Chapter Text
Tailgate was… scared. Which, wasn’t very different from usual behavior, but he was petrified-scared this time, not scared-scared. He couldn’t help but coil up on himself, bracing his body so tight he might even dent something. And he vented, at least he tried to, while trying not to barf at the horrendous smell of trash around him. Empty cubes of energon, used weapons still stained, now useless pieces of armor, and he hadn’t dared dig any deeper.
He wanted to get away, but the fear still pinned him down right where he was. He couldn’t possibly leave, no, not while there were guards patrolling around looking for the ‘mouse-monster’. Truly a fearsome monster. That was what he was reduced to.
But why was he even being hunted? Just because that medic had taken a look at him after he was hurt by an actual, big, scary five-tailed fox, and declared he had a transformation cog?
Which, well, was the truth! But Tailgate had never used it to hurt others. He barely knew how to use it himself. If it wasn’t for the strangling fear he’d probably have transformed and leapt away from Iacon by now. Off to… somewhere, where he’d be able to hide his ‘dangerous’ form for a few more megacycles.
Unfortunately, the strangling fear was keeping him very much choked, and he already knew he was going to stay here until nightfall.
Steps moving along the trash cans informed him someone was coming. He held his vents, made himself even smaller, hid his eyes under his visor and faced down, hoping the bright azure light of his panicked gaze wouldn’t betray him. If he looked battered enough already, would they stop? Or would take take it even harder on him because people loved to take it on those less fortunate?
He could focus on himself, feel like trash. Become one with it. He already smelled like it. He only had to believe it. Come on, feel like trash. Lay down and feel like…
“Guess what, more trash!” A figure shouted, raising the cover of the trash bin and not even caring to get a glance in. Which worked great, because Tailgate jolted so hard that even the medic who’d blinded himself would have seen him. “Really don’t know how I didn’t figure this out sooner.”
There was a grumble in reply, a low and snarling sound that shook Tailgate to his core with fear and the sudden need to go incredibly still. So still his spark might even stop beating. The first voice soon continued.
“Come on, Cyclonus. Cheer up! We’re in another town, aren’t we? Look at all this trash we can thrash today! Hah, got it?” The first voice continued, and Tailgate’s eyes widened as he heard the creature start to change things around. Was… was he looking for stuff in the trash bin? Was he going to be found by malevolent homeless people? Oh, great. His panic definitely wouldn’t let his spark fade out now. And they were looking for things to… to thrash. Or trash. But that wasn’t a verb. Oh, well, Tailgate was done anyway by now.
“Keep your voice low.” The snarling voice, Cyclonus if he was to have any guess, reprimanded. “We don’t want to be found.”
“Yeah, sure sorry. Hey, weren’t those at the gates guards, though? They looked like you.” The first voice replied, grabbing something really close to Tailgate and flinging it out of the trash bin. It bounced and broke even more with the sharp noise of glass cracking and shattering on the ground behind the mysterious figure. Tailgate braced himself, knowing he was going to be next. “So why don’t you, like, get in touch with them? Tell them you’re one of them? Then you can get that arm of yours fixed, we steal some energon, and back into the forest we go! Nice, easy, simple.”
“And dangerous.” Cyclonus replied with a curt snarl, followed by more waste being thrown. “These guards are clearly looking for monsters. And, you can’t be left unsupervised.”
“Oh come on, I’ve made strides at my pace! I don’t even cut everything into neat little strips because I can. Not bodies, anyway.” The other replied, with a distinct clicking sound Tailgate didn’t want to think about. It sounded like teeth snapping.
Oh great. He was with someone crazy enough to cut bodies into pieces and… and possibly eat them, Tailgate realized. He was going to be eaten by… it had to be monsters, at this point. He was this close to being found by a monster and whoever was terrifying enough to travel with him! Great, just great! He could feel his eyes swell under his visor, his gaze becoming shinier. Was that what it meant to see life flash before your eyes? Was it that literal?
The cutting monster kept shuffling around. Something touched Tailgate soon after. Not hands, or appendages, but two claws, made of no more than two fingers each, and one grim, spirited yellow eye trailed on the poor minibot from the opening of the trash bin.
He felt like he was going to cry.
“Huh… Cyclonus?” He kept going. “I think you might want to come here. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. And I do talk to corpses, but maybe we’re not there yet. Let’s… let’s just say I’ll be talking to a corpse soon enough. If you don’t come.”
A huff and several heavy steps later, two dark red eyes joined the singular yellow.
Tailgate was completely frozen on the spot by now. He was so stiff he might break and snap the moment they tried to get him out.
“Who are you?” Cyclonus asked, tone cutting just like the sharp edges of the twin horns that adorned his face.
“Please…” Tailgate only managed to squeak. “Please don’t kill me.”
“And so that’s how they found you? In the trash?” Ratchet asked, while his fingers danced on the arms of the knight seated in front of him. He touched something he shouldn’t have, a tendril that was very much misaligned, but the figure didn’t do so much as sharply vent.
“Yeah, I… yeah.” The small little minibot, seated on a few leaves in the middle of the forest and holding the small lamp Ratchet had entrusted him with, shrugged and coiled up on himself. “When folks in Iacon found I had a cog… it was like I had become Unicron.”
Ratchet hummed, and touched lightly the elbow of the dark and stiff figure in front of him. This time, a groan did escape. “This is really bad. How long have you been going without treatment?”
“Ever since he met me!” Another voice, almost scratchy, too exuberant, exclaimed. Their third companion, Ratchet remembered, even if his name kept escaping his tongue.
“So let me guess, you fought?” He continued questioning, starting to weld a few minor wounds together before diving into the big gash coated by dried energon. “How long ago was that?”
“Dunno, never been good with numbers.” The scratchy voice continued, and his rusty body shuffled to a more comfortable position with various creaks and shifts that didn’t really comfort Ratchet’s ears. He’d have to take a look, or a touch, at him before letting them go. “But it was… eh, a few complete moons before?”
“A few months ago, you mean.” Tailgate supplied. “You… wow, you’ve been living alone in the woods for this long?”
“We’ve been on the move.” The figure right under Ratchet explained, voice clipped and filled with static. Ratchet put more numbing agent on the wound, hoping it would solve the problem. Although his armor was very thick, it was hard to even get his fingers under the joints.
“Yeah, he kinda forced me to go with him.”
“After you blew my cover, you should be thankful I dragged you out of Rivets Field!” The one under him, Cyclonus finally, his brain had taken its time, spat. “You would have been dead otherwise.”
“Can say the same thing about you. You wouldn’t have gotten out of there alive without my fast thinking.”
“I can’t understand a thing you’re saying!” Tailgate lamented, in that shrill voice of his. Although, if Ratchet was to guess, he wasn’t really panicked anymore. Not like when he’d seen his light and thought him a ghost, at least. “Can’t you follow a linear narrative for once?”
With a loud click Cyclonus’ arm regained some of its basic functionality, and Ratchet would deem it a job somewhat well done. He didn’t really care about the story Tailgate had asked, he was just there to heal them, that’s what he had offered, but he supposed it never hurt to hear.
“I was a knight.” Cyclonus started, moving his arm in slow and easy movements. “Me and my platoon were investigating various caves around Rivets Field, looking for monsters to trounce. When we indeed found one. Talking to corpses.”
“Hey, I was giving them the story of my life!” The other one – Whirl, there it was, his name was Whirl. “And it’s really sad and tragic, just so you know.”
“Point is, we started fighting, he hit me so hard in the head it somehow triggered my transformation sequence and next thing I knew everyone was trying to kill me as well in a typhoon of screams and slashes.”
“That’s horrible!” Tailgate squeaked. Ratchet shared the sentiment, he’d always been disgusted by how hunters were taught first and foremost to never trust anybody, especially not their team. He felt his tanks revolt just thinking back to it.
“Don’t worry, squirt. It’s the normal life of a hunter!” Whirl replied, overly cheery voice hiding something in the way his tone fluctuated, but Ratchet was not sure what. “We got out of there by running fast enough anyway. Last thing they teach you to do as hunters, but first to do if you’re the prey.”
“… You were a hunter too?” The minibot asked again.
“Ah, kind of. Too long ago, anyway. Everything I ever got outta it was a forced manicure and half the doc’s eyes.” There was a noise, of something snapping, of claws snapping Ratchet realized. No, perhaps not claws.
“Want me to take a look at it?” He asked, head trailing gently towards the voice. There was silence for a while, something like a choked sound which quickly turned into a clipped laugh.
“No, doc. You can’t do anything about it. Don’t worry your pretty little hands on it. Been living with this for a lot longer than I did without.”
“Is that… is that why you only have one eye?” Tailgate asked again, and got immediately reprimanded by the ex-knight.
“What, afraid I’ll break him in half?” Whirl retorted maniacally, and Cyclonus moved with such speed and precision that Ratchet had barely the time to register the leaves shifting before a metal blade was unsheathed and probably pointed at Whirl’s throat, away from Ratchet. “Oi, chill out. I’m a spider, not a cannibal or whatever. I can’t extract energon from bigger mechanisms.”
“A… spider?” Tailgate asked, and honestly, he sounded more confused than scared at the moment. Very far away from the ‘panic button’ he’d known in Iacon. Actually, he’d never heard him so relaxed.
The affirmation was followed by several more clicks.
“Yeah. See these? I used to have hands. Heck, I used to create watches! Crazy, I know, keep your enthusiasm Cyclonus, but then people got a good look at me and realized I had a bit too many eyes and when they made me transform… bang! A bit too many hands too. Eight hands, eight eyes… they cut the extras away.”
There was only eerie silence. Ratchet himself didn’t know how to react. He’d always just worked with monoformers, that he knew of, and he’d never been asked to do… something like that. Remove hands and eyes. They required surgical precision, at least two experienced medics. He should know, he thought while rubbing his fingers together, and observing them through his blank eyes.
He should know.
“You should all see the look on your faces. Hah! Never heard of empurata before, I take.” Whirl boomed. And then, as if they’d been talking about the weather. “So, doc, is big knight with a big sword here cleared to go or what?”
Ratchet raised from his knelt position and walked to the voice. It was incredible how people didn’t even get out of his way now, when one glare would have cleared the whole way to the hospital not all that long ago. He grabbed the hand – no, no it was obviously a claw when it was between Ratchet’s fingers – and he began checking the ports on the wrist. As he’d thought, no medic did this job. This was the work of a butcher at best.
Which also meant getting his hands stripped would have hurt like hell.
Many of his wrist ports were jagged. Places where the electrical impulses to control fingers would be, just out in the open. There was no way this hadn’t hurt, and hadn’t continued to hurt over the years, as dirt and pathogens settled in the delicate machinery.
He never had wished so desperately Rung was still here. He’d studied psychiatry, he would have known what to say. He would have known what to do and maybe, with time, this weird figure would have realized he never should have coped with pain like this. With making jokes and laughing at the faces people made when he showed his trauma like an antique statuette.
“Doc, what are you doing? I told you my hands are fine.”
Hands. Those were not hands.
“Stay still so I can check you, or I’ll short you out.”
He began working on the obstructed ports, scraping dirt and mush and other dead plants from it.
“He- ouch! Hey! Look doc, everything that’s in me is beyond repair. Really, I’m a destruction magnet. Cyclonus almost tore me in half the first time we met, big deal.” The knight must have shot him a look, because Whirl replied by leaning more towards him. “Almost got him too, though.”
“Please don’t fight!” Tailgate squeaked.
Ratchet moved to Whirl’s other hand, shifting plating that once had been used to form knuckles and nails to cover the damaged ports. Not great, but better than nothing. Some part of him desperately wanted to check the eye too, but he wouldn’t be able to without letting delicate components out in the open.
“What about you, Tailgate?” He asked, almost mindlessly while his fingers went on autopilot. “How did you hide for so long?”
“I… uh.” The minibot replied, and his voice came from a bit farther away. “I was born like this, you know? But living in the forest alone is hard and soon everyone I knew was either killed or had run away. I stayed in hibernation for a long time.” Because of an absolute lack of food. Ratchet grimaced. “And then I managed to roll into Iacon one day. Become a hunter. And it was going for a while. It’s not like I didn’t pull my weight. Or, well, I tried at least.”
Tailgate hadn’t been one of the more stellar hunters. Not like Kup or Smokescreen anyway, but… he was right. He tried to do his part. Only to get haunted himself, because he could only transform.
Ratchet still didn’t feel like he could stomach it, but it fueled him these days, knowing he was helping people just live their lives.
While silently and hopelessly hoping he would come back.
“And then? How did they find you?”
“Forced medical examination.” He replied, meek. “Ambulon was checking my insides and… well. I think you can figure it out.”
Ratchet sighed. Yes, he’d been trained to make the same operation. Try to open a body and check if it was hurt on the inside, if any lines were clipped or still dented… and as a side note, make sure the patient did not have a cog. He couldn’t really blame Ambulon: Pharma had taught him to make things through, but he wondered whether it was the best use of a medic’s expertise.
“And so they hunted you.”
“Ambulon was… feeling a bit bad, I suppose. He let me have some advantage before he had to call security, but it was not enough.”
“Your legs are short.” Cyclonus interrupted. “You wouldn’t have made it far anyhow.”
“Ah yeah, because your legs served you so well when you were trying to escape your own comrades, did they?” Whirl rubbed in. Ratchet could feel the tension building up between the two, and quietly wondered how they hadn’t killed each other yet. But while saying that Whirl moved, messed up the combination of plates Ratchet was making, and that Ratchet didn’t like. He didn’t like patients messing up his work when he was still making it.
So Whirl found himself with his bottom down on the ground after a rather powerful push Ratchet had practiced a lot of times on heavier frames, using the motion of the body to seize his hands and keep working.
“Ow!” He yelped.
“I told you to stay still. If you don’t, I’ll have to push you down until you do. Do you want this to be over or not?”
He waited for a reaction from Whirl, but it didn’t really come. The figure just stopped, probably averted his gaze, and also terminated his continuous jittery movements. When Ratchet could finally concentrate and finish his work again, he was distracted by a light chuckle close to his right followed by the condescending light of the lamp swaying in time with it.
“Tailgate?” Asked Cyclonus.
“Ah, sorry. It’s just… yeah, I’ve been missing the doc. His… his demeanor.” The minibot explained, disguising his laugh as a cough. “I’m glad you managed to repair Cyclonus. His arm was killing him.”
Ratchet made a small nod in reply, but continued with a gruff face as always. “Unfortunately it’s not enough. You should find a real medic that can repair you, and actually, literally, take a look at you. I barely made sure your joint won’t pop back out.” He said, head tilting to the area Cyclonus was inhabiting.
“But…” Tailgate continued, with a soft noise which, considering the mech it was coming from, must have been fidgeting. “But nobody else will help us. We’re monsters. Couriers from other city-states have already spread the news that I’m one, and their wanted posters are everywhere. You’re the only one who dared help us.”
‘Dared’ help them. What a hunter-mind thought. The only difference between them was their cog. They could live in the same society as monoformers, heck Tailgate and probably hundreds more had proved that with their existence, everyone was just too blinded by the Council or other guilds to see that. After all, guilds had made their living off of hunting and murdering these ‘ferocious’ monsters.
Who ever would put ferocious and Tailgate in the same sentence, anyway? And to think the poor guy had been chased all around Iacon, finding solace only in hiding with garbage.
It sickened him.
He stepped away from Whirl. “I can’t be the only one, can I? If you ever find a psychologist who’s willing to take a look at you.” He said while pointing a finger. “Take that chance without a second thought. Primus knows you need it.”
The light swished, and Ratchet could picture Tailgate turning it around for it to have that effect. He put his open palm in the light’s direction and found the stick being put back in his hands soon enough, the light following.
“You believe in Primus too?” Cyclonus asked, with his baritone and cutting voice reduced to a soft hum. Ratchet scoffed.
“Of course not. I don’t believe in blind faith or luck. But, as long as you’re not exploiting your faith to make others live in an upside-down reality, do what you want.” He replied, shrugging. “Now follow me, I’ll get you to a hidden path which will take you over The Magnificence. Hunters rarely traverse through there, you’ll be hidden and you’ll get away from Iacon.”
“And… what about you?” Tailgate asked, jogging until Ratchet heard his footsteps trot by his side. “Don’t you want to come? There’s a great bounty on your head.”
“No, I’ll stay here.” He replied, not even bothering to look down. He wouldn’t have seen the minibot, anyway. “If others flee from Iacon like you did, I’ll help them. I’ll do my part and boycott the council this way.”
He touched the barks of the trees that surrounded the path, until he felt one of the other signs he’d carved himself, a triangle. It looked just like a mountain to his fingers. He pushed his light close to it.
“Follow these signs. They will take you to the top of the mountain, and then you’ll be able to get down. It can be quite a hard climb, but it shouldn’t prove too hard for you. A couple of days at maximum and you’ll be on the other side of the mountain, away from Iacon.”
Whirl brushed against him as he walked onto the path. Tailgate followed suit with a small ‘thank you’ that felt more like a whisper lost in the wind, and last but not least Cyclonus stopped right in front of him.
“Thank you. You didn’t have to help me.”
“You’re not the first monster I help, and you probably won’t be the last.” Ratchet replied, looking up. Perhaps a bit too much, he didn’t know how tall this one was. “Safe travels.”
Cyclous made a small noise like a nod.
“I hope Primus’ will favors you.”
Ratchet forced himself not to snort, or even worse openly laugh in his face. He kept it, somehow, although some might have gotten out of his control because the light almost flickered, as if he had moved the stick too fast.
“Yeah. Bye.”
“Bye.”