~Insert disclaimer here~
Beast Wars and Cheetor belong to evil companies, Makeawish.com belongs to Tigerhawk, the concept belongs to Ivy and Flash's ALL MINE BAYBEE!!!
However, I shall give the homocidal puppdydoggy credit for this because, after all, he did write it ^_^ *sniff* My boy's getting talent... don't forget to email me so I can pass on the message to him how much you hated it. Do it! Do it now! By the orders of Frank!
...No Frank. This doesn't give you authority...
The first thing I saw when I walked into the bathroom was my face staring back at me. Not the gun-metal grey face with dark-blue highlights and a furry black helmet. Not the mouth-guard I was used to, nor even the glittering golden eyes. Instead, I was faced with a grotsque semblance of what I had once been - the bloated, fleshy creature I had become. All that was the same, all that I could recognise, was my yellow, hate-filled eyes. And they weren't even the same shade of yellow.
Rage exploded in my stomach and I punched a fist at the pale face in the mirror. It stared back at me, eyes filled with loathing. I bashed at it again. And again. Cracks appeared and spidered outwards, fracturing into a billion pieces the face I would NEVER call my own. For one moment it gazed at me, triumph in it's eyes-- then the mirror shattered. Pieces fell like so many flashes of silver and my one despicable human image was broken into a thousand distorted ones. I barely noticed. The rage still burned and I was still forced to pound at what was left of the mirror. Filled with loathing, filled with hate, filled with all the negative emotions humans try so hard to conceal. Moisture ran down my face but wether it was sweat or tears of frustration, I don't know. Blood was spattering around the corner of the sink. Just another hateful reminder of what it was that I had become.
"Flash, what're you doing?!" The panicked yell punctured some distant part of my thoughts and I realised that I was screaming in fury as I hit. The door to the bathroom burst open and someone came flying in, crashing into me and shoving me into the wall. Before I knew it, my face was thrust into the sink and the cold-water tap was turned full-bull onto my head.
"Stop it!" I yelled, jerking myself up and bashing my skull painfully into the tap. Lights exploded behind my eyes and I groped blindly for whoever had grabbed me, so I could throttle them into the ground. "I said Stop!"
"Flash, calm down-- Flash! You stop it!"
And as suddenly as it had begun, the rage disappeared and I was left standing in the aftermath. Pieces of the mirror lay shattered over the sink and the floor, and as I looked down at them, the same horrified face was reflected a hundred-fold. I panted softly as another face joined mine in the multitude of images.
"That's the seventh mirror." Cheetor said in a hushed tone, staring at me warily in case I would snap again.
"They'll buy another one." I replied softly, not knowing how else to react to the evidence of my rage. "They always do..."
"It's not the mirror I'm worried about."
A box of bandaids was thrust into my hands. The pain had begun now, a sort of stinging, itching pain from a thousand tiny gashes. I scratched at them absentmindedly. The ones that had begun to clot over bled anew.
"Don't do that." Cheetor snapped. He grabbed my hands and put them back under the cold tap. I let him. The water was kinda soothing. "You can't keep doing this you know."
I nodded guiltily, looking down at the water washing my wounds out.
"I don't understand why you won't go to her about it."
My blood seized up.
"She wouldn't want you to be so unhappy."
I grit my teeth.
"She's not like that. She's not a cruel person."
"Cheetor, she took us away from everything we've ever known!!" I jerked my hands out of the water and shoved him backwards. Cheetor stumbled momentarily before shoving me back, his face creased with the stubborn expression I was beginning to know all too well.
"She didn't know it was going to happen!" he said, almost too loudly. As if he was trying to convince himself as well.
"Carslag!!" I retorted. We stared at eachother furiously. I could feel the heat in my face meaning that I was flushed with anger. These stupid human bodies with their frail little forms and their disgusting bodily reactions to any kind of stress. You feel anger, you flush. You feel fury, you pant. You feel absolute blazing rage, your entire face reflects it. Cheetor's eyes burnt into mine, reflecting the emotion running rampant throughout me. I grew tenser, he grew more serious. We were Maximal and Predacon again, sworn enemies of eachother and all eachother stood for. Brendan and Matt? For the moment they did not exist. Right now we were no longer brothers bonded by one girl's foolish actions. And of course, this was how it was meant to be. My hand tightened on the towel rail.
"Boys!"
The sound of the human 'mother' that had been designated to us interrupted our staring competition. I broke away from Cheetor's glare and was again made aware of the shambles that surrounded me. Cheetor was right, it was the seventh mirror I'd broken since we'd arrived in this world.
"Oh, Brendan..." 'Mother' appeared in the door. Physically she looked more like Cheetor, with light brown, almost blond hair and green eyes, which were now surveying the shattered mirror with distaste. "You broke *another* mirror?"
"It was looking at me funny." I mumbled, not even bothering to give her the rebellious stare I seemed to have perfected. Cheetor piped up.
"Yeah. It was looking at me kinda funny too." He agreed. Instant guilt trip. I'd been anything but nice to him ever since we'd been dragged into this dimension. A few seconds ago I was prepared to kill him. And still he was looking out for me. I didn't deserve it and I never showed I appreciated it. Cheetor kept on doing it anyway, he was like that. Too forgiving for his own good.
"Oh... If you say so." 'Mother' sighed and went off to get a broom. Cheetor reached around me to turn the still-running tap off and placed the box of bandaids back into my hands. He gave me one of those undecipherable looks before making his own way out of the door.
In case you haven't picked it up, my name is Flash, or as they say in this dimension, 'Brendan.' I don't belong here. I belong in a time and a place a long way away. The girl, Kchana as she's 'supposed' to be known, says she brought me here because she was sure it wasn't going to happen anyway. It would take a fool to believe that story. Why wish for something you know can't happen? As materialistic as this world is, why couldn't she have wished for something else? Money perhaps? A bigger house? Why us?
I've read the fanfics that she wrote about us. Why she brought us here. I don't think she's telling the full story. All she ever writes is about _her_, what she does, what she thinks. Her and Cheetor are made out to be the heroes of the hour, while I'm the villian who lurks in the background and plots revenge. It's strange, in these Makeawish.com fanfics she claims that I'm a Maximal, that I'm yelling about Maximal things, but I can definitely remember in my mind that I'm a Predacon. More lies. If I were as I should be, if I were complete, I would show you the insignia. But I'm not so I can't.
I don't care what you think of me. You've been poisoned by whatever lies she decides to give out so I can hardly blame you if you think I'm the bad guy. But I'm not, I know I'm not and that's enough for me. I didn't ask to be brought here. Why would I want to be? Life was perfect in the Beast Wars! As perfect as you can get while fighting a war, anyway. There was a point to it I guess, we had a goal. Destroy the Maximals, that was the reason for being. I had signed onto the Axalon, back when I was 'Maximal' as a biologist, but my reason for being there was more than that. Even on Cybertron I guess I'd longed for something new, exciting, adventurous.
In the Beast Wars, I got it.
Then I lost it.
I came here. To a pithole worse than Cybertron ever was, filled with people with unimportant dreams and materialistic aims. They no longer know the meaning of freedom as I once knew did. The world of the Beast Wars was a paradise. As a Predacon and as a biologist, I knew that much. This, the world of the humans... it's a shambles.
I honestly don't know why she wanted me to come.
I found Cheetor waiting for me when I got back to my room. He was sitting on the bed, idly flicking through a magazine he'd found beneath. I snatched it away from him and ordered him to the desk. Cheetor wandered over and perched on it, looking at me curiously.
"Don't start." I snarled at him, and rolled over so I could shove my face into the pillow. But in my minds eye, I could see Cheetor, swinging his feet idly and waiting for his moment to speak. "Get the frag outta here Cheetor, I don't want to hear it." How wonderful it would be to sleep and never have to wake up.
"I didn't say anything." he said innocently.
"You were going to." A huge shuddering sigh escaped me at those words. Everywhere I turned, people were trying to force me to 'get along' in this world. But I couldn't. The situation was looming up in front of me, the thought that I might actually have to eke out this existance in this slagging human world, never to see the sights of home again... not just Cybertron, that world of glass and metal towers. The world of the Beast Wars was also long gone too. Though Earth was still technically the same, and there were a few preservations, humans had more or less become a swarm. That 'paradise' I'd known was gone forever. And so were my friends as well. I'd never know what happened to the others, wether Megatron had eventually won, wether Terrorsaur had ever succeeded with his treacherous plans, even if Meyham had ever stopped being silly and 'settled down'. Sure, Cheetor could more or less divine his future with the Beast Wars that the girl had recorded, but who was to say that was the truth? Those tapes showed a Beast Wars where I did not exist. What about the one I'd inhabited? So many different alternate realities... the tapes were one reality. I was another.
Cheetor's soft, mournful voice sounded out over the clambour of my thoughts. "You're not the only one. I miss home as well." he said. I laughed bitterly.
"And you *so* show it."
"Just because I don't show it doesn't mean I... at least I'm trying to fit in here." he snapped. "Try be realistic Flash, we don't know if we're ever going home."
"Of course we aren't. We're stuck here forever!" I laughed again, even more bitterly. "You're telling me to try fit in and be happy into a world of *fleshies*!!" My tone of voice said just what I thought on that matter. Cheetor grunted.
"They're not all bad, you know. They're people just like us- only sort of- sort of skoodjy." I lifted my head up from the pillow just in time to see him make some kind of bizarre hand actions. Skoodjy?
"Bah, sure, Rachelle's a real person with a real heart and soul who only wants the best for us." I sat up and crossed my arms, glaring at him. "BITE me."
Cheetor pursed his mouth. "Maybe if you'd try to make her a friend instead of an enemy--" he frowned.
"Which she IS!" I reminded him. He jumped off the desk and stood above me.
"Only because you make her that!" He said accusingly.
"Because she deserves it!" I replied, just as accusingly. Cheetor locked gazes with me for the second time that day. I stared back at him defiantly, knowing there was no way he could win a staring competition with me. Sure enough, he groaned angrily and sagged in defeat. "I'm not going to start another argument with you." he grated.
"So don't! I'm tired of you all trying to fragging convert me! There's nothing you can do about it so why don't you just **** off and leave me the **** alone." I had learnt more than a few curses upon coming here. Where frag didn't fit, they worked most wonderfully. Cheetor gave me an almost angry, mostly baleful look and stepped out of the room. The door closed with a soft click and I fell back on the bed.
"I didn't mean it, Flash."
Wonderful. To have Cheetor gone, only to be plagued my memories of her. I remember when she told me that, when we were both standing on the beach. 'I didn't mean it.' I had gone there to contemplate and be alone, back when I had first come here. Then out of nowhere she had approached with trepidition in her eyes and that stupid fringe flying everywhere. Looking up at me with an assortment of fear and wonder. I had glared at her and she had stared back and for a moment I could almost have forgotten she was the one I was supposed to hate more than anyone in the entire world. "Really." I then replied, in a voice loaded with spite. Her eyes darted from me, out to the ocean, then back to me again.
"I did wish for you to go back, you know."
"I'm sure you did." I rolled my eyes and turned so I didn't have to look at her. It's easier to hate someone you can't see, and I was never going to forgive her. I still haven't. And I never will.
"I wished for you to go home. Back when I first realised how much you hated it here." she said softly. "I sent a wish off to Makeawish.com asking if they'd take you back or something."
"Oh, really?"
"I did." she insisted. A few seconds of silence and she was there in front of me again. I glared down at her until she took a step back, a half-step forward, and then another step back. There she stood, watching me with a wary expression. "I told them that you weren't really what I wanted, and would they please take you back to where you came from, and..."
"And?" I prompted, a sardonic expression on my face. She cast a doubtful look to me, and then shifted her focus back onto the floor.
"They said you couldn't un-wish wishes." she fair whispered. I started on another sarcastic comment, but something in her voice made me hesitate. I peered at her closely. She was looking at me again with a slightly worried expression.
"Why didn't you tell me this before?" I said gruffly. She muffled something.
"You'd think I was a liar..."
I barked out some sort of laugh and then when I spoke to her, my voice was hard and overrid her shamed words. "What makes you think I don't already think you're a liar?" I snarled. "You've been lying ever since we came here."
"To whom?!" Outrage finally wiped the guilt off of her face and I got to see some of her esteemed temper.
"To everyone." I said, not relieving my tone of voice. "To me, and Cheetor, your family and everything. Just because they were lies to hide the fact of what we are, doesn't mean they're not lies."
"I should even have started this." Rachelle groaned and made to walk past me. I sidestepped and blocked her. She looked up at me, still angry. "What?"
"I should be asking what brought on this sudden burst of 'truth'."
She made a false start and licked her lips. Her gaze dropped down to my hands. "Cheetor told me you broke a mirror this morning."
The first mirror. And not the last mirror. Most likely I would be breaking mirrors until the day I died. I stared at the girl and let her go after that, let her go back to her house and that life that she had convinced herself was perfect.
Meanwhile, that figure standing alone on the beach is always going to be me. No matter what I tell anyone, no matter what I try to convince myself of, things are never going to change. I will never belong in that house, I wll never fit into this life, I can never call this world my own. They will try to convince me and I will always resist, maybe even one day I really will kill the girl, but every time I look into that mirror I will remember. I am not Brendan Jenkinson, teenage son of Mr and Mrs J.
I am Flash, Predacon warrior.
And I am lost.