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"intermezzo - n. A brief entertainment between two acts of a play."
- American Heritage Dictionary

"Come on, Fireshot...it's just around the corner," a grey, blue and red figure called out, gesturing for his companion to hurry up. He had the look of a Cybertronian without an alternate mode, but was just scuffed and dinged enough that it was apparent he wasn't a newborn awaiting his first assignment.

"Barrage, you've dragged me a quarter the way around Cybertron to this restaurant, a few nanoclicks one way or the other won't make a huge difference," Fireshot answered somewhat sullenly. His purple and black form also showed signs of having spent an inordinate amount of time in "default" mode.

"Hey, where's your famous drive to know the unknown?" Barrage mocked.

"Lagging way behind your famous drive to go everywhere in a hurry. Besides," Fireshot shrugged, "it's just a restaurant. There's a hundred franchises of this place all over Cybertron and the nearby systems. A dozen vorn ago it was special, but..." he let the sentence trail off. "Okay, give. There's something you're not telling me here."

"Wait and see," Barrage smirked, dashing around the corner.

Scowling, Fireshot followed, rounding the corner to see the restaurant he'd followed his friend across the planetary quadrant to see.

Planet Brawn.

At first, it looked like any other franchise location. Front half more or less open air with a high vaulted ceiling protecting against the occasional acid rains that fell in Cybertron's generally stable atmosphere. With no star to orbit yet, Cybertron had no seasons and precious little weather, so walls were really only needed for privacy and defense...and the war was over. The rear half was walled off for private parties and the kitchens, though.

Then it struck him. Standing atop a mountain-like fountain in the middle of the front room, posed as if holding up the ceiling, was an imposing form. The founder himself, Brawn! With a kindly grin on his face and a simple patch on his damaged shoulder, he held up the clearplas ceiling like At...At...Fireshot sighed as his memory failed him. Unlike many, he knew why there was a hole in his memory, but he was smart enough not to noise it around.

"See?" Barrage pointed up. "This is why I dragged you all the way here! It's really Brawn himself up there!"

"Actually," came a voice behind the two, "it's really Brawn himself down here."

They whirled to see a stubby green and gold Maximal, short even by the smaller standards of postwar Cybertron. Despite his clean and polished body, he looked...old.

"So...what...?" Barrage pointed up at the smiling Autobot.

"Ah, call me a sentimental old fool. They let me keep my old body around so long as it was modified so's I couldn't transfer into it. Stuck a drone program in myself...it makes a dandy bouncer now that most of the likely troublemakers," he cast a quick glance at Fireshot, "are smaller than a Minibot."

Barrage hesitated. "Um, sir...?"

Brawn sat back on one of the chairs and motioned for the others to do the same. "You want to know how I survived the War, right? Everyone does, the first time they see me."

Both Barrage and Fireshot nodded in unison as they sat.

"Well, I can't give too many details, since the Maximal Elders have sealed records of that part of the War, but..."

Brawn was cut off by Fireshot. "You were supposed to have been killed during the final battle between Megatron and Optimus Prime, in the Interdict Zone."

"How'd you know that?" Barrage looked at his friend in amazement.

"Hey, you Maximals may follow your Elders' orders blindly, but we Predacons like to show a little initiative once in a while. I hacked into some low-level secured files," Fireshot replied.

"Y'know, sometimes I think the Tripredacus Council wants you Preds ta find those secrets," Brawn narrowed his optics. "They follow the letter of the secrecy treaties, but...well, that's not really my problem anymore. My war is over, has been since I was reported dead. And to twist the words of an old writer, reports of my death weren't that exaggerated at all. Do either of you know what 'spalling' is?"

The pair shook their heads slowly.

"Well, I can't exactly remember the meaning myself, but roughly it means what happens when a shot goes through armor on one side but doesn't have enough energy ta go out the other side. I think it also applies when a shot doesn't get through, but knocks stuff loose ta rattle around inside. Anyway, I had some pretty thick armor," Brawn gestured up at his old body, "but it wasn't thick enough ta stop a direct shot from Megatron's fusion cannon. Unfortunately, it was strong enough to stop what was left of the energy after my shoulder got penetrated...Megatron's blast spalled all the heck over the place, made a mess of my internals. Some of it blew out through my mouth and eyes, I'm sure it made for a horrible sight."

"So you went into stasis lock?" Barrage guessed.

"Yer gettin' ahead of me a bit, but yeah. We didn't call it stasis lock back then, but that's pretty much what I did. Emergency shutdown, like I did when the...well, I can't talk about that. Anyway, the Decepticreeps bailed out of the ship and left it ta crash on its own. That was my second experience with the joys of an extended stasis lock. After that, things got really hectic and by the time anyone thought to come look for us, it seemed like we were all dead. So they declared the crash site a war grave and left it alone for the rest of the Great War."

Brawn sighed, his hands clenching slightly as if closing around the neck of a non-existent Megatron. "Once the War was over, the Maximals started sweeping space for possible survivors, and they came across the crash. Turned out a few of us were just barely alive, but beyond the reach of Autobot medicine. So we were kept in stasis lock here on Cybertron for a vorn or two. Then someone invented the blank protoform, and it turned out my laser core could be dumped into one of these safely. And here I am. Cashed in on my war hero rep and managed to start this little place," he swept his arms to take in the entire restaurant. "I dunno how long it'll be before Maximals and Predacons go at each others' throats, but until then I intend ta enjoy the peace. I like being a restauranteur a lot more than any other job I had other'n bustin' Decepticon chops, and there's no chops ta bust anymore."

"I take it you kept your full memory?" Fireshot asked, cautiously.

"Yep. Older engrams too hard ta mess with. But I keep my mouth shut about classified stuff. Maybe I miss some of the freedom, but I was pretty much a grunt in the War, so it's not a hard row ta hoe. I'm more my own boss now than I ever was during the War or before it," Brawn shrugged. "I gotta question for you two now. What's a Maximal and a Predacon doing palling around? I usually gotta keep the two sides on opposite ends of the room or a fight breaks out a few enerbeers into the night."

"Well, I..." Barrage started, but then paused.

Fireshot sighed. "We were created shortly after you 'died,' back when Maximals and Predacons were still just Micromasters on either side. We were both part of combiner teams, but our partners both died in the War. Vanquish died five cycles before the armistice," he said, regret filling his voice.

"And Heave bought it from friendly fire...accidents happen," Barrage added. "There's not a whole lot of singletons like us around...usually if one died, the explosion was big enough to catch both...or the remaining partner went suicidal and died soon after. We may have been on opposite sides in the War, but we never fought each other personally. And we have more in common with each other than with others in our own factions."

"Losing half of yourself is pretty bad," Fireshot murmured. "Both of us asked to have our vehicle modes removed so we wouldn't be reminded of our partners every day."

"That, and Fireshot's vehicle mode was useless on its own," Barrage grinned and nudged his friend. Ignoring the resulting growl, Barrage asked Brawn, "So, does it bother you that you're pretty much stuck here on Cybertron? I mean, you're a war hero and you're treated almost like a war prisoner."

"Nah, not really. Any place I hang my hat is home. And if I can't go to the universe, I can bring the universe here!"

Brawn pressed a button on his wrist and the visiscreens in the restaurant all lit up at once, displaying entertainment and memorabilia from a thousand worlds. He stood and walked to the center of the room, the flickering light shining off his polished surface, making him look like a being of rainbows.

"I may be stuck on planet Cybertron, but I can always go to Planet Brawn!"

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Author's Notes:

Thanks again to Jameel al Khafiz (MegaBee) for indirect inspiration for this story.

Brawn's death in the movie has always been a bone of contention among fans, many of whom point out that a shoulder blast shouldn't have been enough to take him out. My solution to the quandary was the spalling bit, but I liked the idea that maybe he'd survived anyway. This morning, I got to thinking about how much harder it is to kill Maximals, and figured that some time after the War they must have found a way to save dying sparks and put them into new protoforms...so why not save an apparently dead Brawn that way?

Additionally, I kinda wanted to show another side to the forced retirement concept hinted at in The Agenda Part 1. Sky Lynx got the bad end of this, but who's to say his situation was the only outcome for Autobots who returned to Cybertron?