By the time Daniel Richard Blazer hit twenty-five, he'd made peace with failing at life.
Not in a dramatic way.
Just in the quiet, resigned, "yeah, this is probably it for me" way that settles into your spine after too many microwaved dinners and too few texts back from women who claim they "love nerdy guys."
He wasn't a monster.
He wasn't a genius.
He wasn't interesting.
He was just Dan.
A man whose greatest talent was procrastinating with Olympic-grade discipline.
A man who could open 47 Chrome tabs, forget all of them, then reopen them again the next day like a confused goldfish.
A man who was painfully, aggressively single.
So on the eve of GTA VI — a national holiday in his mind — Dan decided he would treat himself to a spiritual, personal ritual.
A celebration of solitude.
A moment of inner peace.
Headphones on.
Pants off.
Browser history doomed.
Everything was prepared.
"Hehe Boi...," he muttered.
And then, right as he was getting into the rhythm of his life's saddest parade—
His chest tightened.
Not the dramatic movie kind of tightening,
but the real, horrifying, electrical-jolt kind.
Like someone had ripped the circuitry out of a machine and jammed it back in sideways.
His vision tunneled.
His heart stuttered.
"No—no no no no—NOT TODAY—GTA VI IS TOMORRO—"
His last thought wasn't noble.
It was literally:
"THIS IS THE WORST TIM—"
Darkness.
Dan Blazer died mid-stroke.
The universe recorded it with zero ceremony.
And then—
Light.
Silence.
Cold.
Dan didn't wake up so much as… exist again.
There was no breath.
No heartbeat.
No body.
Only awareness.
He perceived opening his eyes.
He felt his vision come online.
And what he saw was not a ceiling or clouds or flames.
It was—
Space.
Raw, endless space.
Black and blue and star-stained.
Dan stared.
Then thought, very quietly:
"…What?"
It wasn't confusion yet.
Just the mild disbelief of a man who's been jump-scared too many times to immediately panic.
He tried to move his hand.
Nothing.
He tried to swallow.
Nothing.
His head.
Nothing.
It was like being strapped to a giant GoPro, except the GoPro was bolted to something the size of an office building.
Then he felt it.
Deep inside him.
A vibration. A pressure. A roar.
A constant, physically impossible, bone-shaking BRMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM that wasn't really a sound, but an internal shudder.
At first his brain tried to translate it into something familiar.
It picked:
gas escaping.
A constant, unstoppable, full-body fart.
"Oh god… did I die and become a—? No. No way. No way."
The truth crawled up his spine with cold fingers:
He wasn't feeling vibration.
He was vibration.
His entire existence hummed like a jet engine.
A fast jet engine.
A stupidly fast one.
His vision showed stars streaking by in long, warped threads.
He was moving at a speed that no human body should comprehend.
Panic finally caught up.
"Oh—oh hell no—hell NO—"
He tried to scream.
No throat.
He tried to flail.
No limbs.
His body was a single, rigid, aerodynamic shell.
Then—
PING.
Not a sound.
More like a notification shoved directly into his cortex.
A connection forced its way into his mind, snapping into place like someone Bluetooth-pairing his soul.
A glowing interface flickered into his vision.
Then a face.
Metal.
Angular.
Predatory.
Optics glowing red like someone had installed LEDs into pure malice.
Dan's brain stuttered.
The figure spoke:
"Hail Megatron."
Dan forgot English.
The universe narrowed to static.
The robot continued, utterly unfazed by Dan's mental breakdown:
"Blastech, coordinates have been uploaded to your nav systems."
A pause.
"You will rendezvous with Barricade and Brawl on a primitive organic world. Its natives call it 'Dirt.' or something like that."
Dirt.
Someone named a planet Dirt.
Dan would've laughed if he wasn't actively dying of fear.
"You will infiltrate the native population. Provide air support. Do not fail this time."
Dan tried to scream at him:
"WHO ARE YOU? WHO'S BLASTECH? WHY CAN'T I MOVE? WHY AM I FARTING MYSELF ACROSS SPACE?!!"
His body didn't care.
Because his body wasn't his.
His voice spoke without permission.
Cold. Metallic. Obedient.
"Understood, Commander Starscream."
The connection closed.
Starscream's face blinked out.
Silence rushed back in.
Dan floated.
He floated and he existed and he didn't breathe because he couldn't.
Then—
Pain.
His mind exploded.
Information poured into him like molten metal.
Images.
Symbols.
Memories that weren't his.
Cybertron.
A world of steel and war.
The Decepticon insignia burned into walls.
Starscream's talons dripping with menace.
A name etched into every part of this metal body:
BLASTECH.
"Nononononono—stop—STOP—"
He saw battles.
Orders.
Failures.
Judgment.
The cold, grinding disappointment of a general whose patience had been burned out millennia ago.
Dan gasped mentally:
"…I'm… Blastech?"
He waited for reassurance.
There was none.
The truth settled over him like ice water:
He was a Transformer.
A Decepticon.
A jet screaming through the void toward a planet someone called Dirt.
The panic didn't even feel human anymore.
It felt mechanical.
Sharp.
Glitchy.
His engines flared, a physical response to emotional overload.
His own systems corrected him, stabilizing the trajectory.
Dan had no say.
He was a passenger inside a weapon.
"…oh god… oh god—this is real—this is REAL—"
His HUD blinked calmly:
VELOCITY: 0.7C
COURSE: LOCKED
MISSION: ACTIVE
Dan whispered inside the prison of his mind:
"…Fuuuuuuuuuuck…"
And the stars kept rushing toward him like they didn't care.