reward.”

I do not want it. I do not want anything from your hand. Kick Off held himself stonily still, refusing to grant Overlord any more.

Overlord tilted his head, amused. “Your reward is, of course, a choice. We start your freedoms small.”

Choice. He’d had no choice other than live…or be slaughtered. And look at what that choice had gotten him. Kick Off didn’t want any more choices. He kept his optics hard on Overlord, as if trying to drill through the larger mech’s cortex. Phase Sixers. Completely devoid of feeling. Empty, hollow, hard. Programmed without sentiment. This, he thought, is what you could become. This is what you are on your way to becoming.

I’d rather die.

Too late for that. You made that choice ages ago. Twelve battles ago.

Overlord coiled back in his chair, like a serpent preparing to strike. “Your choice is this: Freedom, but at a price.” He gave a dark laugh. “You Autobots have some vapid slogan about that, I believe. Freedom is worth fighting for.”

“I’ve fought enough.”

“It’s never enough.” The red optics flashed with anger. “You gutless fools never understand that. Life is fighting. Constantly. Against entropy. Against stagnation. Against all the forces that would tear you down.” He silenced himself abruptly, as though he’d said something too personal.

“I’ve done your bidding…enough,” Kick Off modified. He wished he were tired of fighting, sick at spark about it. Instead, he felt a sharp hunger at Overlord’s words. Another symptom of his disease. Of his wrongness. When you understand the enemy, you are them.

“You have not,” Overlord said, idly. He darted forward, fast enough that Kick Off jumped back into an attack stance. Overlord laughed again. “Your choice is simple. Fight me. Or self-terminate.”

Same thing, Kick Off thought. Same thing.

“I’m thinking,” the Phase Sixer continued, idly, confidentially, as though they were friends, “that a mech who has survived twelve of these types of combats might actually be a worthy opponent. Am I wrong in that?” A hint of a goad. Part of Kick Off bristled, while another part begged desperately for Overlord to be wrong.

“You’re wrong.” You’re wrong, he echoed. I’m not like you. NOT like you. His fists balled, in anger against himself.

Overlord clucked. “Then I shall have to extract some other amusement from you.” He pushed up , looming over Kick Off. A monolith, built, engineered for one purpose: destruction. Faster than anything that size should have been able to move, he swept down, his fingers whistling through the air before they grabbed at Kick Off and slammed him against the wall, his feet dangling helplessly.

“I want to taste your pain,” Overlord’s voice was raw.

Kick Off refused to kick, refused to give in. He would fight Overlord. He’d fight himself. But in his own way. He’d reclaim what it meant to be an Autobot.

He felt his own face tighten, his optics locking with Overlord’s—eye to eye, peer to peer—for the first time. For the last time. “Do,” he said clearly, proud that there was no tremor in his voice, “your worst.”