"Ratchet, you're the one who knows the most about Jetstorm, and as his medical practitioner, it is your duty to make sure-"
"Okay, I'm gonna stop you right there Optimus. I just stood a breem listening to one of your monologues; and while I don't dislike your chatter, it's not exactly welcomed either." Ratchet snapped, glaring almost eye level into Optimus's optics, yet his metal-brows were pinched in undisguised worry. "I just don't believe it. What Wheeljack is saying; it's absurd - like some kinda prank he'd pull to cause some drama on the team."
Optimus sighed, and shook his head. "Yes, but do not forget, Wheeljack is our longtime friend; he would have no reason to lie about this, and what he said worries me enough to look into."
Ratchet tisked, walking away and he pretended to fiddle with the contents of a clinic-drawer, in the hopes Optimus would leave him alone. Optimus knew his friend well and despite his silence on the matter, he knew Ratchet would still look into it.
"Alright, do you know why I called you in here?"
Storm grumbled. "I know you aren't giving me anymore mid-grade for my rations anymore, Ratchet - you're killing me here." Storm said, with all the angry honesty he could muster - but Ratchet was, of course, ignorant on the matter of Storm's functioning - so he chose to reluctantly forgive the medic, if only in hopes of getting more mid-grade from the clinic stores...somehow...
Maybe if he groveled pathetically on his knees it would work?
Than again, Ratchet cut up people for a living - he didn't seem like the merciful type.
'Nor would Ratchet just waste his precious supplies on one mech ...I'm screwed.' He anxiously thought, his optics going slightly sideways, as he tried to ignore the raw, itching hiccups of his empty tanks.
He was so hungry.
"Please, just a quarter-cube of mid-grade and I'll leave you alone." He didn't even have to pretend to sound desperate.
"No, Storm-" Ratchet paused, taking a vent, rubbing his forehead from Storm's persistent, annoying behavior.
'No mech liked mid-grade that much; especially not a mechling.' Ratchet thought. It was supposed to be treated as medicine, not a daily refuel.
'No, no more mid-grade for you, you glutton.' Ratchet snorted, amused. While mid-grade was meant to be a medicine, a system-booster of sorts, some special mechs saw the golden liquid as a candy, a sweet syrup to burn - and it appeared Storm was close to addicted to it.
Ratchet shook his head, 'Big mistake, kid. Because you're not getting anymore.'
"This isn't about energon; it's more serious than that." Ratchet turned, laying out a row of sterilized tools, his disappointed expression hidden by a carefully crafted persona of...cheer. "We're here to talk about your behavior, Storm. Everyone is worried about you, kid."
'And by everyone, Ratchet just means himself.' Concluded Storm. 'Before Jetfire died, nobody cared who I was. I'm not an idiot.
Storm tried to be indifferent about his curiosity, but he leaned forward anyway, his servos holding his exhausted head upwards as he sat on the clinic's examination berth.
'What's more important than food?' he mused to himself.
Before Ratchet could waste his time with anymore sentimental drivel - useless words, which ultimately wouldn't feed him - he quietly tiptoed down from the clinic's examination berth, not bothering to say goodbye as being polite would just grab Ratchet's unwanted attention.
He left silently, leaving Ratchet to turn around - his patient gone.
Glass was scattered every which way around his room. The shards penetrated anything soft, with included the delicate mesh-fabric atop his berth and the unarmored gaps in his protoform, cuts bleeding openly all around his juvenile body.
Another cube of blue low-grade had exploded in his servos, scorching his visor-optics with a fresh coating of black char.
He could hardly see.
He could hardly taste it.
He tried and failed to charge low-grade with his electric one-percenter powers; he tried to make his own golden mid-grade with minimal equipment, at most blending the mixture with a hand tool from his subspace, a cybertronian-sized trowel he used for digging out rock specimens he'd found out in the world that were worthy to add to his collection.
And for once his rocks came in handy. In their colorful display cases they glimmered like trophies and gave Storm the biggest sense of accomplishment he'd ever had in his uneventful, cold, and isolated life.
No one had assigned him the task - ordered him around - to collect rocks.
That had been his idea alone.
It had been freedom.
So it hurt a little, to break his favorite fragments of ore apart.
But he was used to breaking beautiful things; what was one more?
He'd tasted mainly gold flakes in what little mid-grade Ratchet had given him.
He tried desperately to recreate the taste.
But his collection was lacking in gold nuggets to dissect for his culinary experiment, so he had to go without the golden powder, which was a frustrating reality to accept.
When he mined asteroids in space, he'd found gold everywhere.
He'd mistakenly thought it was a common material found throughout all planets - like feldspar or quartz found along the upper crust of anything solid.
Out in space.
But Earth seemed set on disappointing him.
Not one gold nugget had landed into his servos in all of his time digging upon Earth, and Optimus Prime's leniency with letting him out for morning flights had wavered completely.
Which meant no more hunting for gold, even when he had all the time in the world.
He was a prisoner of the Autobots, which was also an uncomfortable reality to accept.
They didn't respect him enough to let him outside; what else could he be?
He was surrounded by mechs he hated, which wasn't anything unusual for him - but living amongst his brothers couldn't compare to being penned in with a bunch of strangers.
He never imagined he'd ever want to go back to his old life, down in the deep dark tunnels, scrambling and clawing his way to some semblance of sanity.
But here he was.
With the Autobots.
Loathing every waking moment.
The energon he was producing typically became a greasy green sludge, after mixing in shavings of silver and copper, drops of mercury, and the occasional splash of human petrol for flavor - it was the combination he'd found most palatable.
He tried to drink it, he really did; but his cursed creations just weren't fueling him.
The knock-off mixture churned and boiled in his tanks, but it did nothing to take his hunger away.
It was the nineth extra cube he'd pilfered from the Autobot pantry - technically it was his ration, having used his ID card to trick the energon dispenser into giving him a decacycle's worth of energon early - all at once.
He needed all the extras he could get, to experiment upon.
If anyone asked about the missing energon, he would simply say he discovered a bug in the system and that he'd been curious as to how long it would take someone to notice; he honestly wasn't too worried about it.
It wasn't as if he could give back the energon he'd already drunk.
He evaluated his room's storage closet; the provided space was huge compared to him, taller than a mechling by a wide margin. It made hiding away his extra stolen energon trivial, though he wasn't exactly hiding some cubes as best he could - two cubes he'd placed out to be purposefully discovered by the Autobots if they ever raided his room, looking to take their energon back.
And of that, he was sure, would happen eventually.
Logically, it was only a matter of time.
In his closet - there was also a notable stack of mirrors he'd left to lie shattered in a corner - each broken in-half like a flayed eaten animal. When Jetfire and himself had first moved into the Autobot-base, they'd discreetly stolen every mirror or reflective surface they could - without getting caught, of course.
It had been the most fun he'd ever had with his brother - cooperating on a mission - and succeeding, together.
That never happened, and it wouldn't happen ever again, now that Jetfire was dead.
He looked at the pile of mirrors forlornly, as if shattered mirrors could have a hidden meaning.
Gingerly, he took the still-clean blue energon cubes atop his desk and placed them into his closet for safe keeping, done with his experimentation for the day.
Now he would simply stand in the middle of his room, and starve.
Until he experimented tomorrow.
He had more energon cubes to hide than just his own; he had way more than nine.
Since Jetfire died, he figured he might as well be entitled to his own brother's rations.
He dared the Autobots to tell him otherwise.
For the other cubes, he certainly hadn't been so lazy in hiding them in just his closet. He was experienced enough in life to know if was a stupid, obvious hiding place - so he'd carved hidden pockets alongside his walls, randomly with no discernible pattern. In each he stashed a cube or two into a hole.
He'd been careful not to leave marks or scratches around the surface metal, it wouldn't be easily noticed at ground level by any adult-mech; the one perk of being a mechling - he'd always noticed things the larger ones did not.
Storm played with Jetfire's ID card, tossing it between his fingers as a sort of stress reliever. He'd been surprised to find that his brother had left it behind, tucked beneath his berth's storage compartment.
Typically an ID card was expected to always be on one's person, but Jetfire had never been a mech who'd concerned himself with rules and regulations - he'd always brute-force his way through whatever aggressive nonsense came his way with an uncanny relaxed-ease, as if a mech screaming and clawing at him - was an experience that ran off his back like a wax scrub - it was a thing he'd always envied about his brother.
That lack of fear.
Storm couldn't help but to always feel terrified; no matter where he existed, everything felt out to get him.
Paranoia was always eating away at him.
But when he'd lived in a room with Jetfire, he hadn't felt safe exactly: but he hadn't been as scared as he typically was.
Jetfire was his meat shield, his first line of defense - now he looked at the door to his room, finding there was only himself to defend the entrance.
Tossing Jetfire's ID card into a corner, he watched as it flipped lifelessly to the ground and his growing sense of loss became overwhelming...
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooooo...
His tanks churned and he couldn't hold his fuel down any longer...
He tried to swallow, but the bile came up anyway.
Energon splattered onto the walls, and Storm stared at the mess for a click or so, before dragging his claws across the blue stain - making it permanent in some ways.
He wasn't about to clean it up.
There was too much...failure...around him.
Several energon cubes had already broken - left to fester, days old - and Storm was happy to leave the shards to rot beneath his peds.
It smelled like home - like fresh blood.
He could pretend - all was normal.
His room was trashed, though he'd never admit it; what was the use of tidying up if no one even visited him?
Knock knock
As if the Universe was laughing at him, he looked over towards his bedroom door, suddenly hyper aware of the filth around him.
...
...
...
He looked at his servos - his paint was peeling off.
...
...
...
There was nothing he could do about it.
Shaking his head he growled, slamming his servos into his desk, the surface marred with claw marks and energon burns.
"Who is it?!" he cried, and there was an eerie click and clatter muffled by the door, as if the mech outside had dropped something.
Starvation made his senses sharper - Storm was twitchy as his claws hovered over the hand-scanner, the mechanism beeping as it opened the door.
"Whooooaaaaaaaah~!" It was...Jazz? "Your paint! It's all...flakey?" the mech tried to play it cool, his visor-optic hiding his true surprised, borderline horrified expression, but from how Storm was looking up at him like a frazzled scraplet with a case of the shakes, he could only hold his arms up in horror, in hopes of pushing the cursed-looking mech away from him, and to show he meant no harm.
But the harmless gesture seemed to awaken something dark inside of Storm; he felt his paint peel further and he licked his teeth, decision made.
His fangs sprung loose from his gums and he lunged.
Jazz didn't have a chance.
Or so he thought.
The mech kneed him in the gut, right below his churning, boiling tanks.
He purged, vomiting across the floor.
He didn't dare look up.
The immediate humiliation was overwhelming...
So he did nothing, but lay in his own hot sickness.