Predatory

In Which It Is Discovered Tanks Actually Can Run Marathons (Finalized)

Revisions have been made! Chapter is now safe to read! :)

The moment that Tesarus and Helex's footsteps were no longer audible, Tarn immediately darted behind a random column. The engine of the approaching vehicle roared, louder and louder. And the moment it sped past the column, he bolted down the hall. 

It is a truth universally acknowledged, since the first dawn of Cybertron til that day, that tanks were never meant to be fast. Megatron himself has admitted many times, that he was never born to be a racer, nor could fathom going that fast. Tanks are also never known to be very good at endurance. Yes, they can take a punch, but they cannot fight, walk or run for long periods of time. They are simply too heavy and too bulky, and thus consume a lot more energy than a light-weight class race-car for example. For this reason, tanks are usually kept in small numbers, and are usually not used in back to back battles. They are also not used for relaying messages, and are usually the end of all jokes pertaining to speed. 

So it was surprising for everyone involved, particularly the mechs giving chase, when a heavy mech (even for most tanks) quite quickly outpaced and outran them. 

Tarn hadn't actually thought about what he was doing at the time, the station passed in a dark grey blur. He eventually came to the end of the hallway, and ran out of the parking garage at the end of it. There, he banked a hard left, and ran into the sunlight outside. At first he thought he might be able to jut run a rabbit trail around the city before running back to the Peaceful Tyranny, that was before the familiar rumble of an unfortunate engine began to roar behind him. At which point Tarn realized this was going to take a lot longer to lose these guys than he expected. 

His legs started hurting after around six blocks. He stopped being able to intake when he left the city. By this point the vehicle had long since run out of fuel, and the soldiers were now pursuing either on pedde or on bike. The terrain was not at all conducive to driving, not that it mattered much. Tarn's tank mode was so much slower than his robot mode he wouldn't have made it out of the station if he had transformed. 

The task of running like this was strenuous enough for a tank, but Tarn was over 4 million and not getting any younger, nor had he trained to go fast, or even stretched before running. Something he would very much regret later, but for right now, back to the story. 

Where were we...? Oh yes! Tarn running through a funeral! How did he get there? The short answer is that Kaon managed to make it back to the ship, and was tracking everyone's position, when he realized that Tarn wasn't even close to in the same city. He promptly opened the intercomm, and was enlightened that Tarn was running blind, had no idea where he was, and couldn't exactly navigate effectively with a team of dogs, several squad reinforcements, and a whole slew of fresh soldiers who hadn't been running for several hundred miles behind him and chomping at his heels.

Tarn hadn't realized what he'd run into until he was in front of the coffin and noticed everyone glaring at him while wearing black. He was about to turn and run back out, but realized that every side of the circular temple he was in, was blocked by several soldiers. He turned on his heel, taking in all of his options. 

"Kaon, if you could give me some directions that would be great." Tarn muttered into the comm, trying desperately to look like a normal person....that had just run into a funeral, and was currently turning circles in front of a coffin. Honestly it was a hopeless endeavor to begin with.

"Right, uh....I am looking at the schematic now. You need to take a left, towards the atrium, that should take you out into the street."

Tarn glanced towards the atrium, there were five soldiers there alone. He could barely intake at the moment and his systems were not anywhere close to battle ready. He growled to himself, this was not what he wanted to do today. He glanced around one more time, atrium couldn't happen, but maybe he could find a ladder or...?

His optics caught on a series of confessional boxes near the side of the room, then glanced up at the very ornate carvings and rafters above them that led all the way up to a trapdoor. 

It was better than nothing.

Tarn darted towards the crowd of mourners, some screamed, others dived under the pews. Tarn lept up onto the backboards of the pews, and ran down one side of them, building momentum before jumping onto the heads of the two soldiers who thought they could block him, then promptly leaping up onto the confessional. He didn't quite have enough height to land on his feet, so he had to haul himself up with all of his upper body strength. He didn't have time to rest after he did so though, as bullets started flying around him from the soldiers, the barking of several tracker hounds began to grow loader outside of the doors as well. 

Scrap.

Tarn hadn't ever actually climbed a wall before. He'd seen it done, sure. But he hadn't ever actually tried. He didn't figure he was light enough to. But at that moment, he didn't really have the option of being too heavy. 

"Uh, Tarn? I said left? Why are you going right?" Kaon cut through on the intercomm. Tarn was very tempted in that moment to swear under his intake, but didn't have the energy to waste on it.

He instead hauled himself off of the nice, sturdy confessional, and realized that rock climbing was never going to become a hobby of his. A bullet took out a chunk of white stone milliunits away from his face. At which point, he moved a heck of a lot faster than his arms or spark wanted to. 

He scaled the wall in minutes, then glanced up in loathing at the rafter that had seemed so easy to reach from the ground. Bullets ripped through the air around him, and if he wanted to live, he was going to have to jump from the wall to the rafter.

His arms were screaming at him to stop by this point, they hadn't ever had to take on this much weight in this particular manner for very long before. Tarn gritted his denta, and gathered all the remaining strength in his body, before launching himself off of the wall and reaching for the rafter.

He managed to grab it, despite his doubt, and swung himself up, and ran down the rafter to the railing of the balcony. He jumped over the railing, bullets still flying around him, and ran along the round balcony until he found a door to the roof.

This he flung open and ran up the steps, taking then two and even three at a time until finally swinging the door open to the roof....

                                          .....to find at least twenty heavily armed soldiers, guns trained on him the leader smugly grinning at him from the front.