Dear Vector Prime, what can you tell me about IDW1 Treadshot? What was life like before Impactor ended him via harpoon?
Dear Gunman Gleaner,
Treadshot was originally incepted as part of the Silver Harvest, the mass population boom that filled Cybertron's city streets with life, and was assigned a fairly prestigious position as part of the artisan caste, like many who shared his body-type. Given a particle magnetizer, it was his job to paint murals depicting Cybertron's glorious past onto public buildings. Treadshot saw this as his calling, greatly admiring those ancient heroic deeds. He would speculate at length as to what life must have been like in those times, imagining what he might have done if he’d been there, and dreaming about what he’d say to various important historical figures—many of whom were still alive, naturally.
Misfortune first befell Treadshot during renovation of the Primal Basilica. While working on a fresco of Onyx Prime, a stately piece in the traditional triptych form, Treadshot fell from his hover platform, and impaled himself on the statue of Primus.
Though he recovered to working order fairly quickly, Treadshot found himself reassigned to lower-profile tasks. The official word was that Treadshot’s absentmindedness meant he posed a risk to others, but it was clear to everyone involved that his demotion would never have happened were it not for the fact that he had splattered a senator with his spilled oil.
Reduced to maintaining public buildings, he soon fell in with his fellow artisans Atomizer and Bricolo. The brothers spent both their work-cycles and off-cycles together, dreaming of bigger things. Their bar crawls eventually took them to the Dead End, where the three were introduced to the violent world of gladiatorial combat. Watching the combatants, Treadshot felt each and every blow in his spark—at one point almost literally, when a stray spear sailed into the crowd and pierced his abdomen. Once he came back online, Treadshot found he had a new calling… spraying elaborate warpaint onto gladiators like Skyquake. And much like he had while painting heroes of myth, he daydreamed of how it would feel to be the one fighting.
When Megatron’s grand uprising began, Treadshot finally got his wish. He joined up with the Decepticons to take part in the "Liberation of Kaon" (what Autobots would record as the start of the Fall of the First Five Cities)—and was even able to personally take revenge on the senator who'd been responsible for his fall from grace. However, when Megatron had his legendary battle with Sentinel Prime, Treadshot wound up pinned under the Prime’s Apex Armor. Had Megatron not thought to make the ruined battle suit a throne, they might never have discovered Treadshot crushed beneath, one of its many cannons nearly puncturing his spark. As it happened, Megatron took inspiration from the sight, and tore loose a warped piece of Treadshot’s spark casing, commanding that it be forged into a new Deceptibrand for Treadshot—the first instance of this barbaric practice.
This was as close as Treadshot ever came to entering into Cybertron’s mythology. He spent much of the war acting as just another soldier, with long periods of boredom punctuated by brief intervals of shocking violence. Through diligence over the millenia, he worked his way up the ranks, eventually finding his way into the Decepticon Secret Service as a troubleshooter—but after a disastrous mission to track down Monstructor and Jhiaxus, he was captured by the Autobots, who had to physically pry him from the wall where he’d been skewered.
Placed into Spark Extraction in Garrus-9, Treadshot was eventually reactivated during Overlord’s takeover, and was offered a position as one of the new prison guards. It’s impossible to say whether Overlord knew anything of Treadshot’s history for which to favor him, or if he was selected by chance—but if it was luck that governed his fate, it was certainly bad luck, and over the following three years Treadshot partook in brutality unlike anything in the Cybertronian legends which had once enthralled him. Perhaps, when his spark was reunited with his body, it fell through the holes that lingered from those old near-misses, leaving only an empty chamber to await Impactor’s harpoon.