Fanfic / To Fuel The Guttering Flame

Or: "Daily Life On The Capital World of a Dying Alien Empire".

Cyberton is on brink of collapse. The planet has been cut off from its colonies for millions of years and been ravaged by the Rust Plague. A ruthless caste system is in place and the entire society is run by a corrupt Senate desperately trying to hold whats left of society together. In the midst of all this is Catalyst, Cat for short, a researcher who just so happens to be human reborn as a giant robot. She’s doing her best to try and help her new home while struggling to deal with a world that’s so radically different from any canon she’s seen so far.

But more importantly… where is Megatron?

To Fuel the Guttering Flame is a Transformers Self-Insert fic by AshlingWaltzes (author of Maverick Solutions).

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To Fuel the Guttering Flame contains examples of:

• Actually Pretty Funny: Grand Dion finds Tidal Wave's willingness to insult a Titan far older than he is quite amusing and leaves their flyting quite happy with the younger Titan's potential at becoming a master at insults. On a similar note, Tidal Wave himself grudgingly respects Grand Dion for having a sharp tongue despite his great age.
• And I Must Scream: Ten-of-Twelve is lobotomized and forced into serving as a living base to the Rise after his attempt to divert Cybertron's orbit is thwarted.
• Asshole Victim:
  • The Functionist cell led by Six-of-Twelve are massacred down to the last man by Thunderwing and the Combaticons, but considering how they were planning on overthrowing the Cybertronian government so they could implement a caste system even worse than what already exists, it's hard to feel bad for them.
  • The Sons of Kaon cell under Ghoststrike's command are wiped out by the expedition's forces along with Twister's machinations turning them into unwitting sacrifices for the Unicronian Demon he summons with the "Titankiller" gun they had, though the fact that they're violent terrorists who attack anyone and everyone without provocation makes their violent demises well-deserved.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Thunderwing's design invokes this trope with the trim black plating over his upper body.
• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: Sentinel Prime is understandably tired of everything happening on Cybertron due to the corruption of the Senate and Proteus being a slimy git making his position a soul-sucking desk job. Needless to say, when Prysmos needs evacuating due to the side-effect of Cybertron passing through a system, he takes advantage of it to go out and do heroism worthy of a Prime.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Beachcomber may be a laid back pacifist that has smoked far too many drugs, but when a bloodthirsty Infernocon queen states her intention to not just refuse a chance at peace, but outright genocide her enemies, he pulls a weapon and shoots her right in the spark chamber to prevent her mad plan from coming to fruition.
• By the Power of Grayskull!: Using a Cyber Key in battle requires the user to shout "CYBER KEY POWER!", as first demonstrated by Leobreaker.
• Canon Welding: The Gobots are part of this universe, being Ambiguously Related to Cybertronians and their allies. The destruction of their home planet is what kickstarted the Great Lithonic War.
• Cassandra Truth: After Leobreaker reveals that he can access a Cyber Key, several members of the expedition who didn't see it for themselves refuse to believe it despite the all the witnesses and video evidence saying otherwise.
• Chest Blaster: Calibur's Cyber Key gives him this in addition to multiple rotary gunbarrels and miniature missile launchers.
• Commonality Connection: Sentinel Prime manages to befriend Dragotron after defeating the ancient Predacon by bringing up their shared nature as warriors thrust into the role of peacetime leaders.
• The Dreaded:
  • Starscream is this for Cat. His unnatural level of charisma has disturbed Cat ever since she came out of meeting only able to think about how wonderful and insightful he was.
  • Shockwave is this for Cybertron as a whole due to the horrific experiments he performed. His status as this is only compounded by the fact that he vanished just before things started to get bad, meaning no one knows where he is.
  • Bludgeon shares this status with Shockwave thanks to his interest in dark magic and forbidden technology from the days of Solomus Prime's reign as the Liege Maximo, to the point that everyone has blamed him for a variety of real and imagined crimes. Keep in mind that he was the nicest out of the Pretenders from that era, which means that compared to his now long dead former comrades, this guy is practically a saint.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Downplayed. While Catalyst does have quite a few accomplishments, the majority of Cybertron’s scientific community doesn’t view her that favorably due to her obsessively focusing on her artificial energon project rather than branching out into different ventures. While Cat doesn’t mind this too much, she is offended that they can’t see just how important her project is for Cybertron.
• Enlightenment Superpowers: Leobreaker believes that Cyber Keys are bestowed to those who achieve enlightenment rather than it being earned simply through faith and piety.
  Leobreaker: Tell me, do you know how one unlocks the power of a Cyber Key?
  Catalyst: The legends say... it's a matter of faith, isn't it? Piety, and faith in Primus. But...
  Leobreaker: If it were that simple, surely the Prime at least would have one. Cyber Keys are an expression of one's self more so than they are of anything else. To manifest one demands a total mastery of the self, a perfect understanding of the body, and the mind, with a will to bring all of one's potential to fruition. To have one is to be enlightened.
• Expy Coexistence: Catalyst, who has been trying to keep an audio receptor out for important names and figures, runs headlong into this problem when she and her expedition arrives in Archive City and she meets the dockworker Orion Pax, who then mentions/introduces Optimus the space bridge repairman, Convoy, Optronix, a yellow Optima, Guardsmech Pax, and a lookalike scrap eater out in the dump all in one scene.
• Fantastic Racism: Beastformers are apparently not well liked on Cybertron, primarily due to how much less mobile their alt-modes are compared to other cybertronians. They in turn hate fliers for just how mobile they are.
• Fembot: Lampshaded when Catalyst first meets Senator Ferria. While most other Cybertronians (like her Mini-con Beaker) would be more interested in the sleekness of her shoulder and shin-plates, Catalyst's mind of human origin is more fixated on her thighs and her particularly-shaped chestplate. The only thing they both fixate on is her well-sculpted face.
• Foregone Conclusion: Sentinel Prime's (justified) hatred of Proteus is so great that the rest of the Senate frequently place bets about if/when he will finally snap and put his fist through the corrupt senator's spark chamber.
• Great Offscreen War: The Great Lithonic War is one of the main reasons that Cybertron is in the state it is. It started when one of the Rock Lords destroyed the Gobot’s planet of Gobotron (possibly by accident), resulting in Cybertron declaring war on them for attacking their protectorate.
• Hated by All:
  • Functionists are religious fanatics who believe in doctrine of "form defines function" and call for an even stricter caste system than the one already in place. Everyone on Cybertron hates them, especially since most of them have willingly gone through Empurata (removal of one's face and hands to be replaced with more "functional" single optics and claws), which is more or less the robot equivalent of blackface.
  • Brainstorm is particularly loathed in the scientific community for plagiarizing other scientists and engineers.
  • Monoformers are as despised as Functionists are for being crazed Nucleon addicts who kidnap people to tear out their T-Cogs so they can be "pure".
• In Vino Veritas: Cat gets drunk during a ceremony that is celebrating one of her creations, and she ends up making a speech about how the planet isn't trying to fix the big problems and that she's going to start a daring expedition to the Plasma Energy Chamber in the hope of solving the energy crisis.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: The TEKTRON crew collectively decide to not attack Catalyst's team after they spot Grand Dion, an ancient War Titan, among them, because attacking Grand Dion is basically suicide for a rag-tag group of ecoterrorists that are not equipped to deal with bots that gigantic.
• Large Ham:
  • Grimlock. Which makes the revelation that he’s Catalyst’s mentor all the more astonishing.
  • Straxus is quite loud and boisterous himself, speaking every sentence with the cadence and grandiosity of an opera singer.
• Meaningful Name: Catalyst is a fitting name for a researcher working with Energon. It also fits her unique ability, which is to literally act as a catalyst for chemical reactions, provided that she understands how the reactions work.
• More Dakka: Calibur's Cyber Key gives him multiple rotary gunbarrels and miniature missile launchers in addition to a Chest Blaster.
• Noodle Incident: The somewhat sleazy researcher Brainstorm did something that not only got him booted from the Synth-En development labs, but also earned Cat’s ire.
• No Place for a Warrior: Due to how the Predacons were created by Primus as stopgap shock troops after Unicron had converted half of the universe's life into his undead Terrorcon minions, a sizeable amount of them failed to acclimate to the peace that came after the War, resulting in Dragotron being defeated by Primon and sealed by Prima in the planet that would be known as Prysmos after he attempted to lead a campaign of galactic conquest with what remained of his people.
• Patchwork Fic: This story takes characters, powers, items, and events from various Transformers media and puts them all together in a single universe.
• Pieces of God: In the War in Heaven, Unicron was split into three pieces. The first two are recorded in history: the true body of the Chaos Bringer, and Unicron's Moon, Dead End. The last piece is unknown, but was later confirmed to be Sideways.
• Planet of Steves: Downplayed, but Catalyst ran into this problem when trying to search for Megatron. Turns out that Megatron, or some variant of it, is a very popular name among heel gladiators. She’s run into similar problems looking into Soundwave.
• Shout-Out:
  • Per Word of God, Cat’s alt-mode is based heavily on the Ornithopters from Dune.
  • One of the members of Cat’s expedition is a Minicon named Beaker. To anyone who can’t understand Minicon, whatever she says sounds like she’s just saying "Meep".
  • Galvatron is basically Conan the Barbarian, complete with his homeland being named Cimmeria (spelled 'Cymeria' here) and taking on a gigantic serpentine monster in the form of Solomus Prime's Super Pretender shell.
  • In an informational post about the Great Lithonic War, a list of various sub-factions involved in the war, as well as their current status was, given. Each of those factions are based on aliens and factions from different series such as Doctor Who, Stargate, Command & Conquer, Star Wars, and even GunBuster.
  • The TEKTRON crew are expies of the Final Fantasy VII main cast.
  • The Sons of Kaon is an expy of the Sons of Korhal.
  • When Thunderwing goes after Six-of-Twelve, he informs the bot that "offline or active, you're coming with me".
• Take That!:
  • Catalyst internally states that clear joints are "ugly, garish, and dangerous for long-term health", a clear jab at how notoriously fragile clear plastic is on Transformers figures.
  • Motormaster is portrayed as an annoying wrestler who's outstayed his welcome. To make it even more obvious, he has an identical entrance theme that's only difference is the lyrics.
• Token Good Teammate: Ten-of-Twelve is the only member of the Functionist Council with any semblance of sanity, being painfully aware of how fanatically insane his compatriots are. Unfortunately, this does not mean he doesn't have prejudices of his own, as he holds a rather unjustified grudge towards Sentinel Prime for his (very much justified) actions in suppressing the Utilitarian Functionists, and whatever goodness he has isn't enough for him to escape being lobotomized by Thunderwing and his Ascenticon forces.
• Vestigial Empire: The Cybertron that Catalyst lives in is greatly reduced from its heyday.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Leobreaker's Cyber Key transforms him into one of these.
• Workaholic: Catalyst starts the story having worked on her project almost nonstop for an entire month, hopped up on stimulants and having to be told by her assistant to go home and get some rest. This is apparently a reoccurring issue and the very next day she has to specifically be told not to come into work because her superiors are afraid she’ll burn herself out.
• You Are Fat: Catalyst's expedition consists of bots of varying alt-modes and body types, with Scissorsaw being the largest and heaviest. As such, the Constructicon Long Haul is assigned to tow him along at a very slow pace - and tempers eventually boil over in a public brawl.
  Scissorsaw: SAY I'M TOO HEAVY ONE MORE TIME YOU SCRAPLET!
  Long Haul: I SAID YOU'RE TOO HEAVY YOU OVERGROWN SHREDDER! I'VE CARRIED BUILDINGS THAT WEIGH LESS THAN YOU!

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