Storm woke up from his embarrassing ordeal.
He didn't dare look up; but he wasn't given a choice in the matter.
His back was against something hard and solid, a berth tilted upwards, and as he took in the room, he realized it was the very same berth he'd sat atop in Ratchet's clinic just earlier.
Speaking of the mech, Ratchet looked livid.
The mech was on the other side of the room, standing as far away as possible; he didn't turn around, but he tilted his head to acknowledge that he knew that Storm was awake.
"He's awake." It was said by a voice behind him.
Jazz.
"You...barfed all over me, kid." It wasn't said in jest nor concern, but with a hint of palatable cold anger.
That had gotten his attention. That dangerous tone of voice.
'What have I done now?' he thought to himself, hyperventilating to wake up quicker - something blaring in his systems told him it was in his best interests to get ready for whatever came next...
Storm could hardly look down - his head had been locked into place - his limbs splayed out like a dissection-specimen.
Jazz stared down at him, and Storm couldn't stifle the fear engulfing his EM field at the sight of the mech's plainly tight expression; a stinging-smell assaulted his olfactory-receptors and he grumbled in disgust, realizing he was still covered across his entire front in his own bitter vomit - the horrid liquid had hardened, flaking off along with his own peeling blue paint chips.
He felt and looked disgusting.
So he braced himself for the ensuring horror that was obviously coming.
Storm didn't know the black and white mech named Jazz, just that he'd arrived to the base days earlier and that he'd been the new transfer to take over Prowl's old room - the room he'd cleaned.
Oh, how he desperately wanted to be clean.
But Jazz cut right to the chase - any hopes of Storm being allowed to daydream were pinned and locked away.
"Why'd you do it?" asked Jazz, his voice slick, creepy, and buttery-smooth. "Kid, we trusted you."
Storm tilted his head as much as he could with his head magnetized to the berth.
He was just confused; might as well play dumb too.
That was always the smart thing to do.
"Um, what's going on?" his optics looked past Jazz towards Ratchet, in hopes of answers.
But Ratchet had his back turned away, hunched over - all but inches away from collapsing against a countertop, with how his legs and hands buckled bizarrely, as if he struggled to keep himself standing - Ratchet's EM field flared bright and brittle, unreadable, his apparent pain blistered together into a smoldering pustule of nonsense - like he was seconds away from a full-nuclear breakdown.
Jazz seemed to have noticed the doctor's distress. "Ratchet?" he asked carefully. "You don't have to be here you know? I'll give you... all the updates, I swear...just, go get some rest, or fresh air...either, or."
Surprisingly, Ratchet appeared to listen to Jazz as he began to walk out of the room, his head held lower than his shoulders.
Ratchet was crying, and Storm almost gasped from the few precious seconds he'd caught of such a desperate, vacant expression.
Thick greasy lines of oil dripped down that white, professional, and frankly pristine faceplating - Ratchet looked besides himself with grief.
Ratchet said not a word, his entire frame shaking with plating bristling outwards; Ratchet's head clicked and whirled for a nanoclick with lights - perhaps he'd sent Jazz a commlink message before he'd shambled out the door.
'What happened? No one's telling me what happened?' Obviously it had to do with him , with how Ratchet was ignoring him completely.
Ratchet was gone, leaving him completely alone with Jazz, but weirdly he didn't feel scared.
Just confused.
"No, seriously - what's happening?" he tried to look at Jazz, but the mech was standing too far away to get another read on his expression.
"What's this, Jetstorm?"
Jazz held up a round pink-copper object, with both his hands.
Suddenly, why Storm was strapped to a berth made sense.
It was Bulkhead's processor.
"Erm, that's a processor." Storm said lamely.
Jazz took a seat on a clinic stool, right besides Storm's berth, datapad in hand. Bulkhead's processor had been placed into a surgical tray to the side, right where Storm could see it in his peripheral vision - sitting there, mocking him.
"And why do you have it?" asked Jazz. Storm almost hadn't heard the question, his empty spark-chamber was throbbing with fear. He'd almost felt better with the idea of Ratchet being in the room again; at least then he could be reassured the medic hadn't left to fetch a specialized tool to rip him apart with...
"Kid, why do you have it?" Jazz asked again, and Storm felt a spurt of bile lace across his taste-receptors.
It was disgusting; he was disgusting.
"W-why do I have w-what?" Whatever bravado Storm had tried to cobbled together instantly crumbled; he didn't know the first thing in navigating such a situation. Whenever he'd been scared, he'd simply ran away and left his brothers to handle the mess, but now he couldn't do that - for the first time in his functioning, he'd been captured, trapped by mechs who wanted to rip him apart.
Naturally, he wanted to run away.
But he couldn't do that.
"I-is Ratchet coming back?"
Jazz looked at him strangely, as if considering not giving him any information at all. Storm did his best to look harmless, his plating shrunk comfortably against his starved, shriveled protoform.
Jazz shook his head. "No kid, he's not."
"If...if we are going to... talk ...don't call me kid." He wanted to say more, to offer some explanation, but Jazz's hands clacked against the datapad at a frivolous, almost hostile pace, taking notes.
Ok, Jetstorm." Jazz nudged Bulkhead's processor on the tray closer to him, as if it could intimidate him, somehow. "Why do you have Bulkhead's brain?"
...
...
...
Storm stayed quiet for a few minutes, and Jazz generously allowed him the luxury, until Jazz laid a servo against his shoulder, and he panicked.
"Don't touch me!" He shrieked against his bindings - hissing all the while, like a genuine lunatic.
Suddenly, Storm realized his fangs had been flickered out the entire time - his claws and talons had been ripping uselessly against the berth's metal.
They'd seen what he was.
That's why he was tied up.
"My fangs, you can see them!?" he shrieked again, and Jazz coolly nodded his head.
"Yah, we are curious about... those. Did your brother have the same transformation?"
"Yes!" Storm automatically answered, and immediately wanted to kick himself; he'd just heard the word "brother" and had instinctively thought of a "sparkeater."
"Yes! It's normal!" he tried to salvage the situation, but Jazz looked at him flatly, not-amused.
"It's normal?" Jazz parroted.
"Yes!"
"Why?"
"I was born this way!"
"Born?"
"I mean forged!"
Jazz hrmmed, putting down his datapad as Storm hyperventilated, trying to regain control of his speaking volume.
"Why do you have Bulkhead's processor?"
"It's normal!" he said again, and Jazz steepled his fingers together, grumbling as he did so.
"How so?" he asked.
"It's normal, where I'm from..." Storm didn't dare to say more, already he'd said too much - shown too much.
"And you're from?"
"The colonies!" he shouted, a bit too eagerly.
"Which one?"
If Storm could move, he would've shrugged his shoulders.
"Uh, all of them? I was... is ...nomadic."
Jazz hummed, as if he'd been given some great revelation, and Storm's spark hammered, waiting for some sort of blade or pistol against his head.
But it never came.
Jazz's hands didn't take out a weapon, but instead moved down to his legs, then his peds, and then to his talons - as if Jazz was taking measurements.
"These don't look forged, kid."
"They're upgrades."
"And did Jetfire have these ped-modifications too?"
Storm snorted, Jetfire was dead - he could be honest for once.
"Yes, we all did."
"We?"
"It's normal. At the colonies, everyone gets... upgrades ..."
Jazz hummed, his servo shaking the tray Bulkhead's processor was on.
"And this? Why did you have this tucked away into your subspace?"
Storm sighed. "Because it's money."
Jazz gestured a servo, urging him to continue.
Storm sighed again, wishing he could disappear and curl up into a ball.
"In the colonies, no one uses... what's the word, for that old currency?" He paused, looking at Jazz as if he would get an answer.
"Shanix?" Jazz guessed.
"Yah that, no one uses that anymore; instead, mechs trade processors."
Jazz looked horrified. "What? Nonsense, all the authorized colonies still use shanix."
Storm wanted to sit up, feeling more confident for once. "Nope." He tried to shake his head, but failed. "There must be lots of unauthorized colonies then. The Processor Trade is a Black Market. "
"What..." Jazz grumbled, looking down at Storm with new consideration. "What would make a processor valuable? Why would mechs trade anything for one? That's...it's a disgusting idea..."
"Is it?" Storm asked, his shoulders wanting to shrug. "Think about it; what's more valuable than a mech's memories?"
Jazz almost dropped his datapad, his expression pulled too tightly; he obviously grew more disturbed as he thought about it.
The implications became staggering.
"A mech's processor is worth more than shanix ever was." Storm's optics glimmered bizarrely, as if he truly believed what he was saying. "Imagine the memories of a bounty hunter, or a blacksmith, or an archivist. You could glean so much lost knowledge from them...schematics, for example...lost welding techniques...fighting tactics..." Storm could go on and on, but he wasn't exactly having a friendly conversation, strapped to a berth...
Reluctantly, he shut up, already knowing he'd said too much.
But Jazz poked him in his shoulder, willing him to continue...
Storm felt like crying in frustration; but, if he could just get Jazz to understand...
Maybe, he'd have a chance.
Maybe, the Autobots wouldn't kill him.
"I-I took Bulkhead's processor, because I-I could trade it for anything!"
"Anything?"
"Yah...anything..." Storm's optics glazed over, taking in the entirety of the off-white ceiling. Jazz poked him again, urging him to elaborate, but that time he stayed quiet - his jaws and lips clamped together - in fear - in hunger.
'I could trade it for a spark-chamber.'
'I could trade it for a cube of mid-grade or two.'
In reality, a wrecker's processor was worth so much more, but Storm's hunger was such, that he didn't care anymore.
'I could trade it for a ship, a ride out of here...away from these fraggin' Autobots.' He thought, almost on the verge of oil-slick tears, if he wasn't so tired and scared.
"I'd trade it for my freedom." He said suddenly.
"You'd what?" Jazz snorted, his professional façade fractured for but a moment.
"You...heard me." Storm side-eyed Jazz, daring to look hopeful.
Jazz shook his head, looking down at him sadly. "That's not happening, kid."
"I know."
Lights lit up on Jazz's helm, the mech receiving a commlink call; wordlessly, he got up, picking up Bulkhead's processor and unceremoniously, left the room.
"Why'd you do it?"
Again, Storm said not a word, and Ratchet fiddled with a scalpel between his fingertips... considering...something... dangerous...
Or perhaps nothing at all.
Ratchet placed the tool delicately into its place within a tray, picking up another to sanitize with an antiseptic mesh-rag.
One by one - tray after tray was filled - in silence.
Storm didn't know Ratchet long, but he knew enough that it was a habit of the medic - to sanitize his tools over and over - like a broken looping line of coding.
"Why'd you do it?" Ratchet broke the silence again, and Storm sighed, much too tired to be scared.
"Because it's money." Storm said earnestly, for perhaps the tenth time in a row.
"Really?" asked Ratchet, his face stricken in obvious disgust.
"It's worth a lot." Storm insisted, and Ratchet looked for all the world like he wanted to scream at the mechling - that Bulkhead's processor would never be for sale, but to his credit the medic kept his cool, leaning against the examination berth Storm was strapped against.
"It is?" Ratchet looked to be fishing for more information, but what else was there to say?
'Sorry?' Storm thought. 'Surely, Ratchet doesn't expect me to apologize.'
Ratchet loomed over him, his EM field festered with rage - still, Storm refused to apologize.
Bulkhead's processor was worth a lot.
'It had been worth the risk.' Storm assured himself.
Eventually Ratchet sighed, breaking his enraged expression - they'd been going back and forth with minimal words for the past few hours; Jazz had taken Bulkhead's processor to glean what remaining, uncorrupted information he could about the mech's murderer - photos, memories, anything serving useful as evidence.
It was just a matter of cycles before Bulkhead would be avenged.
"We just need to wait for the evidence." Optimus Prime had told everyone plainly at the meeting table earlier; but it wasn't enough to sooth over an angry mech like Ratchet. Arcee also seemed on the verge of breaking Jetstorm apart when that meeting had adjourned.
But they needed the evidence first.
'Like slag we do.' Ratchet bitterly thought.
Ratchet clenched his fists, finding that all his tools had been deemed clean enough. His distraction was over and his mood soured further.
The murderer was Storm, no doubt about it.
The footprints matched.
And that was the most damning piece of evidence Ratchet could've imagined; Jazz was wasting his time, fiddling with that processor - and Optimus Prime was...well, overly optimistic over the situation.
''You know, if Optimus Prime wasn't so patient, so merciful, I would've already melted you down into ingots and forged you into a hundred-thousand scalpels - that way I could clean you up for good." He waved around one of his freshly sanitized scalpels to emphasize his threat. Ratchet could certainly be scary when he wanted to be.
Perhaps then, Storm would finally be useful.
Perhaps then, Ratchet would finally feel better.
Once the mechling's metal was turned into an endless bin of scalpels.
Smartly, Storm kept his glossa shut, still trapped atop the berth within Ratchet's clinic. It would've been terrifying if it wasn't already so familiar. It felt liked he'd been trapped in that clinic for cycles, but logically he knew that it was barely past the afternoon of his capture.
'Just offline me already.' Storm wanted to sarcastically say, but he didn't have a death wish - he wanted to live - and he promised himself he would.
He wouldn't die like Jetfire.
He would one up his brother by living.
He would win, one way, somehow.
The idea of surpassing Jetfire, despite his untimely passing, gave Storm an absurd measure of comfort, some delusion to hold onto until he could actually make his escape.
And he would.
He'd promised himself.
And he took those seriously.
There was nothing else to look forward to.
A promise was all he had - it was the only consistent thing in his world - besides having a rock clasped between his servos.
Or ideally, a spark-chamber between the meat of his jaws...
Suddenly, Ratchet moved towards him, his expression blank and professional.
"R-Rat-Ratchet?" he stuttered, unable to stifle his raw, rolling fear. "Ratchet!?" The good medic held up a syringe.
The needle's tip pierced his protoform, right above where his spark-chamber was.
Storm felt his world spinning, shortening out.
His optics dimmed.
But he did not go into stasis-lock - and from Ratchet's withering expression at the minutes wore on - Storm falling into recharge had been the anticipated reaction.
He refused to go under.
His sparkeater's spark hammered bizarrely within its confines, as if it was clawing to get out of its own chamber - like a squelching chick from a slimy-yellow eggshell.
He'd already been trapped in the dark.
For too long.
"Let me go!" Storm snarled suddenly - a burst of courage had sweltered weirdly within the wires of his arms and legs - his claws and talons throbbed with a righteous fury - some sort of alien adrenaline.
He wanted to live.
Ratchet had no reaction. He simply took another syringe of presumably the same liquid and shot him in his arm.
No reaction.
Storm refused to go under.
His spark hammered painfully, as if he was strapped to a roller coaster going downhill, instead of a solid berth.
Ratchet shot him the third time in his neck.
The entire mettle of his being blistered, his spark screaming raw - yet, his body remained frozen - regardless of the heat building beneath his plating.
His ventilation system and fans has ceased moving, neither making a sound.
Ratchet then left the room, and the clinic lights dimmed.
Storm was confused.
He was awake, not asleep.
Yet still, Ratchet left him there unattended - presumably to get some recharge for himself.
In the dark room, for the first time since his capture, Storm felt weirdly lucid within his body - despite his limbs laying lax against their bindings.
'I want out of here!' Then he amended his thought. 'I am getting out of here!'
Seizing the rare courage that had blossomed earlier within his chassis, he reared upwards, finding that his chest and skull had more movement within his bindings than he'd previously thought. Before, he hadn't saw reason to struggle, not when he needed all his scant energy to navigate the headache of an interrogation session.
'Which I failed by the way.' He bitterly thought. He'd told the Autobot Jazz too much about processor's being a new currency within the colonies, when in reality no-sane unbitten mech really traded processors - just sparkeaters did, and those few in the know with connections did; it wasn't a normal market any neutral mech openly went into...it'd just give more clues to mysteries the Autobots hadn't earned...
Storm felt sick again within his tanks.
But ironically, vomiting out all of his counterfeit-fuel earlier only served to help him. His state of starvation gave him an unyielding focus. His aggression boiled over with the desperation of a scared animal - and he finally felt confident in lashing a mech apart; typically, Storm wouldn't have the gut-gears to pull off an unplanned escape, especially alone, without a pack of brothers to hide behind.
But joors to scheme he did not have.
He looked at the door to the clinic, and without thinking his spark-chamber reached the crescendo of its sick throbbing. Whatever Ratchet had shot him up with felt more like a performance drug, a steroid, than any sort of general anesthetic like Ratchet had probably intended.
His mouth frothed with foam.
His spark-chamber exploded like a gunshot.
A haze of electrifying blue, sparked, rippled, across his screaming form!
Odd.
He felt his arms flailing, side to side... no.
Not arms!
Not arms!
Tentacles!
Tentacles!
Storm stared at his new appendages dumbly, before instinctively springing into action. His tentacles-arms flailed erratically, but with so many "new hands" swarming loose from the confines of his spark-chamber, only one or two tentacles had to be puppeted correctly to unlock his bindings, while the rest were left to randomly lash out against the air.
The berth he was on was shredded apart and he sprung free, his talons giddy with the feeling of cold flooring underfoot.
Crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrssssssssssssssszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Either the noise was static from his vocal-cords as he lashed the sides of the sliding door apart, or from the flayed internal-wiring of the massacred door itself.
Regardless, the door fell backwards and he... was free.
Finally.
Operating on pure instinct now, his sparkeater coding pumped up to its full compacity within Storm's systems.
He was a true creature of the undead now, and he relished it - even as his empty tanks screamed for sustenance.
Bam!
Bang!
Storm was strong, but he was still a mechling. A familiar mech had tackled him as soon as he'd burst through the clinic's entrance.
Smokescreen.
"What? You didn't think someone would be guarding the door?" snarked Smokescreen, although his attitude didn't last long. Without bothering with polite conversation, Storm slashed upwards with both his talons against Smokescreen's chassis, kicking the mech off him and wrestled himself free. Smokescreen hadn't expected such a surge of strength and he'd failed to secure Storm against the ground, hesitating to make use of the entirety of his body weight.
That'd been a mistake.
Smokescreen also didn't expect Storm's chassis to be crawling with stinging and zapping sparkeater tentacles either.
Smokescreen was doomed - Storm was in no state-of-mind to provide mercy.
Storm slashed outwards with a servoful of claws across Smokescreen's horrified, unguarded face.
Stupid, naïve mechling.
Some guard he was.
Storm's and Smokescreen's countless play-fights in the Autobot simulation room finally came to fruition.
They weren't friends, though Smokescreen had dumbly insisted otherwise. His best friend was Bumblebee - not Storm - not him.
Never.
A claw hooked onto a wide, surprised optic.
A guttural scream from Smokescreen slammed down the hallway, not doubt awakening the entire base from recharge.
Smokescreen's optic hung sticky, dripping loosely and away from his burning face.
Storm would've finished the job, perhaps even earn a bite to eat, before he spotted a yellow behemoth in his peripheral vision - charging right at him!
He would've crumpled in defeat, if his first reaction hadn't been to spring forward in a two-legged jump, dodging Bumblebee's attempted tackle, to pinned him again to the ground!
Bumblebee's and Smokescreen's bulk of armors worked against them - and they clanged together as they tried to get a hold of Storm's slippery, electrified chassis.
Like a bizarre porcupine-like-creature, Storm's backside rippled with erratic zapping-spikes - his wings still-clasped together like an unconventional shield; yet, the wings hung uncomfortably like wet bleeding limbs, splintered within their pinched-bindings. The wings struggling to transform into anything resembling a mechanism to help Storm fly.
And Storm was too stupid to unclasp them.
Regardless, Storm didn't have time to assess the situation, as he pelted down the hallways on all-fours, his front-arms had extended to give his body a charging, feral momentum, and his talons lashed dangerously behind him - poised to kick backwards like an ungulate beast.
His wings became a new painful blister against his spine, urging the sparkeater forward and outside - like some creepy tangled whip of an unwanted eldritch-rider - from the otherside, of a higher dimension.
Storm was legitimately demented as he crashed into another Autobot who tried to block his path - the chassis was white, and he wasted no time in scouring the fresh pristine surface with bleeding claw marks. A shock-baton, dark like cobalt, stabbed him mercilessly through the neck - or tried to, to puncture his ridiculously thick hide.
The mech's failure cost him everything.
Storm had no clue who was screaming underneath him.
Just that the mech was delicious and white.
He made full use of his new electrified tentacles, zapping his prey still - while he wrestled a rippling blue glimmering, beautiful laser-core out of its chamber.
Beautiful.
Just beautiful.
With no time to eat or to relish in his energron-splattered victory, tentacles coiled around his prize and Storm continued his escape, dashing down a familiar path he knew led outside and screams of despair highlighted his departure from the crime scene.
Someone else tried to tackle him as he pelted down the halls, but his small juvenile-size served him well, ducking away from random grabbing, clinging servos.
His felt the tip of a shock-baton bounce off his shielding wings, and he reared upwards like a mad screaming beast, flinging whatever was pursuing him off his trail and backside.
There was a door to outside in front of him - it was the outside entrance to the communal sparing arena, which Storm had used many times before for his morning flights of fancy.
This time it felt no different.
His wings were slack and bleeding against his body, but the revelation did not stop him from flinging himself upwards, clawing up onto a random, metallic rooftop - an outside shack used for extra storage, perhaps.
Still, he was pursued - this time instead of a shock-baton, he felt the tip of a cybermetal blade and he screamed in agony as his side exploded in blood and fizzled with hissing cut wires.
He kept running.
He did nothing but run.
Blindly - bizarrely.
He zigzagged.
He ran and ran.
And climbed, to salvation.
Along a cliffside he'd found, the soft sandstone texture a relief to his terrified, trembling limbs. Still he ran and ran, into the shadows of endless-confining gentle-welcoming rocks.
He'd escaped.
And then he'd started to dig.