robothell | [ THE "DRIFT GOT HECKED UP BY TARN" CATCH-ALL POST ]

Rodimus has never encountered mothers before, and therefore is completely and utterly stumped at the amount of concern June has for him. She doesn't even know him, and his opinion of humans is still lodged somewhere between 'annoying, and their planet smells' and 'generally think shooting down Autobots who are under orders to help is a great idea'. His experiences with them haven't been great, what can he say?

"Everyone's a friend of Prime." At least the way he calls everyone 'old friend' would certainly indicate that. He's never understood that particular habit. He does stop trying to walk away, however, because, well, what else is he going to do? Maybe if he tells her she'll leave him alone. "I'm fine. Most of this is Drift's." He hopes to god some of it's Tarn's, just because he expects Drift put up a decent fight.

Sorry, Rodimus, no dice. You won't shake June that easily.

She looks pretty fucking alarmed at the response -- because, you know, with the whole being covered in energon and having a similarly energon-streaked sword strapped to his back, it makes it seem a particular way. Like, you know, Rodimus brutally murdered whoever this Drift is. But he looks...way too heavy with sorrow for June to really suspect that to be the case, and her expression softens.

"Is he all right? What happened?"

Ratchet warned him about Drift's loss of voice in the three seconds he had before Rodimus had rushed into the clinic; it doesn't particularly bother him this second. But voice or not, he's not shoving him away; Rodimus will take any sign of Drift's acknowledgment he can. It helps calm the frantic, panicked whirring of his spark regardless. Resting his face on the plating at the base of Drift's neck, Rodimus finally begins to relax, joints unlocking for the first time since he'd spotted Drift outside the city. It's not over; won't be over until he's punched the mask right off of Tarn's face, but it's something.

"You're going to be okay." It's as much to reassure himself as it is to comfort Drift, promise clear in his tone - he will make it okay if he has to. He just needs Drift to know.

Why, June. Why? All he wants is to go be sad alone for a while. Rodimus doesn't look at her after that, turning to rest his back fully against the wall as he lets himself sink to the ground. If she won't let him go he might as well give up pretending he can actually summon up the energy to walk.

"He was brutalized and left for someone to stumble across by a genocidal ex-warlord's psychopathic fan-in-chief." He's not feeling up to referring to Megatron as his 'co-captain', as if he ever is. But particularly not right now. If she knows Megatron and Optimus then she'll know who he's referring to in at least part of that sentence. "He's--" That gets a helpless sort of half gesture that Rodimus feels accurately sums up the situation.

Drift

There's a sharp clacking of metal as Megatron jostles and taps the scanner in his hand, trying to get it to back turn on. It was working just a moment ago, but decided to shut off a few seconds before he was about to use it to check Drift's vital signs. After one or two more attempts at getting it to work, he sighs irritably and sets it aside, breath seeping out of the gunshot wound in the left side of his face. Scavenged technology could be so moody.

He finds himself a little nervous, of all things, simply because Drift had needed extensive work to pull him from the brink of death, and because his own inexperience. He's had much less time than expected to let Ratchet's lesson's properly sink in. Nonetheless, he continues, resting a gray hand on Drift's wrist to feel for his energon and electrical lines to gauge the fluid pressure and strength of the current. Despite the miner's size, he was learning to acquire quite the light touch.

"Since the scanner here doesn't like to cooperate, I'm going to need check your vitals without it."

He looks at Drift to make sure he wasn't uncomfortable with that.

Open!

To say the week had been busy would be a gross understatement. An explosion of misfortune and violence may have been a more apt description, and it was starting to wear down on Megatron's patience. Nautica, Drift, and Ratchet were all gravely injured. To top it all off, their stockrooms had been raided and he'd gotten his own facial souveneir from the whole encounter.

Ratchet seemed well enough to onlookers, but Megatron was there when he collapsed from exhaustion. The doctor seemed keen on ignoring all of his own advice despite the energon he'd lost and the healing he had yet to do. At times he wished he could just strap Ratchet down for a day and make him rest, even if he was entirely aware of the earful he'd get for doing so.

It was all a lot of stress and no physical outlet to work it off. The clinic wasn't like the mines or Kaon's underworld - he had to be careful here. He couldn't work out some of his frustration by digging into bedrock for a few hours, thinking to himself, and getting some exercise into his actuators. Not that he'd ever miss that form of labor, but he was yearning for something to to work off his own building coil of tension.

In between helping any of the other medics or checking up on Nautica and Drift, Megatron would find himself standing by the entrance, arms crossed, vaguely wondering if he could take a chance and leave for an hour or two.

"A message," Megatron repeats, and his optics narrow, lingering again on the Decepticon symbol carved into Drift's plating. He looks utterly, thoroughly unsurprised. "Of course." He folds his arms, and the bitter anger on his face forced to take a back seat for a moment to a look of serious concern – it's still there, it isn't hidden, but it's not at the forefront. "What did he tell you?"

Drift vents out a slow hiss of air from his vents, barely audible. His optics don't leave Megatron's face, unwavering, boring into it.

"He told me," Drift says, his still low and thrumming with some barely buried tension, rage or fear or resentment -- it's impossible to tell, "to tell you in excruciating detail how he beat me within an inch of my life, blow by blow. That he broke both of my wrists, kicked me until I could feel a tank rupture, crushed my vocalizer in my throat. How it felt when his voice nearly suffocated my spark."

Drift leans forward then, slowly, the freshly welded plating on his stomach creaking as he does. His gaze deadens, still fixed on Megatron -- then something in his expression ripples and suddenly he looks strikingly like Deadlock, the unbridled thirst for violence still buried deep, but the unyielding intensity of his gaze remains. The inscribed brand on his chest seems to gleam under the bright lights of the medibay.

"This is your fault," Drift intones, but the roiling tension in his voice starts to break through, wavering and flanging slightly. "You can't protect your crew. He'll work his way through all of us, one by one, until none of them are left. Until nothing stands between you and him. He says he'll be waiting."

Megatron doesn't look away either. The light in his optics burns with silent fury – and the larger part of it is what he's willing to publicly own, that Tarn's actions are abominable and made all the worse for the fact that they're ultimately his responsibility, but beyond that, buried a little way down but still there, is a tyrant's indignation at this insult.

"I'm flattered that he thinks my crew would want to stand between me and him," he mutters angrily, enraged above all at the stupidity of it. He vents out, heavy and frustrated. "He won't be waiting for long, I'm sure. Did he tell you anything else?"

What Aftermath wouldn't give for some kind of working shower. Travelling so much around the city and digging through the rubble for clues didn't really leave a mech clean. He's been through much worse, but Primus, a mech was allowed to long for a shower, wasn't he?

He arrives at the clinic, scraping gunk out of his elbow joint with stiff bristle brush. Red Alert would smelt him alive for messing the clinic up and she was already not terribly fond of him. But he needed to visit Megatron and the clinic was the most reliable place to find the fellow.

The moment he sees Megatron leaning against the entrance however, he stops and does a double take and nearly trips over his own feet.

"Primus," he gasps, dropping the brush and rushing over, reaching out to touch the lightest of hands to the uninjured side of the young mech's face. "What happened?"

Ratchet doesn't mistake that voice either, and he doesn't look up.

"Good, you're here. I need your hands--he needs to be turned over so I can start on his back. Rodimus, you're relieved, go get some rest. I know you're about to pass out." He finishes up what he's doing and draws back--he's slick with energon to the elbow, some spattered on his face, and he looks only very briefly, flickeringly tired before he straightens in his crutches again--then almost drops them when he catches sight of Megatron's face, his optics paling.

"What the hell happened to you? You were gone for--" Ratchet cuts himself off, swearing, then looks back at Drift. Megatron has already finished prepping an IV--he can obviously still work. He looks almost pained as his optics flick back up to that half-ruined face.

"I genuinely don't have time to fix that right now," he says, an odd kind of strain in his voice. "Help me get him turned over and you can hook that up."

Drift's optics are still bright and slightly wide on Ratchet's face, still letting the implications of everything he doesn't remember settling in. His hand prickles and tingles where Ratchet's fingers press into the plating, but his spark is humming warmly in his chassis, feeling it spread all the way down to his fingertips. It's jarring, the sudden jump from what Drift was so accustomed to to this, and it somehow doesn't even feel real, but Drift is just trying to lay back and let it wash over him. A faint smile tugs at the corner of his mouth and his optics dim slightly, half-shuttering. For the first time, Drift manages to relax against the slab with a faint creak, his hand going a little heavier in Ratchet's grip. He lets his other hand rest on his chest, just watching Ratchet, knowing he doesn't need to say anything at all for Ratchet to know he's grateful.

Drift's frame seems burdened with an invisible weight, pressing down on him, but he doesn't buckle.

"Yeah. Yeah, he did." Drift's optics sharpen and his lips pull back from his teeth in an expression that is most definitely not a smile. "He told me to tell you how proud I am to wear your brand."

Drift leans forward a little more, bracing his arm across his lap as if he might fold over like a house of cards otherwise. His other hand goes to his chest, covering the brand Tarn had carved in him, fingers digging into the grooves in the plating, and his optics burn.

"Well, Megatron? Should I be?"

It seems like there's a lot going on lately, and stumbling across Rodimus covered in energon was only one of the tip-offs. She heard there's a clinic around here, aimed at Cybertronians no doubt, but there's still a professional curiosity there. Besides, if there's medical equipment for Cybertronians, maybe she can find a way to construct some basic tools for human first aid, too.

Of course, the scale of the clinic is huge. June's sort of getting used to feeling the Thumbelina routine around here, but she knows she needs to stay in sight of any Cybertronians roaming about the clinic. She doesn't know much about who's staffing it, exactly, but she's surprised to see the younger, pre-war Megatron here -- on top of the terrifying facial trauma he's recently sustained.

"Oh my god -- Megatron? What happened to you?"

Megatron does look at Rodimus as he grows more and more upset, waiting for Ratchet to talk him down in case the orange Autobot tries to do something stupid (he seemed like the type.). When he's dismissed by Ratchet, Megatron's attention is drawn back to the medic and to the IV in his own hand, setting the needle back on the frame so he can focus on the task at hand.

"I know," is all he says regarding his own injury. He's well aware of triage and what that entails, and he wasn't the one dying on a surgical bed or missing a whole limb.

He looks down at Drift and prepares for the turn, positioning himself to get a stable hold on the bot's shoulders and hips.

Edited 2015-02-08 00:19 (UTC)

Megatron watches Aftermath with a slight glint of surprise as he runs up quicker than he'd ever seen the old bot move before. When the hand reaches up to touch his face, the melancholy returns back into his expression.

"Our stockrooms were broken into. The looter had a gun, but he didn't make off with much."

He reaches up to hold Aftermath's forearm,"I'm fine."

June gets another curious eyeful as he spots her entering the clinic. He recognizes her, of course, but humans were still a rarity in his life. Never a moment of quiet, even when no one was immediately dying or being operated on.

"I'm fine."

Apparently being shot in the face wasn't a fatal wound to Cybertronians. At least, when it missed his brain module. There were still some things that he was fairly certain needed to be picked out of his skull at some point, but that would come when the medics' hands were less occupied.

"I was driving out a looter in our storage."

He goes down on one knee so she needn't crane her head up so much.

Aftermath takes in the sight of the damaged side of Megatron's face and the morose expression beside it.

You don't look fine at all.

But here was the founder of the Decepticon cause and you just didn't just say things like that to another Decepticon unless it was in a private setting. Now that he's looking for it, he can see the tension in the young mech's frame too.

"Let's go have a talk," he offers gently, letting his hand fall to rest atop of Megatron's shoulder. "Somewhere quiet."

Megatron seems to consider declining after giving the clinic one last look, certain if he left for more than a few minutes he'd find some sort of bloodied disaster waiting for him.

But no one was as aware of the building strain on his frame than he was, and his mind was swimming in - well, in a lot of things. He'd be no use to anyone if he wasn't focused.

"Not too far. I need to be there if one of the medics need me."

"We'll be well within reach," Aftermath assures, gently guiding Megatron away from the clinic entrance. "I am pretty sure both Red Alert and Ratchet know how to yell for you when you're needed. And loudly too." Ratchet was missing his leg after all, not his voice.

Besides, the young miner looked tense enough to snap. He needed a break.

"There's a spot to sit just a little ways down the side walk. The clinic will be in our line of sight."

He stays in place at first, still hesitant, but then follows Aftermath's careful nudge to the entrance after hearing more of what he said.

Opening the door, he paces next to the the old bot to their spot outside, just out of earshot. He gives the clinic one last look back before leaning against a wall.

"Has news gotten out of what happened?"

"But that's Megatron," he protests as he has no choice but to step backwards. And stumbles as he does so, just proving Ratchet's point about him being exhausted. But that's not the point, the point is that that is Megatron. And Ratchet doesn't care. How can he not care?

Rodimus rubs a hand across his face, leaving a trail of energon as he attempts to focus in on the problem. Or just Drift. Mostly Drift. "Why is he here?"

Please answer him, Ratchet, he's so confused right now.

If he had pupils, Megatron would be struggling not to roll his eyes.

"Just don't blame me if you lose another arm," he says, and turns to leave.

Megatron leans forward, too, one hand gripping either side of the end of the slab. His optics are narrowed to fiery slits.

"I don't think it's my place to tell you what you ought or ought not to be proud of, Drift," he says, his voice very, deliberately, excruciatingly even. "Is there anything you want to say to me before I find Tarn and persuade him to end this idiocy?"

"Will you look at him for ten seconds, Rodimus? He's not our Megatron, he's from before the war."

His hands come down on Drift's back, working on the lesser injuries there, his mouth set into a thin line.

"He offered to help and we need it, so I let him. And, personally, I'm not interested in punishing him for things he hasn't done yet. Now go lay down before you pass out on your feet."

It's a hard life when you can't give into the urge around Rodimus. Half the universe understands.

"What, and give you credit for the one-liners that'll follow? Not a chance." Come on, Megs, he's got to own his cheesy actions the best he can. "Are we going now?"

Edited 2015-02-08 20:54 (UTC)

[ THE "DRIFT GOT HECKED UP BY TARN" CATCH-ALL POST ]

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[Drift, Open Prompt!]

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Open!

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Open!

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god i legit thought I'd tagged this

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you hecked up