robothell | 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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"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."

Tarn and the very bad no good terrible week

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