When she first left her home planet, Windblade never thought her time at the JAAT would be so exciting. She expected to make friends, deal with culture shock, and labor over schoolwork. Now she’s doing all that plus hiding her secret identity as the Autobot vigilante the Mistress of Flame. With fire and fervor she is determined to spite those awful Decepticons and forge a better society for all.

Biography

Windblade was forged on Caminus circa v.42.165.100 by the Cybertronic Timekeeping Standard. She was adopted by Lug and Anode, a Conjunx pair who had been on the waitlist for a sparkling for awhile. Both her parents encouraged her natural drive to question injustice and instilled in her the belief that anyone and anything can change for the better. As she had the relatively unusual distinction of flight in root mode thanks to her rotor wings, they certainly had a time of it keeping her in one piece as she learned to fly as a sparkling.

She met Chromia when they were both very young and the two became lifelong friends, to the point where many anticipated they may become Amicae once they mature. Her parents met Nautica through their careers, eventually introducing Windblade to her children Firestar and Flareup. These three friends formed her core social group for most of her childhood. Even when Flareup and Firestar's relationship deteriorated as they grew, Windblade maintained a friendship with both of them, albeit occasionally strained.

In v.42.168.429, the Jhiaxian Academy of Advanced Technology hosted entrance exams for its first set of students, including for colony citizens. Lug and Anode volunteered to be a host family for the JAAT's interplanetary exchange program before Windblade even sat the exams. When she passed, she and the rest of the accepted Camien students and staff took the long trip to Cybertron. On the first day the JAAT opened, she met and made friends with her new roommates Orion Pax and Minimus Ambus. The three of them encountered Alpha Trion in need of assistance, and Windblade quickly followed Orion's prompting to help him. The next day, when bad weather turned even worse, she and her new friends sought out Alpha Trion to check on him, leading the old mech to lend each of them Primal relics of power. Windblade received the Creation Lathe and powered up into the Mistress of Flame. [s1e01]

Relationships

Autobots

As one of the original core three Autobots, the Mistress of Flame has a strong rapport with Ultra Magnus and Optimus Prime. Her interpretation of their work as vigilantes is more emotional or perhaps spiritual, likely influenced by the nature of her cityspeaking abilities. She tends to butt helms with Magnus on occasion when they disagree on justice, peace, or the moral course of action. Nevertheless, she respects Optimus's leadership and Magnus's sense of order and will naturally cooperate with her team, playing the idealist in comparison to their optimism and pessimism, respectively. She may be more quickly baited into a fight, or follow her gut feelings instead of a plan, but she will not abandon her fellow Autobots easily.

A beloved but unexpected addition to the Autobots were the Torchbearers, a group of extremely advanced drones that she accidentally created when clashing with Scourge. [s1e07] The Mistress doesn't fully understand how they work, but she remains delighted by her clever little entourage. They can even out-stubborn her, and often drag her towards a more peaceful solution to conflict than she would like to pursue.

When Rodimus Prime joined the team, [s2e11] the Mistress was taken aback and wary, considering their experience with previous victims of shared Matrix power. Rodimus worked to prove himself however, and willingly shared his identity as Hot Rod with them, which won her begrudging respect. Although hesitant, she followed Optimus's lead in revealing her own identity to him in order to better work together. The two now make an effective team on the battlefield, both using fire to fight, and have a tendency to feed off one another's passionate intensity.

The Mistress has a feeling that her latecomer teammate Cheetor is not being honest with the rest of them. She certainly appreciates his help, his powers, and his sharp observations, but there are several things about him that make her wonder. He hasn't shared his identity with them and never explained why he volunteered to help when he first showed up, [s3e07] and he will sometimes make comments that hit a little too close to the truth about their secrets. But she doesn't demand he share his real name, mostly because there's a niggling suspicion in the back of her helm that if spooked, he'll run, and Primus knows they'd never catch him.

After Drift's defection from the Decepticons, [s3e14] the Mistress was mostly concerned that Rodimus may go running off to find him. Later, when Drift joined the Autobots, [s4e04] she found him a surprisingly good ally. He matches her idealism and lofty values in a way the other Autobots don't, and the two will often end up engaged in conversations the rest of their team can't follow.

Other Factions

There is no one who irritates the Mistress like Hellscream. From the very first day the two of them have been locked in rivalry. He even chose his name from an insult she hurled at him, just to spite her. The Mistress is divided on her opinions about the Decepticons as a whole, but Hellscream in particular she thinks she will always hate. He's just so arrogant, disruptive, deliberately mean, he's got no reason to get on everyone's nerves like he does, who does he think he is?! She will readily admit that she loses her temper with him a lot, but he heals so quickly. She'd never go so far as to actually kill him. When she encounters the other Decepticons, she is much better at keeping a level head.

The Mistress is happy to work with the Elite Guard. She suspects some of them may be Camien, and both Elita 3 and Elita 5 seem oddly familiar sometimes. She is however occasionally frustrated by the insular nature of their group. When an experiment involving the Enigma of Creation went awry, the Torchbearers became a combiner team for the gestalt Victorion and gained a sliver of some of the Guardsmecha's powers. [s2e12] The Mistress often collaborates with the Elitas to teach and work with the Torchbearers and their new abilities.

The Predacons are something of a mystery to the Mistress. There are no native beastformers on Caminus, so she's unfamiliar with the particular brand of oppression they face under functionism, which is a cornerstone of Predacon activism. She finds them efficient and powerful, and notices they often pick up on things that the other factions don't address. She isn't sure what to make of them, and while this can leave her uncertain or upset, she conciously decides to extend respect in hopes that they will do the same.

JAAT

Windblade is a resident of Room 10 in the Primaneon dorm of the JAAT. Orion and Minimus are her roommates, and the three of them often make excuses for one another when out late doing vigilante work. Another roommate Cosmos finds her charming, if somewhat confusing, and Dead End is easily exhausted by her determined positivity. Windblade isn't exactly sure how, but she thinks Dead End may know her Autobot secret.

Despite getting her relic from him, Windblade doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about the oddities of Alpha Trion. She decided pretty quickly that his deliberate obtusion wouldn't help them and has since mostly left him alone. She'd love some guidance, but clearly she won't be getting it from him.

The dorm monitor of Primaneon is Dion, a kind and sociable teacher who discovered the Autobots' secret identities. [s1e08] Windblade finds him compassionate and helpful, but relies on him less than Orion and Minimus do. His best support to her was encouraging her to speak with a therapist about the challenging things she's dealing with, both as a vigilante and as a Camien on Cybertron. She can't exactly say a lot, but talking with Rung on occasion does wonders to untangle her thoughts.

In her typical stubborn fashion, Windblade has glommed onto something of a project friend in Starscream, a clever and petty fellow student. She's often impressed with his intelligence and flashes of insight, only to be immediately disappointed by the bitter or even cruel ways he treats anyone who gets in his way. Clearly he needs someone to teach him an attitude adjustment, and she's ready to facilitate that. Whether or not Starscream likes her is no matter.

Windblade also keeps up with old friends at the JAAT. Chromia and Firestar are in the same dorm room, so she often visits them together. Their other roommates are something of a handful, especially Ariel, a Carcerian always willing to roughhouse. She enjoys all their company, as long as she can get some personal space, but she's also a little jealous of their clearly strong friendship. These mixed feelings put some strain on her relationship with her old friends, one that she doesn't know how to easily solve.

Family

Windblade has an excellent relationship with her parents and often relies on their advice when feeling down. She hadn’t realized how deeply important their presence was in her life until arriving at the JAAT and needing to hide her Autobot secret from them in the rare chances they get to speak with one another. Nevertheless, a lot of her actions as the Mistress of Flame are informed by how Lug and Anode raised her. As Cybertronian immigrants to Caminus, the two of them took full advantage of the cultural and political differences to teach Windblade things that would have gotten them scrutinized under Cybertron’s harsher functionism. From Anode, she learned stubborn persistence, and from Lug, she learned patience and positivity.

Attributes

As Windblade:

She's a size 4 prop plane, mostly notable for the fact that her wings don't split in root mode, giving her the ability to shakily fly. As the vast majority of flight frames cannot fly in root mode, this is an unusual skill that makes her somewhat exotic to others. Her stubbornness and intuition make her adept at organizing people, although she is happy to rescind leadership to others.

While the Creation Lathe has a good number of previous wielders, those ghosts don't speak very often, and Windblade needs to concentrate hard to hear them. Instead, the Lathe mostly asserts itself in bursts of inspiration, designs, and ideas, which she will end up scribbling in her journal instead of an account of her day. This can be useful when she suddenly realizes a solution to a problem thanks to the Lathe, but also turns out to be incredibly frustrating when presented with ideas beyond her skill and ability. When combined with her cityspeaking, Windblade often finds herself annoyed about city planning, infrastructure, and community organizing that she knows she could improve but has no authority over.

As the Mistress of Flame:

With the Creation Lathe, the Mistress has a bigger frame, greater strength, and a multitude of new powers. Some of the typical relic upgrades she received include bleeding blue with innermost energon, swift healing, an internal comms system that allows her to speak with other relic bearers, and a well of subspace in which she can store items. She chose her name in honor of the original Mistress of Flame, a Knight of Cybertron who helped found and lead Caminus.

Her alt mode is much like her civilian frame, just much larger and faster. Her individual abilities are:

• the Lathe itself, a ceremonial weapon that is sharp enough to be deadly when used properly and spits holy fire
• increased creativity in regards to designing and conceptualizing physical objects or spaces, along with the ability to project blueprints
• minor forging ability, enough for small repairs and enhancements. When combined with other power, it's enough to create things from scratch, like the Torchbearers
• cityspeaking, a somewhat psychic connection to the living spaces around her that gives her a vast amount of information to draw from and the potential to command or control her surroundings

Trivia

Motivation:

Literally being told to do this hero work by the guy who gave her her relic, plus a deep conviction that she has good to bring into the world and the world has good to bring to her

Hobbies:

Journaling, encouraging her friends and/or badgering them to be better people

Favorite Food:

Manganese truffle soup