Ashtray

Ashtray is a Junkion Reality Junkie and Renegade Mechanic. For his evil counterpart, see Ashtray (SG).

Ashtray at work

Ashtray lives for three things: scrap, speed, and the flickering glow of reality TV. He's a walking, talking pile of salvaged metal, his robot form a Frankensteinian patchwork of gears, wires, and dented panels held together by sheer grit and ingenuity.

Ashtray's claim to fame is his unconventional approach to battle. Unlike his Autobot and Decepticon brethren who rely on sleek factory-forged bodies, Ashtray relishes the chaos. He transforms between robot and motorcycle mode not with graceful precision, but with a glorious, explosive mess. Every direct hit becomes an opportunity for reinvention, his robotic frame erupting into a cloud of scrap, only to reassemble into a different, wilder version of himself – the Mad Max of s.

In robot mode, Ashtray wields an armor-crushing ax, forged from the salvaged engine block of a long-dead starship. His other arm boasts a decelerator laser, a Junkion invention that disrupts his opponent's internal clock, turning even the swiftest warrior into a lumbering oaf.

“

Television is reality, and reality is less than television."

”

History

Pre-MUX History

Since the movie isn't canon, the Autobots encountered the Junkions differently on the MUX.

Uh oh, SpaghettiOs!

The Junkions are descendants of a group of Autobots, Decepticons, and independents that fled Cybertron millions of years ago during the Cybertron Civil War. Discovering the shell of a broken-apart world that had been used as a dumping ground by other races for millennia, the proto-Junkions settled down, figuring no one would fight for the literal wasteland.

At first the refugees were at peace, joining together their small fleet of ships to form a new surface for the junk world, and using their significant engineering skills to repair a lot of the discarded technology for future trade. They began to view the new “Planet” of Junk as their new home, and began defending it from outside incursion with the tenacity of junkyard dogs.

However, as their new civilization developed, old grudges and prejudices started to emerge. Former Autobots and Decepticons disagreed with how the small world should be run, and ancient battle lines began to be re-formed. Desperate to avoid another outbreak of hostilities, the ruling council of Junkion decided to take an extreme measure – a community-wide memory wipe.

Deciding the vestiges of Cybertron culture was to blame for the renewed hostilities, the Junkion supreme programmers worked in secret to develop a computer virus that would wipe out all memory of Cybertron, the Autobots, the Decepticons, and the war. Junkions would be given a clean state, whether they wanted it or not.

The ruse was successful, and the racial memories of the Junkions were wiped with the exception of a chosen few council members who were tasked with keeping the Junkions out of the Cybertronian War should contact ever be reestablished with their former home world. Eventually most of those council members died out, leaving ever fewer with the secret of the Junkions’ origins.

The Junkions continued to exist, but without any culture or history. When the Planet of Junk started receiving television signals from Earth, twenty light-years away, they latched onto them, hungrily absorbing Earth culture like a dry sponge, filling the gap left by the Junkion Elders’ virus. Eventually some Junkions decided to set out to find the source of these wonderful images from the sky…

MUX History

Ashtray flies the Junkion repair ship Scopuli. While accompanying Junkyard aboard the Millennium Falcon, Ashtray was attacked by Seacons, and paralyzed by Seawing's venom laser. The Junkions were overwhelmed by the Seacons, and the Falcon was lost to them.

Logs

2016

Seacons

• February 11 - "Seacons Attack!" - The Seacons attack a Junkion freighter at the Hydrax Spaceport.

Notes

• Ashtray was never named in any fiction; his name (and the names of many other Junkions) comes from character designer's notes, revealed in Transformers: The Complete Ark.
• Ashtray is one of the movie's "extra" Junkions, whose designs were mostly a mix and match of each other's parts. In Ashtray's case, his chest, arms and legs are based on Junkyard's and therefore share similarities with Greasestain's, HAZMAT's and Wasteoid Gamma's.
• Speed Demon with a Reality Fix:

Motorcycle mode is where Ashtray truly shines. Transformed into a sleek, cobbled-together chopper, he tears across the battlefield at 160 mph, leaving a trail of smoking rubber and bewildered enemies in his wake. He can maintain this breakneck speed for a good 100 miles, fueled by a potent cocktail of energon and the latest season of "Junkion Dance Crew."

• Reality Bites:

Ashtray's true addiction, however, isn't energon or scrap – it's reality TV. He devours every glitzy, trashy drama, every staged competition, every manufactured rivalry. To him, the manufactured chaos of the screen is far more real than the endless war he's embroiled in. "Television is reality," he'll slurp between laser blasts, "and reality is less than television."

Ashtray is a paradox on wheels, a walking junkyard with a philosopher's soul. He's a master of mayhem, a speed demon, and a reality TV junkie rolled into one. He's the kind of mech who'd rather quote a Kardashian than recite the Prime Directive, and he wouldn't have it any other way. So, buckle up, grab your popcorn, and prepare for the wildest ride in the galaxy, courtesy of Ashtray, the Renegade Mechanic with a Reality Fix.

Players

• Ashtray is available for application. In the meantime, he's temped by Bzero.

References

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