A/N: And now, the end! I thank all of you who had read, reviewed, alerted, and favorited this collection. And a nod to the Guest who correctly guessed the last phobia.

The gestalt leaders. Two different leadership methods, two different versions of the same fear. Onslaught fears what another failure will do to him and his team, while Motormaster dreads the day his team inevitably frags up badly enough to be knocked from their podium.

Onslaught & Motormaster

Atychiphobia: the fear of failure

Failure is not an option.

He's heard it over and over again. From the Enforcer's "never submit" to the Decepticon's "we will rise above", the phrase has stuck with him for his entire function.

Failure is not an option.

As a tactician, Onslaught knows that the phrase itself is flawed. There must always been room in the calculations for error. The unexpected happens. Your informant is discovered, or your supplies run out early, or the enemy is stronger than your initially thought. You could construct the greatest plan ever to see the light of day, and it meant nothing if a single mech out of place brought the entire operation crumbling down. A good plan must be foolproof, feasible, and above all, flexible.

Failure is a teacher, though a cruel one. A femme who was more than ready to gobble up those who couldn't or wouldn't learn from their mistakes. To fail meant being forced to adapt, to rise above your short comings and return twice as deadly. It was a useful and invaluable tool, no matter how hard it was to accept.

But there came a time when failure was no longer an option, even for him.

It wasn't a question of not wanting to fail, but that he couldn't. Not anymore, with the consequences far in excess of the crime. A compounding interest of karmic justice, and he wasn't sure if he could survive its punishment.

His first major failure had ended with he and his team arrested, their frames deactivated, and their personality components ripped from their helms. Their reward for attempted treason had been a thousand years of silence, of nothing but memories and speculation to occupy their minds. It had broken him, broken them in a way that no one would ever know. A whole host of psychological issues, and it was all his fault. Because he hadn't planned for failure, because his faith in his own abilities had been so absolute that he hadn't allowed himself to look for pitfalls.

The devil's in the details, as they say. His plan had come down like a house of cards, and they had been boxed.

He knew his team resented him for that. It had been his plan, after all. They were the cogs and gears, but he had been the one to flip the switch on the machine. They were the fingers, and he was the hand that controlled them, directed their movement. The hand that had let them down, allowed them to be captured at their weakest moment.

And on the heels of one failure, while they had still been recovering their breath, he had let them down a second time.

It had been a flawed plan, a hasty objective cobbled together from impressions and second-hand information. They hadn't even the time to recognize Cybertron for the husk it had become before he was trying to destroy all life on that tiny miserable planet. Burn it down, he had thought, until there's nothing left.

His team had been uneasy, cautious. Perhaps it had been a side effect of the box. A thousand years of silence, to suddenly be thrown back into the waking world and forced into service again. Something in him had snapped, something that had been long since bent to the point of being unrecognizable, and for once he had tossed all caution to the wind. There had been no plan, no carefully calculated risk. Just revenge, and he had dragged his team into it with him.

Let them burn!

Another failure, another punishment. The shackles of the Decepticons had tightened around them, invading their minds with forced complacency and an insurance against rebellion. Coercion, it had been called, and indeed it was. Signing their lives away to a cause they had long since lost faith in.

His first failure had resulted in the loss of his mind. The second failure had resulted in the loss of his free will.

He couldn't fail a third time.

Megatron was not a forgiving mech. The silvery words and grandiose plans had been a ruse he had long since seen torn to shreds, discarded along with so many useless machines. Behind the curtain of civility had lurked a monster, forged in the mines and tempered in the arena, and there was no spark in his chest that could be swayed by pleas for mercy. It was a monster that Onslaught had once willingly followed, but now found himself groveling before its pedes. It was humiliating, made even more so by how easily he had allowed himself to be enslaved. A mark on the frame was temporary, but the scars it left were there forever.

Onslaught knew that the only thing keeping him alive at this point was Megatron's expectations. The mechs he had once seen imprisoned had been returned to him improved, a peace offering he gladly accepted from his second. With the gestalt programming forcing them into an unnatural bond, they were once again useful to the warlord. A new tool, a plaything for him to use as he saw fit. As long as they remained useful, they would remain safe and secure in the monster's grasp. If they angered him, if they failed, there would be no last minute plans to save them from Megatron's wrath.

Once, failure had simply been a black mark on his record. Now it was a matter of life and death.

And he couldn't take that risk.

There was always a risk.

In battle, one risked being killed by the enemy or friendly fire. A wound risked infection, and a damaged limb risked amputation. A commander risked betrayal by his men, and a soldier risked being abandoned by his superior.

Sometimes, the risk was created through external forces. Other times, existence itself was the the cause.

The Stunticons had been created by Megatron. The warlord had personally selected each of their frames, lovingly modifying them with his own servos to support transformation and a spark and a processor. He had built them to be his perfect warriors, to fill a gap in his ranks that had allowed the Autobots to slip through time and time again. He had given them names, and he had given them life.

Without Megatron, there would be no Motormaster, and that fact alone was enough to win his eternal loyalty.

The Stunticons were young. They didn't have the same scars as the other Decepticons, crisscrossed over both frame and spark until hardly any of the original was left. They didn't have the memories of lives and lovers long lost to fire and faction, dark shadows that weighed heavily on the processor and flickered in the optics. They were without loss, their entire existence moving forward on a new road, and for that they were resented.

Megatron was but one mech, and the Decepticons were many, and the Stunticons were hated by the many as they held the favor of the one. To have favor was to have a pardon for minor mistakes. For a light strike with the lash rather than a brutal beating. Outside the light of Megatron's favor, the other Decepticons slunk and spit and envied, ready to tear the gestalt apart if given even the slightest opportunity.

Motormaster didn't intend to give them that chance.

He knew what his team thought of him. They were a team, closer than brothers, and he had seen into their sparks. He wasn't afraid to hold them down, to tear at whatever pathetic barriers they tried to put up until he got the answers he wanted. They saw him as a beast, a black hole that devoured everything without mercy. An evil they would love to amputate, if it didn't mean killing the entire body in return.

The gestalt could function without a leg or an arm, but Motormaster was the core. He was irreplaceable, unshakeable. It was his fury that propelled and directed the rest of them. He was the one who held the chains, loosing them only when he felt it was best. A weaker mech might feel some sort of remorse or pity for his actions, but Motormaster wasn't weak.

He couldn't afford to be weak, and neither could his team.

Motormaster knew risk, and he knew reward. And what he knew was that his team were in a precarious position within the Decepticon hierarchy. Favored by their leader, hated by their comrades, it only took a slight push in the wrong direction for it all to come toppling down.

If they lost Megatron's favor, there would be no second chances. They would hardly have enough time to pick themselves up before the other Decepticons descended upon them, ripping and tearing and clawing at all their little flaws and imperfections. There would be no calls for help, and no one to answer them.

The Stunticons were a team, and they would have no one's strength but their own as their defense.

It was a difficult task, keeping the Stunticons in line. There must have been some sort of hiccup in Vector Sigma when they had been created, or else Megatron's programming had been less than perfect, because instead of perfect soldiers they were more like unruly creations. It had been left to Motormaster to be their caretakers, and he had long since learned that his fists worked better than his words. A well-placed kick instead of gentle encouragement. A threat rather than a bribe.

His team was fractured, flawed, cracking at the edges, and it was Motormaster's job to make sure they didn't fall apart under their own weight. It was his job to deflate Drag Strip's ego, forcing him into realizing his place as just an arm rather than the greatest mech to ever live. It was his job to drag Dead End out of what whatever pit his mind was in so he would focus on the task at hand rather than his paint. It was his job to give Breakdown something to be more scared of than eyes, and Wildrider to find a reason to create terror in others or suffer it himself.

Motormaster knew risk, and he knew weakness, and he knew that his team could not afford to be weak. He would be the beast from within, a horrible storm that chased the others out in front of it if only to give them an incentive not to trip and fall. When, not if, they lost favor, his team needed to be prepared to deal with the backlash, and in their current state they simply would not survive.

He was the core, and it was his job to make his team stronger. If that meant breaking them down only to build them up, so be it.

Failure is not an option.