Tiamat1972: You get a cookie. May his awesome never decrease. ((pitiful fangirling))
More pointless scraplet-ing, because angsty pre-BW Predacons are fun. Oh, and this here may or may not count as slash. Personally, I prefer just a mutual trust sorta thing, but take it as you will.
Life in Babylon
He awoke to the smell of burning.
His first, instinctive thought was that he was under attack. A hand twitched involuntarily for the illegal blaster he kept, purely out of habit, in a small, hidden compartment above his recharge bunk. His second, slightly more up to date thought was; Oh, slag, the block's on fire.
His tingling sensors alerted him to the fact that there was no smoke wafting around his room. They also pointed out that the burning smell was not as pronounced as it should have been for a flaming building. Just a faint wisp on the air, as though someone was…
Oh. Right.
He got up.
Snatching back a sip of energon and quickly checking that nothing obvious was out of place, he hesitated, then went down the stairs.
Cut the fuel line.
Cut the fuel line, just once, no need to do it twice. Just one neat sweep of the blade, letting black fluid spill.
The mech in question was large, larger even than he was. Crouched over the corpse like someone offering tribute to a dead god, he was quick to ensure that none of the liquid went to waste. Cupping it in his hands, then splashing it lightly over torso, frontal armor, limbs and faceguard. Swiftly he worked. He wasn't particularly worried about being interrupted, and even if he was doubted anyone would dare bother him, but had no desire to linger over this chosen task.
There. All done.
He drew back and stared at the fallen transformer for a brief moment. It was just as well that there was no one around to see the look on his face. He stood and drew back. The effects wouldn't be explosive-the corpse was a day old- but that would be immediate. He gave no requiem. He hadn't known the mechanism, so honoring him properly would be impossible. This was the best he could do.
His optics went green.
After watching the blaze for two minutes, he turned and glared. "What do you want?"
Scorpinok shrugged. "To make sure you weren't burning down the neighborhood."
Scope made a small, incoherent noise in his throat that somehow managed to indicate that, in his personal opinion, the idea was not a bad one. Scorpinok's smirked lifelessly, his gaze shifting to the smoldering figure on the ground, the flames starting to die down.
"Friend of yours?" he asked, although he knew it wasn't.
"No", snarled Scope brusquely, snatching up a rag with which to wipe off his fingers.
"Then why-…", he began, even though he knew why.
"It's important."
Scorpinok sighed. His friend, he knew, had some very strange ideas about importance.
Silence spun for a few minutes, not out of any particular feelings of respect towards the unknown mechanism, but out of respect for the other's feelings on the matter. Odd as they were, they were as much a part of Scope as Scorpinok's lab was of him.
"You wanna go now?" he asked after a while, absently scratching the back of his head.
As Scope retrieved his weaponry (despite his acceptance of the warrior's tendency to deal with the energy-depleted corpses that sometimes collapsed in their neighborhood 'properly', Scorpinok still didn't understand why he had to be so…orthodox about it. Scope, he suspected, hadn't even been around when Decepticon funeral practices had included cremation. Just as senseless, to the scientist's mind, was his deliberate usage of his own weaponry. Upholding tradition was all well and good, but when it came to slitting open primary fuel lines, Scorpinok found that a scalpel was generally far neater than a five foot saber), Scorpinok glanced up at the sky.
Sunrises and sunsets on Sector 19 were always the same; grey. The times in between were variations on the theme. If you had lived there long enough-longer than was good for one's faith and sanity-you could learn to tell the time by the different shades of grey. Currently, the sky was a dim, wood smoke colour, darkening to black in patches here and there. By noon, it would have brightened to a smudgy white, before sinking black into gloom come evening.
Days on the planet were long; eighteen cycles. Whilst some creatures found this disconcerting-for Predacons were not the only inhabitants of Sector 19-it had never bothered Scorpinok. Every ten days one of three moons would become full, and then the Sector would be lit brighter than it ever was during day. This Scorpinok did mind. The glare hurt his optics and gave him a headache.
They left.
Scope departed early. Where he went off to was information that Scorpinok had never been able to divulge, but strongly suspected it involved the city's fetid gladiator pits. Scorpinok sorted through the information disks still splayed across the counter from the night before. Then he locked himself in his laboratory and set to work.
That night, curled over on his bunk, Scorpinok detected the sound of approaching footsteps. They weren't soft, careful footsteps, but rather the footsteps of someone for whom subterfuge is a lost cause. They were the footsteps of someone incapable of 'subtle', even if his very soul depended on it. Wordlessly, Scorpinok shuffled over. Moments later, he was aware of a large, ungainly shape slumping exhaustedly down next to him.
A long, sharp-angled arm snuck over his mid-section. He inched back a little bit, and looped a leg over the awkward, shielded bit on Scope's foot. Uttering a small 'hmph' and hearing the other respond with a low growl-muttering sound, Scorpinok settled into recharge.