music talks || origin
warning for TFOne spoilers
Glory and Gore
but in all chaos, there is calculation
RTE was a regular Cybertronian; no name, no importance, just another bot in the crowd. When the Quintessons showed up and drove the populous underground, the rat slipped away, finding the thrill of life scavenging and dodging alien eyes. They made their way on the surface by uncovering now-abandoned homes and mines and hoarding the resources to resell to those in Iacon. [Their story connects here to Bluescreen, which can be its own post if we decide!]
Things settled after the Primes ran the Quintessons off the planet, or at least, that was what the rat assumed as the invaders disappeared for stellar cycles. But things changed below the surface. The scavenger didn't recognize this Sentinel Prime, didn't trust him-- though it was none of their concern as long as their trading business kept up. The Cybertronian government had always been so-so at best, anyway. Then business slowed. The resources didn't dry up, but the energon the rat traded for suddenly became harder to come by... and gradually, so did contact with the Iacon bots.
The scavenger could sniff out just about anything they wanted, and now they wanted answers. Unfortunately, they got those answers the hard way, when the supposedly defeated Quintessons returned and caught the rat off guard.
The Resistance
(who's gonna stand up, who's gonna fight?) the voice of the unheard (who's gonna break these chains and lies?)
They onlined in dim lighting, unclear how they were alive, much less where they'd ended up. They got answers soon enough when another bot entered the lab, a towering figure like a deer with a single optic glowing in the low light. The rat only stared back at him, curious, not concerned, and he told them what happened.
"Everything you probably know is a lie."
It was, of course-- even what little the scavenger cared to know. Sentinel was no prime but a power-hungry murderer who'd sold out Cybertron to the invaders while letting the people believe he was their last standing savior. He hoarded the energon for the Quintessons, worked the people nearly to death, paraded himself around like he was Primus himself. A fraud, somehow even worse than his predecessors, who were hardly perfect and even barbaric at times (the empurata victim standing before them was proof of that) but at least attempted to protect their own.
The rat didn't like it. The deer-- Shockwave-- said there was hope, in the form of the High Guard who'd been chased out of Iacon by Sentinel and had operated from the shadows to take him down ever since. They couldn't afford risks, couldn't keep enough energon for their ranks, but that was where the rat came in and why Shockwave had repaired and enhanced them. They'd made quite an impression over the cycles, and if they wanted to help the cause, they could put their scavenging abilities to good use.
That's how they became RTE-09. An unconventional name, but one given to them. The experimental designation, the repairs built from a creaturelike frame similar to Shockwave's, and their (for all intents and purposes) imprinting on the deer bot all made RTE see Shockwave as their brother, and Shockwave simply went with it. Perhaps he enjoyed the companionship, even allowing the rat access to his lab without threatening them for the inevitable mess they'd make of his things. RTE would only talk to Shockwave for several stellar cycles, finding it hard to trust anyone else for a while.
That didn't stick, of course, especially once they warmed up to the High Guard's leader who occasionally visited the lab. Starscream was a highly skilled seeker, and led as best he could with Soundwave and Shockwave to help him-- but at spark, he was still a scientist and poet. He hadn't yet let war break him, hadn't yet been corrupted. He was an odd bot, to be sure, but he still appreciated everything around him, especially the creatures, and that extended to RTE. Even though they were perfectly sentient, RTE was happy to get the pet rat treatment for completing a task well-- that being headpats, mostly. Starscream was a good friend, a good bot, and RTE never lost sight of that in him despite what his future held.
This Means War
you've gone too far who do you think you are? is this what you came for? well, this means war
But in their spark RTE wasn't satisfied. They'd come to know a lot of Cybertronians through their business, and they hated doing so little to help them. They hated what Sentinel was doing. They hated being helpless against the invaders acting like they owned the planet. So when a group of cogless bots turned up saying they could change things, they had proof, they could take Sentinel down, RTE was all audio receptors, even towards the one who beat Starscream within an inch of his spark. They didn't trust D-16, not completely, but he was right, and he was doing something about it.
If you've seen Transformers One, you know the rest. RTE was captured with Starscream (Shockwave in this continuity was a bit more eager to help Orion get them back) and saw everything play out. They saw Sentinel supposedly offlined, celebrated it, even-- but in the back of their processor, there was something off about their new leader, even as they continued to agree with him. Something shifted in his spark when his friend (really, his sparkmate, RTE thought) became a Prime.
RTE never forgot how they felt about that last interaction between two leaders, even as new transformation cogs and enhancements corroded all of Cybertron's memory files over the stellar cycles to come. They'd always believe in the Decepticon cause, in stopping the corrupt government the Autobots upheld. But they'd also always see something different in Optimus Prime, and the Decepticon who stood directly against him.
Rise Up
and we follow the path that we believe in no we're not gonna stop until we reach it oh all you need to know is that we're holding on we rise up from the dust and claim our throne