Wheeljack (G1) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ye_olde_engineer) wrote2015-05-20 07:22 pm
ye_olde_engineer) wrote2015-05-20 07:22 pm
Entry tags:
Wake History
Wake History PART THE FIRST:
Wheeljack Woke to a city on the edge of war. The invasion of Kalliste to defeat the Deva, Isis, once and for all was less than a month away. While a peaceful mech by nature, Wheeljack was far from unfamiliar with war, and once he heard what things were all about and what was at stake, he readily jumped in feet first. Three weeks wasn't long enough for him to learn to Bend, so he set his sights on building any and all physical mechanisms that might be helpful – jetpacks, portable forcefields, and communicators, among others. He was one of the casualties of the three-day battle, and returned to his new home deeply affected by the experience.
It only hardened his resolve, however, to do whatever he could for his new home and those in it. Returning to Kalliste, he was one of the first on the scene to retrieve his new friend V – with whom he had hit it off on a surprisingly deep level – when the masked human also returned from death. Then he organized a concerted effort to both restrain and help another new friend – a Decepticon, actually, from his own reality named Dead End who during the Kalliste battle had inadvertently Bent himself into his gestalt leader Motormaster and was apparently stuck like that, the brutal leader terrorizing the city. Later still, Wheeljack was at fellow inventor Tony Stark's home when his friend came under attack by Jadis – Wheeljack was able to get his unconscious friend out of the house, though not without injuries (He lost a leg to something about once a month for some three months in a row there at one point. That wasn't even planned, and only the first time was actually his fault.)
He's been through his share of city gifts and shifts (such as being arbitrarily dressed as Sherlock Holmes or turned into a toaster, or getting his home/workshop nicknamed "Ground Zero" courtesy of a spontaneous sign over the front door) as well as reality storms – getting high, watching his friends be turned into Pokemon . . . going after a friend turned into the dark, twisted parody of another friend, and paying dearly for that mistake. Never mind what it did to him – for the psychological damage it did to his friend, it is probably the one action he's the most ashamed of in his life, or at the very least since Waking.
Watching friends suffer is something hard for him, and he'll do whatever he can to help them through it or protect them from it. He's opened his home to mechanoids and organics alike – he has only considered it "his" anymore in that he feels any under Ground Zero's roof are his responsibility to care for and protect. He went into the Network to try to help V's friend, Rion. He tried to help Ratchet when the medic lost himself to the bear-form of an alternate persona. He tried to guard his friend Zak against a possessed Sephiroth and was partially successful. He wasn't, however, able to save either Jazz or William Jesse from the attacks of Legato. He chased a regressed Starscream to Helix in order to subdue his friend until the city's effects could negate the reality storm influence the mech was under.
He's survived a zombie apocalypse, making weapons out of detritus from Wreck-Gar's junkyard when all Bending failed. He's been kidnapped by Weeping Angels (and technically by a Dark Aeon though he has no real memories of it[I was on hiatus at the time]). He's had an instance or three when he's posted on the Network with an admonishment about everyone getting along and realizing exactly what it is that they have there in the city, which he sees as an incredible gift – reality storms and other occasional hardships aside. He's taken over or at least helped out at the Med-Bay on occasion when a reality storm has knocked out other, more capable medics like Ratchet. He took in Antovil for a while after the Deva was attacked by a being from the Labyrinth. He spent a few days as a lightbulb in punishment for challenging another Deva, wrongfully (in 'Jack's defense, he didn't know the guy was a Deva and was trying to protect a friend of his, one of his "family") – he realized his error and did apologize.
Wake History PART THE SECOND:
Upon Waking the second time, Wheeljack was gladly beset by a number of old friends, including some he considered family, as well as greeted by many new faces. He'd been gone almost two years and, to his great chagrin, quickly learned that he'd missed the war against the Dark Aeon. It wasn't his fault, he knew, but too many of his loved ones had been too hurt by their experiences with it for him not to be affected on some level (if only he'd been here, maybe….).
He didn't settle back in right away, at least not the way others might have expected. At Wheeljack's arrival, Sideswipe quickly reasserted exactly what he thought of the engineer. Wheeljack also learned that Sideswipe had declared himself protector of the Northern District, and he felt neither comfortable nor really safe remaining in an area "ruled" by, in his view, "that malicious young upstart" who truly seemed to have it out for him. As much as he would have liked, returning to Ground Zero - his old lab that he'd spent so much time expanding and renovating to accommodate himself and his closest friends - was simply out of the question. Besides, too many he'd considered "family" had gone back to Sleep, and the place held too many memories. Instead, he moved East, into a modest place within sight of the Museum and his "brother", V. It took no time at all for him to start building a new family – Jendayi had recently returned to the city, and she brought two new "brothers", Nott and Lucas, when she moved back in with "Papa Jack". It was Lucas who would eventually dub their home "GZ 2.0". Wheeljack never called it that (he'd never called the original by the name Nautilus had given it either), but it amused him.
After an issue he'd had in the original GZ shortly before going to Sleep, Wheeljack was determined to keep his home – more specifically, his housemates – and his lab quite separate. For that, he looked West, claiming the airplane hangar that had formally belonged to his enemy-turned-friend, Thundercracker. Without disturbing the section the Seeker had once set up as home, the engineer turned the rest into his safe haven for experimenting and building to his spark's content. After a conversation with Jack Skellington regarding the intelligence and sentience of the West's infamous giant spiders, he'd even managed to befriend a pair that he allowed to stay in the hangar (after having driven out a whole nestful). George and Fred were pseudo-pets that he worked with when he wasn't actively inventing.
He met Dead End for a long, LONG (about three years) overdue drink at Furman's discussing the past as well as Sideswipe's comments on his arrival post which the Stunticon had intercepted. Both 'Bot and 'Con were well overcharged by the time THAT conversation was wrapped, and they spent the rest of the evening challenging each other on the engineer's "confidence course."
For the most part, he kept his head down, busying himself between his workshop and his home, though when the storms came, he did as he always did – his best to mitigate the effects on the Affected and be there for them in the aftermath, if he wasn't an Affected himself. More than once, he relocated to the Medbay when no one else was left to man it. At the three-year anniversary of the Battle of Kalliste, he walked the city, reminiscing and checking on the kinetic sculptures he'd erected at the first anniversary, sorry he'd missed the second to Sleep, but sorrier to miss those he'd lost.
I . . . honestly don't remember what all it was that went down with Pitch, "Rex Black", and "The Reaper" (Rex and Death) – I remember there was a fight against Rex, and Wheeljack was on that team – but I know it messed up a lot of people, and Jack was hardly immune to the damage done, though others were hurt far more, so he spent his time focusing on them – such as taking cookies to Nott sitting on the roof wondering how it was people were and yet weren't all equal here, then checking on Death and helping him pull out of a funk over discovering what he was capable of. Wheeljack knows a lot about seeing ugly parts of yourself and consciously choosing who you are and what you're not.
Then again, though he didn't choose to be a high school science teacher (a reality storm did for him), he did a damned good job of it for the duration.
Some of the last things Wheeljack experienced before Sleep overtook him for the second time were two more storms. In the first, one's greatest desires were presented to them – Wheeljack spent a week trying to catch up to loved ones who'd "just Awakened" but proved only illusions. In the second, people's memories were changed, and for Wheeljack, that meant that he thought he wasn't natively a Cybertronian, that he was in fact a shape-changed hedgehog, Sonic's older brother, and that Denzel Crocker was his son (yeah, you go ahead and try to figure that one out). Once the storm was over, Wheeljack went to check on Crocker, tried to gently set him straight when it seemed the quirky man still believed that Wheeljack was his father . . . and wound up embracing the man when he realized just how much that prospect had meant to Denzel, who'd never had a father to speak of before. Wheeljack had learned the value of family, regardless of "blood" (or Cybertronian equivalent), very early in life, and had adopted a number of people in Nautilus as "family" over the course of both his times in the city, but Crocker was probably the first person with whom he made that relationship official. Crocker's also probably the last person who saw or spoke to Wheeljack before Sleep took him once more.
Wheeljack's last memory is of slipping into his Memorial Room in GZ 2.0 making probably one of the hardest decisions he'd ever made in his life – he slipped back into Sleep when he Unmade the Autobrand on his chest.
(That is a narrative that I'd almost but not quite finished writing when I dropped him last, so I've posted it here on his account instead. It's game canon/game history in my head, and I'll link people in his OOC intro if he's accepted, but if the muns would REALLY prefer, I'll do it in-game after his intro instead.)
Overall, he fails – sometimes more spectacularly than others – but he means well, and he loves Nautilus with all his spark, as well as those who have Awakened there. As a former Angelii, he feels it is his duty to do everything he can to protect the city and its inhabitants, helping in any ways he can . . . though those he considers his close friends and especially those who are "family" to him hold a special place in his spark.
Wheeljack Woke to a city on the edge of war. The invasion of Kalliste to defeat the Deva, Isis, once and for all was less than a month away. While a peaceful mech by nature, Wheeljack was far from unfamiliar with war, and once he heard what things were all about and what was at stake, he readily jumped in feet first. Three weeks wasn't long enough for him to learn to Bend, so he set his sights on building any and all physical mechanisms that might be helpful – jetpacks, portable forcefields, and communicators, among others. He was one of the casualties of the three-day battle, and returned to his new home deeply affected by the experience.
It only hardened his resolve, however, to do whatever he could for his new home and those in it. Returning to Kalliste, he was one of the first on the scene to retrieve his new friend V – with whom he had hit it off on a surprisingly deep level – when the masked human also returned from death. Then he organized a concerted effort to both restrain and help another new friend – a Decepticon, actually, from his own reality named Dead End who during the Kalliste battle had inadvertently Bent himself into his gestalt leader Motormaster and was apparently stuck like that, the brutal leader terrorizing the city. Later still, Wheeljack was at fellow inventor Tony Stark's home when his friend came under attack by Jadis – Wheeljack was able to get his unconscious friend out of the house, though not without injuries (He lost a leg to something about once a month for some three months in a row there at one point. That wasn't even planned, and only the first time was actually his fault.)
He's been through his share of city gifts and shifts (such as being arbitrarily dressed as Sherlock Holmes or turned into a toaster, or getting his home/workshop nicknamed "Ground Zero" courtesy of a spontaneous sign over the front door) as well as reality storms – getting high, watching his friends be turned into Pokemon . . . going after a friend turned into the dark, twisted parody of another friend, and paying dearly for that mistake. Never mind what it did to him – for the psychological damage it did to his friend, it is probably the one action he's the most ashamed of in his life, or at the very least since Waking.
Watching friends suffer is something hard for him, and he'll do whatever he can to help them through it or protect them from it. He's opened his home to mechanoids and organics alike – he has only considered it "his" anymore in that he feels any under Ground Zero's roof are his responsibility to care for and protect. He went into the Network to try to help V's friend, Rion. He tried to help Ratchet when the medic lost himself to the bear-form of an alternate persona. He tried to guard his friend Zak against a possessed Sephiroth and was partially successful. He wasn't, however, able to save either Jazz or William Jesse from the attacks of Legato. He chased a regressed Starscream to Helix in order to subdue his friend until the city's effects could negate the reality storm influence the mech was under.
He's survived a zombie apocalypse, making weapons out of detritus from Wreck-Gar's junkyard when all Bending failed. He's been kidnapped by Weeping Angels (and technically by a Dark Aeon though he has no real memories of it
Wake History PART THE SECOND:
Upon Waking the second time, Wheeljack was gladly beset by a number of old friends, including some he considered family, as well as greeted by many new faces. He'd been gone almost two years and, to his great chagrin, quickly learned that he'd missed the war against the Dark Aeon. It wasn't his fault, he knew, but too many of his loved ones had been too hurt by their experiences with it for him not to be affected on some level (if only he'd been here, maybe….).
He didn't settle back in right away, at least not the way others might have expected. At Wheeljack's arrival, Sideswipe quickly reasserted exactly what he thought of the engineer. Wheeljack also learned that Sideswipe had declared himself protector of the Northern District, and he felt neither comfortable nor really safe remaining in an area "ruled" by, in his view, "that malicious young upstart" who truly seemed to have it out for him. As much as he would have liked, returning to Ground Zero - his old lab that he'd spent so much time expanding and renovating to accommodate himself and his closest friends - was simply out of the question. Besides, too many he'd considered "family" had gone back to Sleep, and the place held too many memories. Instead, he moved East, into a modest place within sight of the Museum and his "brother", V. It took no time at all for him to start building a new family – Jendayi had recently returned to the city, and she brought two new "brothers", Nott and Lucas, when she moved back in with "Papa Jack". It was Lucas who would eventually dub their home "GZ 2.0". Wheeljack never called it that (he'd never called the original by the name Nautilus had given it either), but it amused him.
After an issue he'd had in the original GZ shortly before going to Sleep, Wheeljack was determined to keep his home – more specifically, his housemates – and his lab quite separate. For that, he looked West, claiming the airplane hangar that had formally belonged to his enemy-turned-friend, Thundercracker. Without disturbing the section the Seeker had once set up as home, the engineer turned the rest into his safe haven for experimenting and building to his spark's content. After a conversation with Jack Skellington regarding the intelligence and sentience of the West's infamous giant spiders, he'd even managed to befriend a pair that he allowed to stay in the hangar (after having driven out a whole nestful). George and Fred were pseudo-pets that he worked with when he wasn't actively inventing.
He met Dead End for a long, LONG (about three years) overdue drink at Furman's discussing the past as well as Sideswipe's comments on his arrival post which the Stunticon had intercepted. Both 'Bot and 'Con were well overcharged by the time THAT conversation was wrapped, and they spent the rest of the evening challenging each other on the engineer's "confidence course."
For the most part, he kept his head down, busying himself between his workshop and his home, though when the storms came, he did as he always did – his best to mitigate the effects on the Affected and be there for them in the aftermath, if he wasn't an Affected himself. More than once, he relocated to the Medbay when no one else was left to man it. At the three-year anniversary of the Battle of Kalliste, he walked the city, reminiscing and checking on the kinetic sculptures he'd erected at the first anniversary, sorry he'd missed the second to Sleep, but sorrier to miss those he'd lost.
I . . . honestly don't remember what all it was that went down with Pitch, "Rex Black", and "The Reaper" (Rex and Death) – I remember there was a fight against Rex, and Wheeljack was on that team – but I know it messed up a lot of people, and Jack was hardly immune to the damage done, though others were hurt far more, so he spent his time focusing on them – such as taking cookies to Nott sitting on the roof wondering how it was people were and yet weren't all equal here, then checking on Death and helping him pull out of a funk over discovering what he was capable of. Wheeljack knows a lot about seeing ugly parts of yourself and consciously choosing who you are and what you're not.
Then again, though he didn't choose to be a high school science teacher (a reality storm did for him), he did a damned good job of it for the duration.
Some of the last things Wheeljack experienced before Sleep overtook him for the second time were two more storms. In the first, one's greatest desires were presented to them – Wheeljack spent a week trying to catch up to loved ones who'd "just Awakened" but proved only illusions. In the second, people's memories were changed, and for Wheeljack, that meant that he thought he wasn't natively a Cybertronian, that he was in fact a shape-changed hedgehog, Sonic's older brother, and that Denzel Crocker was his son (yeah, you go ahead and try to figure that one out). Once the storm was over, Wheeljack went to check on Crocker, tried to gently set him straight when it seemed the quirky man still believed that Wheeljack was his father . . . and wound up embracing the man when he realized just how much that prospect had meant to Denzel, who'd never had a father to speak of before. Wheeljack had learned the value of family, regardless of "blood" (or Cybertronian equivalent), very early in life, and had adopted a number of people in Nautilus as "family" over the course of both his times in the city, but Crocker was probably the first person with whom he made that relationship official. Crocker's also probably the last person who saw or spoke to Wheeljack before Sleep took him once more.
Wheeljack's last memory is of slipping into his Memorial Room in GZ 2.0 making probably one of the hardest decisions he'd ever made in his life – he slipped back into Sleep when he Unmade the Autobrand on his chest.
(That is a narrative that I'd almost but not quite finished writing when I dropped him last, so I've posted it here on his account instead. It's game canon/game history in my head, and I'll link people in his OOC intro if he's accepted, but if the muns would REALLY prefer, I'll do it in-game after his intro instead.)
Overall, he fails – sometimes more spectacularly than others – but he means well, and he loves Nautilus with all his spark, as well as those who have Awakened there. As a former Angelii, he feels it is his duty to do everything he can to protect the city and its inhabitants, helping in any ways he can . . . though those he considers his close friends and especially those who are "family" to him hold a special place in his spark.