"Pharma, get those fracken distracting tentacles outta the way! I'm trying to steer!" Kup was trying to drive the "ship," a rickety escape-pod they'd "borrowed" from a cheeky salesmech called Swindle, and uh, well …with a name like that, such an "honest merchant," deserved to be robbed.
At least that's what old mech Kup told himself, to spare his fragile spark. He'd known Swindle since the mech had been a newspark, fresh out of the waters of the Allspark Well, (which have since dried up.)
And so he felt bad.
He'd broken a mech's trust.
Perhaps irrevocably.
'Ugh, I can only hope Swindle forgives me for this mess, somehow. My shanix is useless, so how in the shunder-piss am I going to pay him back?' thought Kup, with a shaky hand as he clicked dull, worrying fingers against the ship's insultingly dusty console.
Absolutely disgusting.
"Hey, asteroids ahead! Optics up front, old mech!" Pharma, a dangerous medic with an alabaster-sheen clicked his long, carefully waxed sodalite-blue claws – both hands much too elegant and beautiful for the beast in which they belonged.
"Kup, I know you can see out of those optics. I just finished giving you a check up, or do you want another one? So soon?" Pharma's voice was sarcastically buttery-smooth, almost like a whisper as he rumbled static into Kup's closest audial.
Like a cheap, frisky piece of shareware.
"Damnit Pharma! I said – Get. Out. Of. The. Way!"
Kup smacked a harmless weak hand against Pharma's face, an ugly off-white plating with saber-fangs splintering all the way down his dragonic jutting-chin.
It was a sparkeater alright.
Perhaps the most notorious and well-nourished specimen in cybertronian history.
Despite the rough and frankly rude treatment, Pharma laughed as Kup pushed him away from the ship's console. There was barely enough room for one mech to glare out into space from the single pilot's windshield and chair.
And Pharma was sloughed over Kup's backside like a skinned animal, all creepy-like and dead-ash-white .
"Pharma, stop being all weird…and clingy …wait a minute – don't tell me, you drank all the engex, again!
Pharma guffawed, "Guilty as charged Kup-Commander, *hic* so don't be expecting me to pilot this ramshackle-capsule anytime soon."
"Hrmm, look, Pharma. As much as I find your misplaced, and frankly baffling drunken-flirtations amusing, move your caboose!"
Calling Pharma large would've been an understatement. He'd been a sparkeater since the start of the Great War on Cybertron, six million something years ago.
And in all that time alive, he'd gorged himself on the countless sparks of soldiers, civilians, and prisoners alike.
Such a diet changed a mech.
He was about the size of a rare, almost-extinct shuttle-class mech, easily twice the size of either Megatron and Optimus Prime.
Kup shook his head, when Pharma finally retreated into the farthest crevice of the ship, coiling around himself like a cybercat.
"Hand me a cigarette, why don't you?" asked Kup.
"I need to think."
Pharma hummed, "Sssure, you do. Thinking? That doesn't sound like you." He was still much too close to Kup's neck for the old mech's liking. "But don't you have an infinite amount of smokes in your subspace? Just grab it yourself." Argued Pharma.
"No, and no. But I wish – having an inexhaustible supply of sticks sounds lovely.
"So…?" And Pharma burped.
"You're not too sharp when you're sloshed, huh, Pharma?" Kup paused, watching carefully as Pharma blinked slowly, processing the mild insult.
Not that he didn't trust Pharma.
Just.
The dangerous creature was plenty unpredictable, even when sober.
And now, uh, Kup just had to trust that Pharma wouldn't eat him over a not-too-serious insult.
Pharma had killed mechs for less.
And Kup was all alone, a rusty-old corroded mech, piloting a ship with the most notorious sparkeater around – who was currently eyeing up his neck like a fresh pump of highgrade.
Kup sighed, crushing the cigarette nub he'd just finished smoking. He gestured blindly behind himself, his optics glued to the view from the driver's seat.
"Just grab me a pretty cadmium-laced cigar in that red box by that engex bottle you just drank."
"Righto, Old-Mech-Captain." And with a twisty and sinewy tentacle, Pharma pilfered the delectable cigar from its box.
"Can I have one?" He asked Kup, who snatched the cigar so quickly away – from the outstretched tentacle – as if the appendage was liable to burn him.
He muttered something inaudible to Pharma.
"What was that?" And Pharma hummed impatiently, his teeth snappish.
Kup sighed. "Of course. Who am I to deny a pretty face, like your's, a savory smoke?"
Pharma hummed again, pleased and still stupidly drunk.
Pharma lit his cigar with a huff of his breath, curiously watching as Kup sucked in a deep drag of smoke, before spilling the cloud out like a bellowing volcanic vent.
…
…
…
Pharma nibbled his sweet cadmium flavored cigar, the taste reminiscent of chocolate.
He smoked, in and out.
In.
And out.
All was well.
…
…
…
Frankly, it was a miracle the escape pod had been able to take Pharma and Kup so far from the secret Vosnisn-outpost on Pluto and ever closer to their destination of planet Earth.
They'd meant to come sooner – to help Starscream's cause – but well, they weren't exactly allowed free-roam around space.
They were both criminals.
They had to be careful.
They were exiles of Vos, and on Winglord Sunstorm's hit list.
"Do you think the Winglord will detect us once we land?" Pharma asked suddenly.
Kup leaned back in his pilot's chair, taking another deep drag before answering.
"In this scrapheap we call a ship? Unlikely."
"And…what about the Autobots?" and Pharma chewed the last of his cigar, swallowing it whole.
Kup smiled. "I was hoping we could pay our old friends a visit. I sent Jazz down there not too long ago. I'm sure they'd welcome two more recruits."
"You mean us?" asked Pharma.
Kup chuckled, " Very good Pharma. That processor of yours is getting some work in."
Pharma snorted, pilfering another precious cadmium cigar, much to Kup's chagrin.
"No need to be condescending. I'm drunk, not lobotomized." And Pharma clicked his teeth together, as if to make a point.
'That could be argued,' thought Kup, but he also thought better about picking a fight with a drunk sparkeater.
"Hey! Optics up front! That's no asteroid! Kup, what IS that!?" yelled Pharma, choking on his cigar like a newspark.
Kup grumbled, rubbing a weary hand across his exhausted face. "That's Winglord Sunstorm, who we've been tailing the past few cycles behind, Pharma. Don't tell me your memory-banks have become completely washed."
Pharma just looked away, embarrassed, palming his sloppy half-choked cigar nervously between his palms. "No. I remember…we had to wait to leave Pluto, until he did; else he would've found us…arrested us…" He paused. "Just, are you absolutely sure he won't detect us once we land? He'll kill us!"
While Pharma had a very valid concern, as Kup didn't want to die either – they'd be fine.
Just fine.
It's why they'd stolen Swindle's escape-pod in the first place.
"Oh, Pharma Pharma Pharma, you worry too much – just get some shutdown before we land, sunshine. Remember, I need you sober!"
And for once Pharma didn't argue. He laid his gigantic head down, finally pointing his fangs and horrendous mandiles AWAY from Kup's neck.
Kup took a drag from his cigar, breathing a sigh of relief.
The vehicon was freshly dead. Energon was still spitting hotly, from the cracked and cleaved limbs.
There was a trailing patch of dirt leading up to the kill, and the predacon walked up it like a king gliding across a red carpet…
Towards the dining hall.
'Delicious.' The predacon thought, as he paddled closer to the corpse, nosing into his meal.
Not sparing a thought to where it had come from.
It was rare that the beast would be allowed the luxury of eating meat. Life amongst the impoverished Deceptions meant he drank energon, and suckled on the occasional unrefined blue crystal.
But not this.
Not flesh.
And he knew just enough to know…
How good it was.
He couldn't articulate his pleasure after he bit down into one of the finest meals of his short life.
So he settled down on his haunches, a purr spilling from his teeth like pouring wine, as he chewed wet blue globules of energon.
Delicious.
"Hey. That'sMine."
And the predacon startled at the voice, almost choking.
He'd thought it'd be the orange-one , the one called "Jetfire," who'd always interrupted his simple pleasures, but when he looked over at a shaded grove of trees, out stepped a mech he'd never seen before.
It was blue.
Like the sky.
Head shaped, like an energon crystal.
Deep in his adolescent spark, he felt it wise to articulate his apologies.
He'd had enough fighting for one day – that mechling Jetfire – had really ruffled him up.
And he wanted to heal.
And to eat.
"Do you speak?" The baby blue mech asked.
The predacon froze.
No one had ever asked him that question before.
He hadn't considered it, if he could…speak…
He shook his head for "No," though he'd felt embarrassed to do so.
'I'll have to change that.' He smartly reassured himself.
Then the mech stepped closer, and he started to panic.
Flames crackled within his muzzle, and the mech stopped, eyeing the fire curiously.
Then silently, like a ghost, the mech bent down to the kill, cutting off a sizeable section of meat with a knife.
"Eat." And then the meat slapped against his front paws.
Not deterred in the slightest, soon it disappeared into his gullet.
And the mech threw him more and more.
Delectable pieces of flesh.
'Oh, thank you.' He'd wanted to say, but such a kind word didn't exist in his vocabulary, so he settled on a purr.
The noise seemed to please the mech, or at the very least, put the stranger at ease.
Then the mech dared – to turn their back – to him! And for a nanosecond, he felt the instinctive urge to tear them asunder.
But as he was thinking, wrestling with his instincts…
He noticed…
The body was being dragged away!
The mech had a hold of it, just barely, as it dragged it away…
How small its hands were, the predacon observed.
'Let me help.' he thought, and so he did. He grabbed a twisted leg of the body, lifting it above the ground.
The little blue mech looked back at him, his expression flat and lifeless.
Just like a predacon.
And together they carried the body deeper into the woods.
They came to a dense patch of brush, and a collection of boulders jutted outwards from the green. The blue mech continued walking, hands tight against the shoulders of the body, as it was dragged upwards into a hidden nook of grey stone – a cold shaded cave – and unceremoniously, he climbed into the crevice – disappearing.
Not wanting to be left behind, or to be alone again, the predacon nosed into the cave, his head bowed low to match the ceiling.
There was someone else there, at the back of the cave, bleeding.
The blue mech was crouched above another blue mech. It was injured – it's plating sagged against a cradle of rocks. It's protoform sickly thin, the coloration suspiciously pink with flecks of rust.
There was so much blood – sticky and black.
His olfactory-sensors wrinkled in disgust.
'Well, I won't be eating the dying mech.' Obviously, something was wrong with it.
Affirmed all the more, when it suddenly jumped up, and screamed.
"Whoa, holy scrap, Blurr! Blurr, why didn't you tell me Cliffjumper was here!?"
"What?" Blurr said flatly. "Storm, what?"
"Outta the way, I need some air!" And the mech named "Storm" pushed past "Blurr" , and despite his wounds he stalked outside of the cave, with a very noticeable limp.
"What's air?" asked Blurr, and "Cliffjumper," just shook his head, unable to answer.
"What. In. The. Lead. Helium. Is. That!?" Storm screamed again, much to the alarm of "Cliffjumper" and Blurr.
They both ran outside, almost getting caught against the small cave entrance as they bumped together.
Blurr was the first to weasel free, and he stumbled over to Storm, his lips pursed, unamused.
Storm was pointing frantically, over and over, into the sky.
"What?" Blurr asked. "WhatIsIt?"
Eventually, he had the good sense to look over his shoulder – towards the direction and patch of sky, Storm kept pointing to, over and over.
Naturally, Cliffjumper had a look, also.
Both Blurr and Cliffjumper blinked, as they spied just what had freaked Storm out.
"Oh." Squeaked Cliffjumper.
A comet was hurtling towards Earth.
"LooksLikeFun." Blurr said.