Not in Kansas Anymore

[triggerhappycopter]

Who: Tarn and Spinister
Where: The City
When: Sometime after arrival
What: Spinister gets an unfortunate welcome.
Warnings: Tooorture potentially??



This was not the WAP.

This was not the WAP at all.

Spinister shakily wipes the black tears from his face with the back of his hand, confusion and panic condensing themselves into a small, hard lump somewhere under his spark casing.

They were playing jenga while waiting for Fulcrum to call in. Then the white-out pain of his spark suddenly starting to burning out, the blurred sight of Crankcase and Krok seizing on the floor in agony.

The pain had stopped as suddenly as it'd come, leaving a ringing, fading soreness behind. When the world cleared up again, it had not been the comforting sight of the WAP's lounge room that had greeted him. Spinister staggers onto his feet, gun and rotor sword slipping into his hands, the former of which he aims into nothingness as he twists round and round, trying to make sense of his surroundings.

"Guys?" the heli calls out desperately. "Where are you? This isn't funny. This isn't funny at all!"

Comments

[sparkwhisperer]

Tarn just stares at him.

"That sounds...repulsive."

Lead inhibitors? Tarn would never touch the stuff; his tanks would probably rust from the inside out. At this point though, he needs energon. He might just have to suck it up, just this once.

[triggerhappycopter]

"Well," Spin puffs a little unhappy sigh. "Welcome to the bottom rung, buddy. That's just how things are. Better than century old corpse fuel anyways."

Although corpse fuel had at least been tolerable with good company. Spinister's face twists into an unhappy expression, but he quickly buries his concentration back into tidying up the cables and putting the armor plates back on.

"Anything else I need to look at while we're here?" he asks, stopping briefly to bend Tarn's thumb plate back into shape.

[sparkwhisperer]

Tarn lets out an unhappy puff of air through his vents as Spinister confirms his thoughts. Besides, he is right, anything would be better than old corpse fuel. He shudders slightly at the thought.

As Spinister finishes up the repair job, setting armor plates back into place, Tarn straightens back up.

"Perhaps if you would..." His hand comes up to touch the gunshot wound on his flank, optics growing cold as he remembers the circumstance that caused the injury.

[triggerhappycopter]

"Hmmm," Spinister leans in and flicks a little flashlight out of his wrist compartment, placing light fingers around the edges of the wound. It'd just looked like a cracked biolight initially but now that it's been pointed out...

"This is gonna take a bit longer than your hand." It looked like at least one set of servos at been burnt through in there. No wonder Tarn had looked a bit stiff.

[sparkwhisperer]

"Perhaps we should go inside that building, for the time being?" He says gesturing to the run down structure that he emerged from. "I would feel more comfortable if we less out in the open, if you understand. "

He starts easing himself up, wound aching slightly at the movement The thought of an adversary stumbling upon Tarn while he was so vulnerable made him uneasy. A bit of privacy would ease that significantly.

[triggerhappycopter]

"Better than getting dust into everything anyways," Spinister says by way of agreement, tidying up his field kit and closing it before tucking the box under one arm.

"Is this base then?" the heli asks, peering curiously up at the building as he waited for his current teammate to get himself up. "Or is it, like, temp base?"

[sparkwhisperer]

Tarn straightens up the best he can, leading Spinister into the building.

"Temporary base. It is probably best if we keep as mobile as possible. Just in case." May as well keep his paranoia heightened. Tarn takes a look around the interior, working his way further into the building "I think I saw a berth in one of the back rooms. Would that be easiest for you?"

It wasn't especially clean in here either, but Tarn had just stumbled upon it when Spinister showed up. It would have to do for now.

[triggerhappycopter]

"Heh! Table works as well as berth for me, but I'm betting you're not going to be anywhere near as comfortable on a table," Spinister answers, shrugging slightly as he inspects the building, knocking on the walls, eyeballing any cracks they walked by.

It didn't seem too bad off. Sure, the structure wasn't going to last another year, but they should be long gone by then. Spin DOES make a note to tidy the place up somewhat though, if only for some peace of mind. Just because they were on the go didn't mean they had to leave in a turborat hole.

[sparkwhisperer]

Tarn disappears into the back room, ignoring Spinister's investigation of the building and making a beeline for the small berth. It creaks as he shifts his weight onto it, lying down. Clearly the the recharge slap was made for a smaller lighter mech but as long as it continues to hold his weight, he supposes he can be choosy. He simply bends his knees, so that his legs don't hang awkwardly off the end.

"I would prefer to get this done quickly if possible." He calls into the other room, hoping to get the ball rolling sooner rather than later. The less time that he is vulnerable the better.

[triggerhappycopter]

"Juuuuust wanted to make sure this wasn't a horrible deathtrap," Spinister chirps, popping his head out from around the door frame. "As long as we don't drop Monstercon on this place though, I think we'll be fine!"

He sets his field kit down on top of the night stand and kicks over an old, empty crate from one of the corners.

"Who do you think this place belonged to?" he wonders, plonking himself down onto the crate and sorting through his tools.

[sparkwhisperer]

Tarn watches as Spinister kicks the crate over, irritation building at his near constant chatter.

"I'm not certain. I didn't stumble upon anything useful while scoping out this building. Just dust and old furniture."

He shifts on the berth to find a more comfortable position, causing it to creak. Still better than a table. Or the floor.

Tarn stares at Spinister as he lays out supplies on the nightstand from his field kit. This would hurt, Tarn knew. Digging a bullet out of his protoform is different that reattaching some wires.

Taking on look at the old stained supplies that Spinister is preparing, Tarn opts to look away. He doesn't want to know where those have been.

[triggerhappycopter]

Oh, the tools have definitely been used on a number of corpses. Quite a number, really.

"I bet it belonged to some sort of IT nerd," Spinister natters on, oblivious to Tarn's annoyance, setting the tools out neatly by order of use. "It looks like the kind of place Fulcrum would like!"

Fortunately, he trails off into speculative mumbles and eventual silence as he starts working.

First order of business was getting the armor off; not a terribly difficult affair since Tarn's armor was actually built to be easy to navigate. He places the thick plating onto the floor, moves onto the protective dust cover, cuts away the burnt bits and further revealing some of the delicate machinery underneath.

The shot hadn't severed any of the nearby fuel lines, but there was coolant all over the place, coloring the dark mass of cabling a reddish tinge. He starts working on plucking pieces of the biolight glass, debris and pieces of the bullet out.

[sparkwhisperer]

Tarn shutters his optics, gritting his teeth, as Spinister roots around for debris. He declines to comment on his inane ramblings, instead, distracting himself by reciting in his head one of his favorite poems. By Megatron. He immediately stops.

A shooting pain stabs through his side as Spinister brushes against a nerve sensor. "Urgh-- Primus, be careful, Spinister.

[triggerhappycopter]

"You know that tiny, Genericon Captain of mine whose face Vos messed up? Well, he survived having his face put back together without pain dampeners." There's just a sliver of frost in Spinister's tone, but he doesn't look up nor does he stop working. "Barely made a peep, even after he woke up halfway through me reconstructing his fuel intake."

His forceps find the last piece of the bullet lodged inside of a motor relay and he begins the slow and delicate process of removing it.

"I'm being as careful as I can be."

[sparkwhisperer]

Tarn turns to glare daggers at Spinister. Perhaps he has allowed the mech to get too comfortable around him. Surely that is the only explanation for the amount of sass he is getting from the helicopter. Unfortunately, there is nothing he can do about it while Spinister has his hands inside him.

"Yes, of course." He spits. "Just finish it."

[triggerhappycopter]

"We're not even getting started yet," the heli shrugs. "Sorry, man."

Yeah, he kind of has to take apart most of Tarn's side in order to reach the broken components. The damage wasn't exactly extensive, but the wound was deep; self repair would have taken at least a month to work through it all. As it was, it was a good half hour of finicky disassembly to start off with. It leaves a rather big, empty gap in Tarn's side where the damaged components had once resided.

"Try not to move too much," Spin warns as he covers the hole with the dust cover before turning his attention to the little pile of broken parts.

His success as a surgeon mostly stemmed from his ability to fabricate parts on the fly- the kind of work that was usually relegated to molding or high precision fabrication machines. It was slow and tedious job with a flagging laser cutter though, and he still needed to splice all the various wires together afterwards. They didn't have much in way of scrap metal or corpse parts either; just everything that Spin had brought with him, or anything he managed to scrounge up from the building.

It's nearly ten hours later before Tarn finally gets everything put back into place- and even then, Spin still had to patch the hole in Tarn's armor.

[sparkwhisperer]

By the time Spinister is done, Tarn is approaching his tenth hour of not transforming; perhaps the longest he has gone in some time. Irritability grips him and he struggles to keep still on the berth, twitching in a barely contained precursor to transformation. He can't wait anymore.

"I need to move." He starts to get up from the berth, frame creaking from being still for so long.

[triggerhappycopter]

"Okay," Spinister mumbles, trying not to nod off. He's not really had much of a down time even before his arrival.

"Don't drive or run or transform or anything." He's beginning to slowly list forwards, faceplanting on the patched side armor, blow torch clicking off. "Gotta... let the repairs... set..."