So. They were in... "therapy".

The war had ended and the Decepticons had lost, which was old fragging news at this rate. Equally old news was the way the 'bots had split up every combiner team and held them separately from one another, which worked really well if by really well Wildrider meant that it had everyone climbing the goddamn walls after five minutes and the Autobots didn't even want to deal with it after five days. It wasn't even entirely his fault this time, though he'd done his part. Apparently Onslaught had been a fucking nightmare about it.

There was a compromise. The compromise was apparently "therapy".

So they were in "therapy" now.

Wildrider still hadn't seen any of the other Stunticons in like a month, and they were only allowed to interact under strict supervision, which was getting increasingly fragging annoying the longer it went on. Wildrider had been given "non-destructive creative outlets" for his "impulses", which he largely used for kindling when he had his hands free enough to do anything with them, and a demand to please try to talk to his fragging "therapist" about "it"... whatever "it" was supposed to mean.

And then there were the mandatory sessions. Which were like, if you took a turborat and put it in a box and shook the box up a whole bunch. That would adequately describe how Wildrider felt about the mandatory therapy sessions. He was one more frustrating session away from just calling it quits and trying to strangle the damned "therapist" until they died. He'd been promised with good behavior they'd take the cuffs off. He was biding his time. He wasn't good at it, but he could do that.

But for now he had to play along. And he was going to die. He was going to implode.

"So," said the therapist, leaning back in their chair, "how have you been feeling this last week?" They folded their hands in their lap comfortably. Wildrider's hands were still cuffed together in front of him.

"Bored," said Wildrider.

"How did you find the sketchbooks?"

"Boring."

"Did you use them?"

"Yup," Wildrider said.

"Fantastic!" said the therapist, sounding genuinely surprised. "Can I see what you've done?"

"Nope."

"Why not?" asked the therapist. "If you're shy about sharing, that's fine, of course."

"I'm not shy," Wildrider snapped, unable to stop the sudden offense. "I burned them."

The therapist sighed. "Right. Did you try the drawing exercises I gave you?"

"Yup," Wildrider said. "They were boring. Told you that already."

"Alright," the therapist said. "I think we'll try a new method of rerouting those impulses, how about you?"

"As long as it's not fragging boring," Wildrider said. "I don't like sitting in my cell with nothing fun to do."

"It's not a cell," the therapist said. "It's a room in a half--"

"A halfway house, yeah, yeah, whatever, there's a guard at the door and I can't leave and I can't see any of my friends. It's a cell. At least I got visitors in the Decepticon brig, you know that?"

"Your teammates, I imagine?" the therapist said.

"Yeah." It was an easy enough assumption to make, and also it was true. "Here it's just fraggers I never met. You know I haven't seen them in weeks?"

"Your teammates?" the therapist said again. "You're due for another visit in about six days, correct?"

Wildrider rattled all his vents, about as close to a dramatic sigh as he could get while chained to his chair. "Something like that. Who even knows. You're always getting mad at us for something and postponing it or holding one of us back or something. You know I haven't seen Breakdown since the fucking truce?" That was an exaggeration.

"I'm not," the therapist said, which was neither here nor there.

"And I still haven't seen them in forever because of your side and your rules. You get me?"

The therapist inclined their head. "I understand you're frustrated. Do you want to tell me about them?"

"No."

"Wildrider," said the therapist, "we've been making such good progress." Ah. A threat.

"Uh-huh."

"And I'm sure you want to keep your good record."

"I am keeping my good record. You asked if I wanted to talk about my teammates. I don't want to. If you want to hear about them you shouldn't ask me about my feelings. I gave a true answer. You should just ask better questions."

The therapist blinked their optics off and on again. "Good point. Wildrider, I would like to hear about your teammates."

"I figured that out."

"Uh," the therapist said, clearly at a loss for words. As though this were even hard.

"You want to hear about them? Dead End is better at this game than me by a factor of ten, and Motormaster is better than you, too. At least he's able to back his slag up with you know what I meant, because we all know I know what you meant."

"Right," the therapist said. "What else was Dead End good at?"

Wildrider shrugged as much as he could, a little shrug that rattled his chains like he was jangling a bunch of bells. "Stuff. Reading."

"Reading...?"

"Yeah."

"Reading what?"

"Books? What else is he supposed to be good at reading, tarot cards?"

"What?"

"Earth thing," Wildrider said. "He reads books. Read books. I don't know if they're giving him books he'd give a slag about, sounds like last time he was complaining that it was all, uh, i can't make air quotes but I need you to know this is a quote, painful saccharine slag, so, like, maybe he ain't so good at reading right now. I don't know, do you talk to him?"

"No," said the therapist.

"Fragging shame. If you could pass on a message you could tell him that I'm playing out the life of the main character in that one stupid book he liked about the guy in the cell. He'd know the one."

"Uh," said the therapist, "what was it about?"

"A guy in a cell. I just said that."

"Little more description than that, Wildrider," the therapist said.

"He's in a cell and there's a window and there's a plant in the window, and then he loses his mind and the plant dies and then there's some metaphor for him losing all hope before he kills himself or something. Also I think there's something important about a centipede. I don't know, I didn't read it, I'm just really fragging bored and he'd think it was primo wank bank material."

The therapist wrote something down. "Run that by me again?"

"He's in a cell and there's some kind of window and there's a plant in it because it's an organic book so it's an organic man in an organic cell. He's really bored and nothing happens and every day he watches the sun rise and fall or something because Dead End said something about the shadow on the wall every day was relevant, or something. And then he kills the plant or the plant dies and he loses all hope and there's a long drawn out scene where he kills himself that Dead End wouldn't stop talking about for, like, three weeks, because he thought the imagery was that good. And I'm pretty sure there's something important about a centipede but I didn't read it."

The therapist paused. "Uh, that's not what I was referring to. You are comparing yourself in real life to a character losing their mind and you think your teammate will be, uh, masturbating to it?"

"Yeah? I mean, I'd hope someone was getting something out of this?"

"Okay," said the therapist, writing something else down. "And do you feel like you're getting anything out of this?"

"Uh... maybe? I don't know." Wildrider couldn't wait until they let him do this with the cuffs off. He'd be getting something out of that, all right.

"You can be honest," the therapist said. "I know you're frustrated."

"I don't know," said Wildrider, "I think I will."

The therapist smiled, "That's wonderful! I'm really glad we're able to make progress here. From what I hear, your teammates aren't half so cooperative."

Yeah, because they weren't in cuffs ninety percent of the time. "I was always kind of a disappointment," Wildrider said vaguely, instead of that.

"Tell me about that," said the therapist.

"What's there to tell? We all were. Motormaster had standards and I didn't meet them."

The therapist looked up from their datapad. "I don't think we've ever spoken about your team before."

"We have," Wildrider said. He'd spent ages last session trying to talk the conversation into literally any other place. It'd worked, too. This therapist person wasn't nearly as persistent as Drag Strip and they didn't have half the sense for bullshit Dead End and Breakdown did.

"Not in any substance, though," said the therapist.

"Okay," Wildrider said. "But there's a lot of things we haven't spoken about in any substance. Last session you just kept going back to me lighting fires. You didn't even ask about me starting fights."

"That's true," the therapist said. "You start fights?"

Perfect. "All the time," Wildrider said. "It's more fun than arson, really, depending on where you are. Me and Vortex- "

"I imagine that had to have some sort of effect on your relationship with your team, right?"

"Yeah. Motormaster didn't like it. But Vortex always thought it was funny, and we used to- "

"That's alright," said the therapist. "I don't want to hear about Vortex right now. I want to hear about your team."

"Why?"

The therapist glanced at their notes. "I imagine it'll be helpful to know where you're coming from. We're clearly not making a lot of progress on the destructive behaviors."

"I told you," Wildrider said, careful not to interrupt. "I'm just bored."

"I know that's what you believe," said the therapist. "I'm sure we'll be able to reroute that anger into something else soon."

"It's boredom," Wildrider repeated. "The solution is to give me more things to do. Motormaster figured this out in five minutes flat. I've been telling you once a week for three months."

"Obviously," the therapist said, "Motormaster didn't successfully dissuade you from following these destructive impulses. I only want to see you get some control over yourself."

Wildrider wasn't going to say that he didn't tear things up or light fires by accident because he knew the therapist would take offense, and he wanted the cuffs off, but he thought it. "Right."

"Now," said the therapist. "I really would like to discuss your team. Let's start with Motormaster."

"Uh-huh," Wildrider said. "Like I said, there's nothing there."

"Alright. I believe you believe that. But I want you to tell me about him anyway."

Fine. "His name is Motormaster. He turns into a truck. He fights with a sword. He's in charge of my team. Or at least he was. His paint is black and gray and purple. Uh... he had a crush on Onslaught." He absolutely did not have a crush on Onslaught. "You should put them together, they'll probably kiss and slag."

"...Are you certain?" the therapist said.

"Yeah, totally." Wildrider was not a good liar. He needed to get off this tangent. He just thought it would be kind of funny if Motormaster and Onslaught got so mad together that they blew a hole in the side of the Autobot prison block. "Uhhh, he used to like, sit up all night after we had a training session with the Combaticons practicing sword forms and shit."

"How did you feel about that?"

"How was it any of my business? It was funny, I guess."

The therapist inclined their head, looking down at their chart. "You and the Combaticons were like rivals, right?"

"Nah. Totally different combat capabilities."

"Last session, you said that--"

"We had a, like, competitive thing," Wildrider interrupted, "because no one likes them, that's not the same thing. Just cuz we wanted to kick their afts at everything doesn't mean we were rivals, us and them were the only ones who ever gave a rat's ass about it."

"...rat?"

Wildrider fought the urge to grumble. "Earth thing."

"Alright," the therapist said, pausing. "How do you feel about him not being in charge of you any more?"

"I wasn't in a cell when Motormaster was in charge."

"I don't hear any emotion words," the therapist said.