robothell | Tarn and the very bad no good terrible week

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ratchet | asafepairofhands

Tarn and the very bad no good terrible week

Who: Tarn and Drift and Tarn and You
Where: The city center
When: A few days after the Rodimus incident
What: Tarn has an unfortunate run in with some new friends
Warnings: Tarn. Violence to come

Tarn has had bad days before. Occasionally his latest victim would get a good punch in, perhaps they were particularly good at eluding himself and his team, or they managed to temporarily escape. Maybe the pet decided to gnaw on a particularly important set of data pads. Or Vos decided to poach parts from one of the cleaning drones. Again.

Any of that is a walk in the park compared to the viciously terrible week Tarn has had. So far he has been transported to an alternate Cybertron without his consent. He has been harassed by Autobots, burned, shot at, disrespected,; but really, the proverbial cherry on top of the whole mess, was the incident with Megatron. The founder of the Decepticons, the mech he has sacrificed his identity, his name, his very life to serving, turned traitorous. Betraying his own faction and trading his own badge for an Autobrand. Honestly, Tarn is having a difficult time even wrapping his mind around the whole thing. One thing is for certain though...he is angry and on the hunt for someone to take his aggression out on.

He has been prowling the city ruins for hours, stopping every few minutes to transform a few times, just to take the edge off. He can feel his T-cog grinding more and more with every transformation. He is familiar with the sensation and the knowledge that the cog probably wont last him the month only adds to his every growing ire.

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"Excellent, Pharma, I knew you would see reason."

He gives the medic a sort of condescending pat on the cheek as he walks away. He knows the small gesture will grate upon his nerves. Which, lets be honest, is most of the reason why Tarn does it.

"I have your comm frequency. Keep it clear and I will be in contact."

Pharma clenches a fist. As much as he doesn't want to instigate Tarn, condescending little gestures like that always made him furious. But he checks himself and holds his tongue until Tarn is at a distance away where he can mutter derisively under his breath.

What has he gotten himself into this time?

"You are not my superior, Starscream. Not even in my own universe," Tarn clenches his fist at the slight threat creeping into Starscream's voice. He takes a step forward, his hulking mass displaying its own intimidation.

"You are a coward and a manipulator. Slandering Dreadwing's name for your own selfish purpose."

Starscream is subsequently so taken aback and so furious that he literally starts to tremble with rage where he's standing. "Slandering!?" he sputters.

"Everything that I just said is irrevocably the truth, and you are a poor officer of justice indeed, if you would take the word of the convicted as law simply because you happened to speak to him first," the jet hisses. "Dreadwing disobeyed a direct order from Megatron in such a situation where our glorious leader was forced to dispose of him right then and there. He shouldn't even be alive, but this universe is apparently sadistic enough to have brought him here from an earlier timeline when his demise had yet to happen. These are facts, not opinion!"

He doesn't even remember what the purpose of engaging Tarn was anymore, he's just so offended that he told the truth for once and still no one believes him.

You're Starscream . Of course he's not going to believe you. However, he is interested on what he has to say about Dreadwing.

Tarn crosses his arms, glaring down at the jet. He is going to ignore that comment about his reliability.

"Megatron has proven to not have his priorities straight in my universe, why should I believe that it is any different in yours."

The jet opens and closes his mouth helplessly for a moment and rolls his eyes to glance off to the side, wincing. When he finds his voice again it creaks in at an impossibly high pitch before his words follow.

"To be fair... the Megatron in our world is arguably in a similar position. However, at the time of the incident in question, he was decidedly not."

Starscream taps his talons together nervously. "I had recently returned to the Nemesis after an extended absence, something that Dreadwing took issue with. He did not have the stomach for many of the more morally questionable experiments which we were utilizing in our fight against the Autobots, and he tried to terminate me for it. Megatron did order him to stand down, but in the end Dreadwing made his choice, and it ended with his receiving a rather large hole in his torso."

"Yeah, good luck with that," Ratchet says, his vents laboring as he struggles against panic. He waits until Tarn is out the door before he folds in to survey the damage. At least the cut was fairly clean.

He permits himself a few helpless, agonized noises as he brings a welding torch out of his wrist and down, searing heat scorching sensitive components until until the pain makes him go numb. No one around to hear him anyway.

He works until all the leaks are patched, then slumps back, his cooling fans screaming and his optics too bright. He's still dangerously low on fuel, but he doesn't try to move just yet--he lets himself curl up, hands wrapped hard around the ruined stump of his hip and just shaking a little, rattling against the floor as he tries not to think about the half-destroyed mess that used to be his leg lying a few feet away.

The trembling knot of his body eases gradually and his grip relaxes by degrees as he forces calm through his lines, his ventilations evening out as he goes limp. He lays there for a moment in a now-no-longer-growing pool of his own energon before he decides that's quite enough indulgent self-pity for one non-fatal injury and sits up, looking around for something to help haul himself to his remaining foot and wondering how the hell he's going to start cleaning up.

Megatron is stricken with a look of utter horror as the door slides out of his periphery and unveils Ratchet trying to get onto his feet in his own energon. But, he couldn't have been gone more than half an hour...!

A cocktail of betrayal, anger, and disgust flood from his spark as he processes the grotesque display of violence inflicted on the Autobot doctor. It actually takes him a moment to snap himself out of the grip of his own emotions, sickened with how foolish he was to have caused this. He'd led a mass murderer right to the doorstep of someone he was starting to consider a good friend... What could he even say to that?

The young miner is utterly silent as he runs forward to help Ratchet up, tentative and unsure of how badly Tarn had injured him.

"Hey," Ratchet says, his vocalizer still hoarse from screaming. He sounds exhausted. "Just--yeah, give me a hand up."

He manages to balance against a table, his knee shaking a little, and he almost shrugs Megatron off to try to hop to the nearest chair but decides his dignity will suffer less if he doesn't move too much. He hauls himself up onto the counter to sit, slumped forward on his elbows, lopsided--one on his knee and the other propped in the empty space where his other knee should be.

"I need some fuel," he says, his ventilations still a little unsteady. "And I'm going to need crutches, but we'll figure it out later. That mess is unsalvageable." He jerks his chin at the ruined leg, the finger-marks around the knee joint where Tarn ripped into it with his bare hand plain as day against the wet plating. "And I'm going to need you to wipe that look off your face, as long as I'm making a list. You didn't know." A hand comes down, slick to the elbow with pink fluid, and his hand tightens gently on Megatron's wrist.

"Not your fault, kid."

As well-intentioned as Ratchet's words are, they do little to ease the guilt in his spark. The scene was grim. Ratchet wouldn't be able to get a replacement leg anytime soon, which left him without an alt mode. Nautica was hurt, and now they'd have to break up their slim supplies between them. If Red Alert and First Aid weren't around to lend assistance he'd be feeling more uncertain of their chances of continuing to run the clinic at all.

Megatron's hands are firm and steady in helping Ratchet up to the table, despite the gloom finding itself stubbornly weighing down his expression. His voice remains steady and even.

"Intralinear or intake?"

"Will you stop being dramatic and just get me a drink, please?" Ratchet says irritably, but there's no real heat in his voice. "I'm fine, or I will be. It's a leg, not the end of the world. I'll get some crutches from scrap parts and make do until a replacement can be built. It's fine."

Megatron really didn't want to argue with Ratchet after he'd just had his leg torn off, so he goes and fetches a cube for the doctor to drink without another word.

As long as he could do something to ease this whole process, he could manage his own feelings. He just had a habit of working quietly and letting the somber cloud flow through.

Ratchet downs it quickly, his optics brightening once it's gone and his ventilations ease slightly. He looks up at the expression on Megatron's face, hesitant and a little wary, not sure how much pressure to put on him now.

"Think you can help me scrounge a pair of crutches?" he asks, looking around a little helplessly. "...and maybe give me a hand cleaning up?"

"Do we have anything that could make good crutches?"

He goes over to pick up the ruined limb just a few feet away, feeling another pang of revulsion at the way the plating was so viciously twisted out of place. It doesn't make it to his expression, though.

Megatron glances back at Ratchet. Although a bit melancholy, he was ready to work. "Where do I put this?"

Ratchet's tanks do an unpleasant little roll, but he keeps his expression smooth.

"I'll clean it once I'm walking around again, before we put it in the heap with the other spares. It'll get used. There should be some longer, thinner scraps in one of the corner piles. They don't need to be pretty, they just need to keep me from falling over every two minutes."

"I understand." He really did, something felt inherently wrong with the universe that the Decepticons leader had fallen so disastrously across universes.

"As I said, am without allies on this world. It would be my honor to fight alongside you and your fellow Decepticons, until such a time as we may return to our own worlds."

Tarn immediately latches on to the admission that Starscream makes regarding Megatron. His eyes narrow behind the mask. Disappointing. Truly.

"Yes, of course."

He moves to storm away, turning his back on Starscream. Next time he sees Dreadwing he will have to address these claims, however unfounded they probably are.

"I appreciate your concern, Starscream. I will take this into consideration."

Normally Starscream would take issue with someone so rudely turning their back on him in the middle of conversation, and he has so many questions for this strange Decepticon, too- such as, consideration for what- but for once, he has the good sense to realize that he probably just narrowly dodged a bullet talking with this guy.

"Yes... er... My pleasure, Tarn."

Yeah he's going to go ahead and fly away now.

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Tarn and the very bad no good terrible week

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