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"The Other Side (as in a supernatural sense)"

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Sixteen hours and a four-hour recharge break had done nothing to sweeten Krok's temper. It'd made him more tired and pained, in fact. There was something about having big, gaping wounds where there should be metal that did not make mechs happy. The gunshot wounds that Misfire was guilty for (Crankcase totally tattled on the jet) weren't helping matters any. That had combined with all the other aches and agony the D.J.D. had left in their wake, and oh, hey, that crushing sense of responsibility Krok felt as the sole Decepticon authority figure in a six-planet radius. Probably the whole sector, but six planets he was sure of.

Add to that his (anxiety issues) minor concern over his missing unit member, and Krok was not a happy 'Con. Go figure.

He'd always thought he had a healthy amount of ambition for a Decepticon. Not too much to stand out (and get shot), and not too much to be apathetic (and get shot). Moderation and control had always been key; he secured what he had before risking the push for more. His caution had seemed like a good thing. He'd had a plan going: sign on as a grunt, get commissioned, slowly rise through the ranks until he took command of his own unit, and steadily build on that until he was in a position of real power.

Good plan. Solid. Working out well for him. His superiors had actually trusted him, because he was just ambitious enough to be proactive without being proactive enough to shoot them in the backs. Assuming command of his own unit had been a bit rocky, but not anything he couldn't handle.

His subordinates had been typical Decepticons. Good mechs for, well, Decepticons. He'd kept his guard up and tried to keep everyone alive. Weaponry had, for the most part, stayed pointed at the enemy. That'd been a positive endorsement of his leadership abilities according to Decepticon High Command. Lack of assassination attempts and/or success of the same? Score! Keep that officer in charge.

There'd been bad spots, but nothing he couldn't get his mechs out of. They'd apparently managed to got out of the last bad spot on their own, which was fine. He couldn't fault them for going on without him, but catching up had become an unnecessarily complicated procedure.

First he'd needed a ship. That had…not been one of his better plans, but he'd pulled it off in the end. Then he'd needed to fuel it, and luckily he'd managed to acquire enough mechs to crew the rustbucket while searching for fuel. Resources were low, however, and trying to find fuel was a never-ending search. Becoming an expropriation specialist had not been part of his career plan, but he chose to regard it as, uh, padding his resume. He could dress it up as something like, 'Experienced in utilizing any available resource.' As well as those that weren't available until he made them so, but - yeah. Decepticon. Utilization of other people's stuff despite their protests was a privilege of the faction brand, or at least the rank hash-marks. If he was incapable of begging, borrowing, or stealing it, then he could probably blow it up.

Or recruit someone to do it for him. He'd found more crew, and they had a wide range of talents. It said something about a commander when his unit roster included a K-Class frametype who failed to explode and a surgeon more useful as a killer. Krok wasn't sure what exactly that roster said about him, but ignorance was probably bliss in this case.

Not so blissful: the whole unit had been added to the Decepticon Justice Division's List. That said a whole lot about the unit commander, unfortunately.

Even without the massive facial injuries, that was a headache all on its own. Unless or until he cleared their names, his name was off Decepticon High Command's promotion list. At best, he'd be demoted. At worst, he'd be terminated. At the very worst of all worst case scenarios, they'd hand him over to the D.J.D. for execution.

Theoretically, the war was over. Krok would believe that as soon as Decepticon High Command told him so in person. Alright, no, he'd accept the Autobot equivalent telling him so if it'd turned out that the Autobots had won. Maybe then he could stop having to worry about the D.J.D. hunting them down.

But confirmation and safety relied on reaching Cybertron, and right now, Cybertron was very far away.

Frag his life. He'd had a plan. He was a strategist. He was all about planning. Having a plan explode in his face wasn't the end of the world, but it was frustrating. And painful. Literally, in this case. Right now, he couldn't see physically - but he couldn't see a way out of this mess, either. That was the blindness he hated most. The pain he could take, but helplessness he could only fret about.

He'd tried his best to be a good officer, and it hadn't been enough. Just what the frag more could a 'Con do?

So pile all that on top of the poor officer, and then have one of his unit go missing while he could do nothing to go look for him. Being useless on top of feeling helpless? Not fun. Add in an overly cheerful and unrepentant voice over his commlink, and Krok's horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day was complete.

"Hey, Krok."

Complete. Over with. Full up. That was it. Krok was officially done with this slag.

"Rust your wings. If you haven't found him yet, I don't want to hear from you," he growled into his commlink, and he could hear Spinister jolt across the medbay from him. The dread Superior Officer Voice was one he was finally prepared to back up with violence on one his own mechs, and much to even Krok's surprise, the rage bled through clearly. "You come back without Fulcrum in tow, and I'll let Spinister use you for target practice. No, surgery practice. I'll ground you, flyer! Next time we need spare parts, we'll use your blasted wings first, and I will personally make you watch Crankcase melt them down in the forge. Wherever Flywheels is, I hope he comes back just to haunt your annoying aft!"

Oh, grease crud and used engine oil. Flywheels. As if Krok had really needed to dwell on how he'd failed the spastic mech - yes, okay, he'd been restrained, but he'd still been right there when the D.J.D. had killed him - he'd just reminded himself that it was his duty as unit commander to carry out any final will and testament of the deceased. It was a duty that most officers sneered at and most grunts ignored because, er, Decepticons didn't really tend to honor the dead so much as recycle or abandon them. But Flywheels had recently converted to NeoPrimalism, and he'd actually requested last rites according to his new religion.

That - huh. Frag. Krok was going to have to do some research.

Misfire seemed taken aback by the snapped, cursing tirade. "But…Krok? I, uh, what?" This was the same mech who didn't seem to get it why 'Cons were insulted when he referred to them by 'loser' and 'pinhead', so Krok was somewhat resigned to the clueless, wounded act. It passed soon enough. Instantaneously, almost. "Right, whatever you say. Only not, 'cause I like my wings. Actually, I kinda hope wherever Flywheels is, he's taking pictures for posterity. Krok, you gotta come see this!"

Whatever 'this' was, if it wasn't their unit's convicted cowardly criminal, Krok was not interested. Unless it was a NeoPrimalist manual. He'd take one of those right now. "Misfire…"

The warning tone got through to the hyperactive jet, possibly because the last time his commander had taken that tone with him, Misfire had spent sixteen hours talking to ceilings throughout the W.A.P. "No, seriously, it's cool! We found Fulcrum, he's fine, you just gotta come see this before they wake up!"

Misfire's enthusiasm could only mean bad things. Nothing the jet was that excited about could be good. Krok didn't have that kind of luck.

On the other hand, Fulcrum was found. Which seemed too good to be true, at this point. "Where is he? What's his condition?" Krok asked suspiciously. He paused, suspicion deepening. Crankcase and Misfire were looking for Fulcrum. Spinister was keeping a very close optic on Krok himself, refusing to even let him leave the medbay. That accounted for the whole unit, so who was this 'they' Misfire spoke of? "Before who wakes up?"

"Grimmy and Fulcrum are - "

"Get him out of there." Raw connections sparked painfully in the jagged pits filling his face, and Krok swayed as stabbing pain taxed his systems. He still took two staggering steps toward the medbay door before Spinister caught him. "Do you copy that, Misfire? Get him away from Grimlock immediately!" The officer didn't struggle against his strong, stupid medic, but the rotary mech wasn't so stupid as to stop restraining him.

He'd agreed to bring Grimlock aboard the Weak Anthropic Principle because Misfire's reasoning about hedging bets had been sound. Also because he'd been a tiny bit delirious with fresh agony, but Decepticon officers never admitted to hampered judgment. Regardless of why he'd agreed to allow the Autobot onboard the ship, it didn't mean Krok trusted him. His subordinates all claimed the Dynobot was braindead, but he didn't know why they thought that. He'd yet to get a full debriefing on how the fight had ended, much less the aftermath. All he knew was that they were still alive, and the D.J.D. had somehow been driven off.

Spinister seemed genuinely too focused on putting everyone back together for Krok to justify breaking his concentration. Concentration from Spinister was like silence from Misfire: rare, and usually enforced from the outside. Although Spinister had broken his work periodically to natter on about Crankcase and a 'Might Mega Puncher,' whatever the frag that was. It sounded like a video game end-move, to be honest.

Krok had woozily asked what that was about when he'd come back online the first time, but Crankcase had cleared his filters uncomfortably and pled work before bustling back out of the medbay to go strip down the P-6 Worldsweeper. That wasn't the reaction of a conquering hero, so either the 'Mighty Mega Puncher' hadn't ended the battle, or it had, but not in the way Crankcase had intended. The 'Con was being a weaselly little bastard by avoiding questions, so Krok didn't know.

Yet. The officer's focus was shot to slag at the moment, but Krok was patient. He could outwait the pilot. He could outwait them all, in fact, because they obviously knew something. It was a grunt conspiracy. They'd gotten themselves a Grimlock, but a Grimlock with a mysterious infection of the Stupid Disease; they'd survived the Decepticon Justice Division, despite all the odds against that actually happening; there was a 'Mighty Mega Puncher' and Fulcrum's terrible condition somewhere in among these facts. All these little stories that added up to one big concealment.

Nobody was explaining anything, but Krok could wait. The W.A.P. would lift off as soon as the Scavengers finished stripping the P-6, and then they'd be trapped on a small ship with Krok. Four grunts, one officer? Good odds for an effective interrogation.

In the meantime, the Decepticon officer pored over what he did know. Which…wasn't enough.

Fulcrum had made a funny 'meep' sound of dismay when queried about why the D.J.D. had targeted him, and oh yes, Krok was going to get that story. Along with just how Fulcrum had managed to get himself so damaged Spinister had temporarily abandoned Krok himself to tend to the smaller Decepticon. The surgeon had started wrapping up the little mech while Fulcrum guiltily confessed to the conviction behind his reformatting, and Krok had nearly started laughing. It wasn't really funny, but come on. A K-Con convicted of cowardice? Of course he'd ended up on Krok's team. It was a cosmic inevitability.

The universe was fragging laughing at the officer. He could swear it - or at least swear at it.

The cowardice conviction had been absurd enough to require an explanation of the circumstances behind it, and Krok had demanded one. That's when Spinister had reached Fulcrum's head, however. From Misfire's laughing narration and Fulcrum's muffled noises of protest, the medic had gagged the K-Class mech in the process of wrapping up a helm injury. Convenient timing, especially when the squirrelly K-Con used being gagged as an excuse to stay quiet and high-tail it out of the medbay before his brooding CO realized Spinister had finished.

Too convenient. Krok had added Spinister to the Grand Grunt Conspiracy Theory.

Then he'd taken the rotary mech right back off again. Because, really. Spinister. Yeah, no.

Trying to get relevant information out of Misfire, as always, had been an exercise in futility. The blasted jet was more of the universe's giant joke on Krok. Haha. Ha. Slaggit.

"But why?" the hyperactive waste of fuel was whining to Krok right now, because urgent orders from an officer were heard and promptly filed somewhere behind his cortex's 'Oo, Shiny!' folder. "Grimsy's asleep. Fulcrum's asleep. They're both asleep. They're so asleep we could hear them snoring out in the hall. Frag, you can probably hear them snoring from medbay!" There was a moment's pause, and the jet actually seemed to get more excited. "Whoa, can you? Krok! Krok, can you hear them? Open the door, open the door!"

Patience. This situation required patience. Krok could wait. He could be patient and wait until Misfire came within reach before strangling him.

"I would, but I'm apparently under medbay arrest," he grated out, turning his head to aim that at the medic restraining him. The partially-functioning optic sensors in his one compressed but unshattered optic spitzed static across his vision, trying to compensate, and the pain in his head redoubled. He cut his side of the comm. just in time as a wave of agony-spangled prickles took his legs out from under him. "Not agaaaaaiiiin…"

When he recovered from the (unplanned, humiliating, weak) fainting spell, he was laying down. From the familiar feel of berth padding, Spinister had carried him back to the medbay's sole repair berth again. His tanks were rolling unpleasantly, but at least his levels showed he hadn't purged when the nausea hit this time. Having his self-repair amped up like this drained his other systems like mad, causing the black-outs and a nasty roiling vertigo he couldn't control. Ugh.

There were fingers checking the bandages completely covering his head. He hated those blasted repair nanite-culture swathes. They'd seemed novel and useful when the Scavengers had first found them. Non-invasive slow repairs were a good thing, right? Except that now he'd kill for a decent pain patch. Even a half-stocked medbay would have the supplies on hand to fix some of what had been torn out of his head by Vos' face. As it was, Krok could only lay back, fists clenched, and let Spinister fuss.

His audios could pick up the gritty scrape of damaged parts grinding together deep in the wounds, and every time the medic ran a scan over him, he kept making unhappy sounds. Spinister being unhappy usually translated to Spinister shooting things, but apparently in this situation it translated to Krok being put on an intensive surgery schedule.

Spinister hadn't been able to explain what he intended to do during the operations, but he'd transmitted a list of what he wanted to fix. It was a long list. There were lots of important things in a mech's head, and Vos' face had done copious amounts of damage to those important things. That'd been intimidating, and Krok had not felt any better about it when Spinister had followed the initial list up with a list of how the injuries would soon compromise healthy systems if left untreated. The medic didn't have the equipment to outright fix some of the problems, but he seemed confident that he could at least minimize further complications. Maybe. If Krok was getting the gist of what the rotary mech tried to tell him before all the words confused the medic too much to continue.

" - hear me? Krok, c'mon, this isn't funny. Krok, say something. Spinister, make Krok say something! Krok! Krooooook."

"Can I shoot him?" Spinister asked hopefully, hands never stopping their work.

"No shooting," the officer said on automatic.

"Krok!" Misfire sounded relieved. "Scrap metal and rust, you freaked the bolts off - " A door swished, and heavy thrusters stampeded in. " - whoa. You look like slag."

Well, well. Look - or hear, in Krok's case - who'd come visiting. "Flattering, Misfire. Come over and say that again, hmmm?"

That got a nervous laugh and zilch obedience. The self-preservation instinct was strong in this one. The jet stayed prudently out of arm's-reach, hovering over by the door. Or so it sounded, anyway. Krok turned his head in that direction and pretended his optics could shoot lasers. It was a harmless fantasy, and one that seemed to get results.

Misfire blurted words under the optic-less glare. "Look, we tried to get Fulcrum like you said, but, uh, there was a minor complication. Very minor!" he rushed to assure his commander when the wounded 'Con jerked upright, trying to stand. Spinister put one hand on Krok's chest, and it said something about how drained the officer was that one hand flattened him. "It's just that Grimsy's kinda curled around the loser, so we had to wake him up to ask him to let go, and he's, er, well, fixated? On Fulcrum? And we thought it'd probably be bad to bring them both in here when you sounded kinda out of it, because you're armed and all? You didn't, um, sound like you'd like waking up to, hey, surprise! Autobot! Right?"

The way Misfire kept saying things like they were questions was making Krok's headache worse. Grunt reports only sounded like suggestions when the grunt was trying to minimize repercussions from the report. 'I'm just the messenger? Sir? So don't kill me?'

Krok carefully cradled his bandaged head in his hands and indulged in a long, resigned groan. "So you're telling me that a notoriously unpredictable machine of rage and destruction is following Fulcrum around the ship unsupervised."

"Crankcase is with them?"

Right, because Crankcase was going to be such a help again a Dynobot. The mech's helm was already damaged. How convenient for when Grimlock decided to start bashing brains in; the nut was already cracked open. "Crankcase and Fulcrum, then. Who are, may I add, Decepticons. Decepticons being what Grimlock is famous for going berserk on. Is that what you're telling me?"

The gentle prodding finally ended. "War's over. That's what you told me. It's why we're not supposed to shoot Autobots in front of witnesses anymore, yeah? Anyway, he seems like a nice guy," Spinister said as he wiped his hands down. Krok could hear the slithering of a polishing cloth. "Fulcrum said that's why he got left on the symbol ship."

"No, he said Grimmy got left behind because he's braindead," Misfire corrected, and Krok started planning on just who he was going to corner for an interrogation first. He needed to know what exactly had happened after he'd gone down.

"That's what I said."

"What - ? No you did - wait. You think 'nice' equals 'braindead'?"

"Isn't that what it means?" The rotary mech seemed oddly surprised.

"Uhhh. Spinny. We gotta update your internal dictionary with some more accurate definitions - hey! Hey. You said I was a nice guy when I first came onboard!" Cue the insulted squawk from Misfire, and confusion from Spinister. "I'm not a nice guy! I'm - I'm - frag, what am I. What's your lexicon got for 'badaft Decepticon flyer'?"

"Um. 'Starscream'?"

"…that is so cool. I'm - "

"But he's a good shot, so nope."

Oo, denied.

Krok couldn't help it. He laughed out loud despite how much it hurt. That sound? That was the sound of a punctured ego deflating. Misfire's vents wheezed sadly.

Spinister sounded a bit confused by what was going on, but he went on to assure Misfire, "You're just too nice a guy compared to Starscream."

More wheezing, and the crackle-pop sound of a vocalizer failing to initialize. There was long moment of silence. It was the sound of Misfire, for once, being at a loss for words. That sad, sad ego had deflated down onto the floor like a balloon to be kicked about by Spinister's earnest honesty. It was hard to find an error in the rotary mech's weirdly twisted but brutally Decepticon-accurate internal definitions.

Krok found that he was surprised by his own lack of surprise. Somehow, none of this was even vaguely striking him as odd anymore. He'd gotten used to being in charge of the Scavengers. He rather felt like he was leading an insane asylum instead of a military unit. He was probably just another inmate with pretensions of rank.

"Yeah, okay," Misfire said finally. He sounded totally crushed. "I'm trying to come up with a way to counter that, and I got nothing."

Another chuckle got out before Krok could stop it. He carefully shook his head. "Bring me Grimlock and Fulcrum, Misfire. I think I need to talk to both of them."

Krok might not be much of a leader, but there was a saying about madness and methods. He'd just have to scrape a plan out of what he had.

He sighed as Misfire trudged off. He'd have to find a manual on NeoPrimalist last rites, too.

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