robothell | Tarn and the very bad no good terrible week

Entry tags:

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Tarn lets out of soft 'oof' as Ratchet knees him in the stomach, pushing with all his strength. Unfortunately for him, Tarn outweighs the medic significantly. He continues to squeeze the hand harder even as he struggles to keep atop Ratchet, feeling some of the joints start popping ominously.

"Just save yourself the pain and tell me where the fragging t-cog is. I will leave without so much as a look back." Tarn growls lowly; only a slight wheeze to it from the pressure being applied to his stomach.

Ratchet makes a choked, wrecked sound in his throat, his optics widening... but his face sets and he thrashes in Tarn's grip, bringing his knee up again to catch Tarn square at the thin plating at the center of his pelvic span as he snaps his head forward, slamming the thicker plating at the center of his chevron against the front of Tarn's mask.

"Go to hell!" he yells, trying to kick Tarn again and struggling harder, venting roughly as he writhes in Tarn's grip.

Tarn falls atop Ratchet with a hiss at the direct hit to his pelvic plating. He barely even feels the hit to his head, too distracted by the shooting pain. Pulling himself together he straightens up, glaring down at Ratchet fiercely.

"I warned you, Autobot, I really did. This entire situation could have been avoided had you not been so damned Stubborn. I have been more than patient with you, and this is the thanks I get." Tarns stands, grabbing Ratchet by the same knee that was used to assault him. "This hurts me more than I hurts you." He twists the knee joint, destroying it's inner workings and breaking cables, before letting him drop back to the ground.

Ratchet screams.

His head slams back, optics blazing white as Tarn's fingers bite deep through plating into the joints and pistons of his knee, severing cables, energon spilling. His head slams back against the floor as he arches, trying to twist away for a moment and then stopping when that wrenches the tattered, pulpy mess in Tarn's grip and he stops to just drag in air through his vents. It hurts so much that the sensation is almost meaningless, white noise in his head, and he shakes through it, just taking a few seconds to jitter uselessly against the floor before he twists again, looking back up at Tarn with wild optics.

"Are you done?" he asks, voice ragged, vocalizer popping from strain and overuse, but he doesn't look afraid.

The medic's screams are like music. Tarn looks down at Ratchet, smirk reaching his optics and blazing behind his mask.

"Ratchet, Honestly, I'm surprised at you. "He leans over and grabs hand saw from one of the cabinets that he was just rifling through. "This is an interrogation! And I am the Commander of the Decepticon Justice Division. Do you think I would back down so quickly?" He kneels on Ratchet's injured leg, effectively pinning him, before looking him dead in the eyes.

"Now. You have one last chance. Tell me where the t-cog is." He lowers the saw to Ratchet's upper thigh, pressing down firmly.

Ratchet writhes against the floor, fists pounding uselessly on concrete before they shove helplessly at Tarn's knees, but that just jars his injured leg, so he stops. He's briefly frantic, panic slamming through him like a hammer on an anvil before he focuses on Tarn's face, the expression in his optics. Something nauseatingly and uncomfortably like hatred rakes through him, raw and naked, dragging like sandpaper through his brain and leaving him scraped clean and strangely calm.

"No," he says, his voice clear but for a little static, staring Tarn right in the optics.

"Very well." Tarn murmurs before making his first cut with the saw. shallowly, but enough to cut clear through the armor plating on his thigh and into the protoform a few inches.

"You worried that I would injure your precious hands didn't you?" He saws slightly more into the leg. "Let me tell you something, Ratchet..." The teeth on the blade catch slightly on the inner workings, causing Tarn to push harder, energon gushing freely. He leans in to whisper into Ratchet's audiol, "Not even I am so sadistic as to remove a medic's hands from him."

With one last cut Ratchet's leg is severed.

Ratchet thrashes and bucks, hands coming up to shove at Tarn's elbows, his shoulders, pounding laughably smaller fists against the collar of his armor. The teeth of the saw catch and a short, ragged sound wrenches from between his clenched teeth, despite how little he wants to give Tarn the satisfaction. He reaches up blindly, his fingers digging into either side of Tarn's mask and trying to wrench it free, struggling to do damage of any kind, to hurt Tarn back as he feels his leg come free, the sick lack of weight. He abruptly realizes that Tarn was only pinning him by that leg and he shoves back on his hands, optics blazing, trying not to look at the vivid pink swath he left on the floor when he moved.

"You don't know anything about that," he says, shaking with pain and the remnants of anger--it's starting to be swallowed up by the cold knowledge that if he doesn't start patching lines soon, he's going to pass out before he can finish and bleed himself dry onto the floor of his own medibay. He keeps his optics on Tarn. "You don't know anything. But I know how bad it's going to be for you if Megatron comes back here with Nautica and sees you like this. Is that something you want to risk?"

Tarn makes a small noise of agreement.

"Yes, perhaps your right." He stands from the bloody remnants of Ratchet's leg. He thinks about taking the it with him but decides against it. Let the medic reattach it if he so desires. The damage had been done and the message sent.

"Know this, Ratchet. Don't think that just because I am walking away today, does not mean I will not be back. That T-Cog will be mine."

Edited 2015-02-18 13:34 (UTC)

"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."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Tarn and the very bad no good terrible week

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject