Tales of the Intermezzo: Decoy
                       A Transformers Universe Story
                     copyright 1998 by Dave Van Domelen
               characters and settings are TM Hasbro/Takara
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     Imagine that your entire purpose in life was to act as a decoy, a double
for someone more important.  You were created simply to draw fire, to die in
the place of this important person.  Worse, you were created to enjoy this
job, to eagerly place yourself in harm's way so that the one whose image you
were created in could be safe from assassins and battlefield mishaps.
     Perhaps it would be a short life.  But, thanks to your programming, you
would at least find it fulfilling.  After all, it's possible for those not
programmed for this duty to find satisfaction in it, bodyguards and sentries
throughout history have done it.
     So, not a bad life all things considered.  If you had been allowed to
live it.
     Now imagine that the great leader you were created in the image of
scoffed at the very idea of needing a double.  Sneered at the underlings who
had created you, claimed that such a plan was beneath him and that they
should have known better.
     Wouldn't you burn with the hatred of the scorned faithful?  Perhaps you
would have, if you had even been activated at the time.  But you slept
through this indignity.  You also slept through the death of your leader, a
death which came in single combat, which you wouldn't have been able to
prevent even if you were present...for it was your place to protect against
the dishonorable assassin, the accidental death from a distance.  Not to save
your leader from his own honor.
     How would you feel, then, to be activated decades after your creation by
factions which didn't even exist when you were built?  To be given a set of
history files which told of your leader's death, your faction's defeat in the
Great War...to be told that while you bore the face of a great leader you
would be expected to blend peacefully into the society forged by those who
had spent millions of years hating the face of the one you were fashioned
after?  
     So many feelings, so much pain.  Betrayal by your leader, who cast you
aside unborn.  Guilt, too, over failing to save that leader...a contradiction
your logic circuits screamed was impossible, but that you held nonetheless.
You hated him, you loved him...he was the reason for your existence, and he
was gone while you lived.  You were supposed to die for him, not the other
way around (although you know you were far from his mind when he died, and
you hate him for that as well).  You are at a loss for how to spend this life
you were brought into.  The new leaders of your faction find you a mild
embarrassment, and want nothing to do with you if they can help it, so you
cannot simply transfer your loyalties (as if you ever could consider it) and
act as a bodyguard.  Nor will the enemy, the rulers of the planet, let you
forget who you were supposed to be.  Every look of hatred or fear or worst
yet, pity, that you see in the faces of those you meet drives like a stake
into your soul.  If a doppleganger has a soul.
     Society has no place for you, and you're not sure you want a place in
the society you have been born into.  You seek solitude to grapple with your
conflicting emotions, and to hide from the torment that the world outside
heaps upon you.  Burying yourself in the old records of the planet, you find
an apt alien quote in the database.  "Hell is other people."
     How true.  Other people serve only two purposes...tools and tormentors.
You were built as a tool, and all around you are tormentors, whether actively
or passively.  Friendship, loyalty, honor...over time you become convinced
these are simply sophisticated ways to use people or inflict pain upon them.
Or upon yourself, if you're foolish enough to believe in them.
     Power is your only friend, for while your stature is small by the
standards of your birth, it is hulking compared to the new inhabitants.
Information is the only thing you find to be truly loyal, for secrets always
serve their master truly.  And honor?  Honor got your leader killed, they
say.  It may be a useful veneer, and you may cultivate such a shell
eventually, but believing in it is a fool's game.
     Decades pass as you bury yourself further in the old records, learning
ways to bypass barriers erected to keep the "unworthy" from the truth.  You
have been largely forgotten, and during your time deep under the planet's
surface you have given up your wings (absurdly, those who created you also
expected your leader to alter his own form to match yours!) for a single-mode
existence, concentrating on acquisition of data.
     Today is a day for celebration, for you have unearthed a great secret.
A secret which could someday give you a true purpose, although the technology
to make it possible was still years away.  You have found a message from an
earlier time, and there is hope that you might use this new knowledge to
arrange things MUCH more to your liking.  The tormentors would become tools,
yes.  It was time to emerge from the musty archives and begin a new life,
with an ironicly fitting "new" name.
     You are Megaplex no longer.  Let these "Predacons" learn to respect the
name of Megatron once more....