Hes a cold construct built on the tail end of nova primeās population boosting campaign/silver harvest. Cloudripper and his batchmates were a small set of specialty builds made for surveillance and security work as a commission from a courier company that transported high value goods. At this point he functioned sort of as a body guard/security during transit for the shuttles moving the goods. This is when he bonds with a shuttle named Ballast who sort of takes him under his wing.
Eventually as tensions around cold constructs rise and apartheid is put in place, the company he was working for ālets him goā and he finds himself living in the cold construct quarters on the lower end of the city and doing odd jobs to scrape by. He also completely loses contact with his unofficial mentor Ballast
Anyway after a undisclosed amount of time passes and apartheid is lifted, he actually sets off to reconnect with ballast and maybe his old batchmates. Only to find out ballast is actually missing- this is also when he gets more or less introduced to the decepticon movement as he follows a trail of breadcrumbs to find his old mentor. He does find him eventually sort of by accident, when they are both detained in the same enforcer station due to misunderstandings and wrongful arrests. When they get free they officially join the decepticon movement together, and all is well for a little while. That is until the riot in vos, which results in ballastās death. This leads to even more resentment towards high class and senate bots, and those trying to stop their revolution.
I havent quite decided what his catalyst for leaving the cons is, but he would be with them for quite a while. At first as a scout, later as a spy/more complicated reconnaissance and a communications officer. He has his knives for close combat but he isnāt particularly good at it, he prefers to be a sniper.
The general idea is that something heinous enough would happen and heād finally realize the cons arent fighting for what he believes in anymore. Heād impulsively sabotage a mission and then realize heās utterly fucked, and have to go in hiding.
Eventually would begrudgingly admit the autobots have a point, and try to convince them to let him in hah. Originally he gets his frame repainted and changed here and there to seem less threatening and maybe a little more trustworthy and not con-like, but he finds he actually likes the new colors quite a bit
After the war the idea of just leaving and starting over sounds extremely appealing, so he joins the lost light crew. Its not even that he believes in finding the knights of cybertron, everything just reminds him too much of the absolute fumble his entire life has been, so he just wants to get away and a ānoble questā would make him feel better about it all.
