damned_institute | DAY 43: CAFETERIA, MORNING

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DAY 43: CAFETERIA, MORNING

Where was Blitzwing?

Lugnut ignored the nurse's fussing over his foot, even as it howled objections to his ill treatment of it the night before, pounding through the town in search of his wingmate, reportedly helpless and injured by an attack the night before-- and not finding him, not seeing even a glimpse of his crazy triple-changing ally.

Snarling at the nurse, but restraining himself from shows of violence-- Blitzwing would mock him if he showed up drugged already, and he would be useless to Megatron like that--he made his way impatiently to the cafeteria, stopping for just long enough to post an urgent notice on the board.

Where was he?

Looming in the middle of the cafeteria, he took the tray the nurse handed him (filled with disgusting human fuel, didn't she know he didn't have time to eat, not when his wingmate was missing?) and ignored it, watching for Blitzwing, where was he?

He refused to think about what might have happened to a wheelchair-bound, drugged, incapacitated warrior, with the swarms of monsters flooding around him, clawing and biting...

[for Scourge]

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Lugnut stared at this Recluse for a moment. Hmmph, "Lord," was it?

Still...

"If Lord Megatron does not require my presence, it would be very satisfying to destroy Landel's body as violently as possible," he said, including himself in the plans without asking permission. Still, if Recluse didn't want him to hear them, he wouldn't have sat down so closely, would he?

"Any body not dressed in worn or informal clothes would be enough of a match. And I do not care who does it, so long as it is done," Recluse said, looking over the larger Decepticon with cold red eyes. The man was even bigger than him. That was rare.

"All the morgues I've seen had naked corpses," Scourge commented through a mouthful of sugar-soaked breakfast. "But I'm sure you could find someone to do it."

He swallowed. "We all want the guy's guts for bungees."

"... 'Guts for bungees'?" Lugnut echoed, bemusedly, but nodded in agreement. "I'll do it, gladly, if my liege permits."

He'd bring Blitzwing, too. His wingmate would enjoy it.

"Not all of them do." Most in Arachnos morgues never got more than a cursory autopsy, if that. "I doubt that Marcus, annoyingly righteous man that he is, will make it possible for me to do so myself, however much I might relish the idea." And he could probably be the most thorough out of anyone. He had his thermite, after all.

"Bungees. The long bouncy things." Scourge holds up two fists in front of him and pantomimed tugging a stretchy cord.

Slag, Marcus. He'd forgotten about that idiot. "Why did you save him last night, anyway? We could have fed him to the zombies. Immortality's not so hot when you're inside someone's digestive system."

Lord Recluse mostly came across as your average, trustworthy tyrant, but the Statesman think made Scourge suspicious.

"I know what they are," Lugnut growled, a bit miffed. "Can human organs really be used as them? Why would you want to?" It seemed rather gross, to him, all that organic gunk that humans seemed to be filled with.

Listening to the rest of the conversation, he said, lowly and mostly to himself, "Feeding Starscream to something. Hmm."

"They can't be. Not enough elasticity." Not that he'd ever tried, of course, but they always tore quite easily.

"If I had seen an opportunity to do so without any chance of his survival, then I would have. Unfortunately, he tends to survive quite a lot of things, up to and including point-blank detonation of high-yield nuclear bombs." Something the Soviets had found out the irritating way.

And his hearing was more than good enough to note what Lugnut said. "There tend to be high concentrations of hostile creatures on the recreational field. Many of them can move quite fast. I'm sure they'd be more than willing to eat him."

Scourge could have protested that they were all regular (mostly) humans now and that it would be far more likely that Statesman would be either dead or at least in enough pieces for it not to matter, but he was starting to get the feeling that any suggestions he made regarding Statesman were going to be shot down without a second thought. There was something else going on here.

In the distant haze of Thundercracker's memories, it reminded him of Megatron and Optimus Prime, and how many times Megatron wouldn't just shut up and shoot him when they had the Autobot leader in their clutches. Not because they couldn't, despite desires to do something creative but nonfatal like building him into an alligator, but because something always kept Megatron from letting it happen.

Scourge speared a piece of melon with his fork and regarded it with a melancholic expression. "Right, boss," he responded dully. The tracker had heard humans turned to alcohol or mind-altering substances in times of stress and confusion. In the absence of those he was considering developing a therapeutic eating disorder.

A faint trace of a smile flitted across Lugnut's face. "I know about the monsters," he said, lowly, unconsciously touching the fading scars on his arm. "If his arms and legs were bound, he wouldn't be able to flee like the coward he is..."

He continued smiling to himself, imagining it, until Scourge said 'boss' and his head snapped around, glaring intently at the tracker. "You are a Decepticon. Lord Megatron is your commander, not this Recluse," he growled, with angry ferventness. "Do not forget it."

"Duct tape would be the best readily available binding. The cloth here is too easy to shred." Recluse had of course thought about this quite a lot.

He'd been expecting this to happen at some point. "I've only been using Scourge while your Lord Megatron has no orders for him," Recluse said dryly, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. "I have already been in contact with him and this was not deemed to be a problem." In fact, it seemed as if he might soon be buying Scourge from Megatron.

"No rule says I can't have a part time job," Scourge added with a resentful scowl. "Megatron hasn't even told me to do anything yet." Lugnut's Megatron was the polar opposite of his Galvatron--while Galvatron was wild, impulsive, and violent, Lugnut's Megatron never seemed to stop mulling things over long enough to make a plan of attack.

Lugnut was silent for a moment, then grunted in a sort of "fine, if Megatron okayed it" sort of way and prodded at an apple.

Well, that had been settled easily. Recluse took out his notebook, turning to a mostly blank page and beginning to write, jagged script plain for everyone to see. If only it wasn't all written in Base64 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64).

He poked absently at his breakfast, taking a few bites. Recluse, after all, was not known for his willingness to engage in small talk.

If no one else was going to have enthusiasm about breakfast, he would. "So what about these visitors?" Scourge asked, trying to change the subject. "Fakes, right?"

"... Visitors?" Lugnut said, cluelessly. What visitors?

"Yes, they are fake. The Institute brings in human equivalents of individuals that you have known, who repeat the same fabricated stories of why you are here. I have been subjected to this once. They brought back one of my dead enemies." Recluse's expression darkened. Even just thinking about Monica was more than enough to anger him. "They are useless, beyond their abilities to shock and manipulate the weak."

"Sounds pretty annoying. But they can't bring back anyone of ours, we're not even from this planet. Or human." Scourge's powdered-sugar-stained lips curl upwards in a grin as he pictures a fat, horned human version of Unicron coming in to visit him. Or maybe Optimus Prime, brainwashed and weak, now that would just make his day.

Lugnut nodded at what Scourge said; that made sense. Anyway, there was hardly anyone who could come that wasn't already here-- Strika, maybe, but no human could even pretend to imitate her.

"Many among the prisoners here are not from Earth, and quite a few were dead before they arrived, including non-human organics. And all they need is a human simulacrum of an individual, regardless," Recluse replied, setting down his pen and closing his notebook, trying a little of his food. Now that he'd heard more about what happened to those who had been bitten by the zombies, he almost wished he had been among them. Then he would have an excuse to attack Marcus.

"These guys go to a heck of a lot of trouble for no reason." Par for the course at Landel's, he supposed.

Scourge almost hoped he got a "visitor". Maybe Optimus Prime to give him an inspirational speech, or a neatly brainwashed Starscream (could they have two Starscreams, if they were from different points in time?). Maybe Soundwave? He had no idea how Soundwave would translate over.

"Hrmph, as if any mere human could rightfully claim to be a Decepticon," Lugnut grumbled, stabbing a bit of food with his fork and shoving it around his plate.

"At present, permanent human status is hardly a factor for anyone here. Only how effectively you can employ these weak bodies while we are all trapped in them," Recluse said, spitting out the words 'human' and 'weak' as if they were curses.

"What capabilities does your race have in its normal state?" Recluse asked, for lack of anything more useful to discuss. The real bodies of all non-humans--possibly including himself--were being stored somewhere within the control of the Institute, and at least one of them had been returned to it for the nightly brainwashing. Beyond that, it never hurt to know the capabilities of others.

Scourge shrugged, licking the sugar from his lips. "Depends on the build. We're all robots, obviously. Most of us are bigger than a human, although the Cassettes come pretty close, but standard height is maybe three or four humans tall. Most Decepticons, me included, can fly, although there's a few who can't and a few Autobots who can. Some of us have natural weapons attached, but I just carry a gun around. And these, of course." He held up one hand, fingers spread to display his claws--no longer pink, but still long. Ideally he could file his nails a bit sharper during dinner, in preparation for the night. "There's also those with unique abilities like cloaking or creating holograms. I have tracking skills, heightened perception and detection way above what I've currently got, but nobody else has that.

"And there's transforming, of course, we all do that, but we turn into different things. I'm an air skiff, for example, and Starscream was a F-15. If Lockdown was the guy running around two nights ago, then he transformers into a muscle car."

"Three or four humans tall?" Lugnut echoed, and snorted. "Pathetically small. Blitzwing, Megatron, and I are far larger than that-- I'm about as tall as this building," and he waved his hand at the institute, "Blitzwing about a head smaller. He is a triple-changer, and three-faced. Megatron took the form of a helicopter when he was rebuilt. I am a bomber." He looked at his hands, and murmured, "I had explosive mods installed."

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