TFP: Legends Never Die

Chapter 4: Stormchaser

Dried energon flaked and cracked as I scratched it. It wasn't from this match, but it had become a nuisance when it started to build up. I snarled when I accidentally hit a line, nicking and spilling precious energon. I hesitantly lapped it up, the small leak running down my pauldron. Self repair would take care of it in a few clicks, but until then it was a nuisance.

Much like myself, actually. I bristled when a pair of guards walked by, chattering away in a language I was unfamiliar with. I made sure to be unapproachable and as difficult to work with as possible. I'd seen what had happened with those who are softer in this place, and while I knew that I wasn't cold-hearted or cruel, it would not do me any good to stay at the bottom of the pack.

My mind drifted as it often did, with nothing to focus on in a place two steps from the pits. Memories resurfaced of a better time, when my steel felt the sun and my nanites were operating at their highest capacity.

Strangely, my mind went to the hunt. Despite my oath to heal, nothing made the adrenaline rush like ambushing prey. Hunting and herding was second nature, tracking large herds of cyber animals. We protected them from other predators while culling the unfortunate in a careful balance.

I was a healer, and to be forced in this hostile environment was extremely conflicting. It was kill or be killed, which often seems like a black and white decision, but it wasn't always. I almost never aimed to kill, but my opponents did, and sometimes that's all it took for instinct to kick in.

You didn't have to try to kill when you had the strength of a predacon.

Maybe that was why they feared us, and put us in cages. When mecha don't understand and can't control something they panic like prey in their last moments, flailing around for a semblance of control.

There was nothing else I could do besides literally lick my own wounds. There were no tools at my disposal, and anything they couldn't take away was locked up after they disabled my transformation cog. Orns upon orns of studying failed me. There was nothing I could do to help myself or anyone else slowly dying around me.

I knew that I was deficient in at least 18 different minerals, and I knew that most of the other predacons were as well. The filtered down energon held no nutritional value, and there was nothing that I could chew on around me to boost my frame or my immune system.

Besides, the cells had recently been wired with an electric shock, so to touch something you shouldn't be touching resulted in a nasty shock. Of course they hadn't told us beforehand, we were left to figure it out. 

I knew what I needed to eat to restore my frame, I knew what I needed to apply to heal the electricity burns, and yet I couldn't. I could cauterize a wound, maximize self repair, treat carriers and their sparklings, and yet here I was: forced to kill. The irony that I am becoming the thing I sought to end was not lost on me.

The mecha from my most recent match wasn't dead, or at least not yet. Whether he lived or not depended on his usefulness. I sought to maim and not kill, and his wounds were treatable if he was sent to a medic in the next couple of hours. Then yet again, the so-called medics might not help him. The butchers often did more harm than good, or at least that's what was being passed down the rumor mill.

The most unsettling thing about it, was not knowing which list I was on. The list where I would be saved if I was critically injured, or the list where I would die.

I was currently in the waiting gate, a place no mecha liked. It is a small place, unsuited for mecha that are coming down from the adrenaline of a fight and the realization of what they had done. It was just a transition from hell, to a darker, slightly damper hell.