Series: The Ghost Unit
Title: Deadline - Redemption (4)
Setting: IDW Transformers, inspired by the "What's Wrong with a Little Destruction" 'verse by ajremix

Building the Team: Deadline - Redemption
"Mental stains cannot be removed by time, nor washed away by any waters."
~ Cicero

Deadline. The name was hardwired in his systems now, one he responded to without a second thought. It felt odd sometimes but he never lingered on the emotion, easily shrugging it aside for more work instead. He'd been the first to arrive, the first official member of the unit. The first to be fully refitted, to be given a new identity and a new life. Deadline had then been given the chance to think and plan and set things into motion on a level unlike he'd ever had the chance upon to work before. Pity they had not been able to give him new memories, as well - but then again, he'd not be where he was today had they done so.

He stood on the brink of a chasm now, and all decisions were his to make. Build instead of destroy. Save instead of condemn. Salvation took many forms, he knew. He'd just never thought She'd deign to look upon him and grace him with Her favor.

His unit leader had been brought on board one cycle ago, swiftly extracted from his old life and delivered to Deadline's medlab for a full refit. As with any intervention of such a nature, it had taken time - time to strip the mech to his cranial unit and core containment case along with whatever systems were essential to his survival in such a state. Time to destroy any of the remaining elements of his old life thoroughly, the only identifiers remaining such that only death of a most final kind would allow anything to be revealed. A new identity was re-encrypted and laid in his systems, chip by chip, data stream by data stream, carefully nestled among all the things that composed the mech's own, innate personality. Once those had been accepted by the original systems, work of a more mechanical nature had begun as new components were brought in. He worked from the bare frame of a Cybertronian skeleton, setting strips of wiring and cabling into place, overlaying them upon parts and pieces which went from the mundane to the more esoteric to the entirely new and never dreamt of before.

Each of the mechs to join the unit would be brought to him thus, exposed and dismantled until they were at their most vulnerable. And each would be rebuilt, slowly and patiently, part by part. New bodies. New identities. New lives. A single, united purpose.

Deadline carefully designed each new upgrade for his unit leader, then implemented it. Mostly he worked on his own, though sometimes he had to bring in someone to assist him with some of the touchier, time sensitive work which could not be accomplished by a single mech. There would be nothing new for any of the other mechs awakening under his care after this one, other than his features and presence. Every upgrade, every aspect of their new body would be explained to them before the procedure began; just as it had been for the one he was working on.

There would be none of the terror or madness which had been the result of his previous work. Of his previous life. There would be none of the horror and debilitating cruelty he had chosen to perpetrate, then been forced to commit and to endure for far too long. His actions haunted him still, but with each new mech brought to his worktable, a little bit more of his past fell into ashes, leaving only glory to rise from the remnants of his unforgotten misdeeds.

Arise and sally forth, Flagship.

Deadline watched the mech on the table and allowed himself a small smile - a rare show of emotion with no one present to witness it. The thought had been fanciful, yet pleasant. Oddly comforting. Perhaps, he thought, this was what hope felt like. To hold the faintest outline of a chance, to grasp for something which didn't twist away from him to mockingly fade into nothingness. Belief in something better. Faith in a possibility which grew more and more real with every passing moment, every newly implemented upgrade.

Each of them would be his retaliation towards a cruel dictatorship, one which had twisted his previous work into a thing of nightmares. Each of them would be a small chance at salvation from acts he would not forget, acts which haunted him day and night and would continue to do so until the end of his days. His faction symbol gleamed red in the light, a reminder of his new life, of the one way which he'd found which might allow for the beginnings of atonement.

None of mechs in his unit would ever know of his past unless he told them himself. None of them would ever know how very badly he needed every single one of them to succeed where he had failed.

Through them, perhaps, he could finally attain a balance.

Current Mood: calm