Fandom: Transformers Bayverse (POV'verse)
Author: gatekat and fallentaiyoko on LJ
Pairing: None
Rating: PG-13
Codes: None
Summary: A very confused young Decepticon femme crash-lands on Earth near NEST headquarters.
Notes: RP written in the Point of View fanverse explained http:/community .livejournal .com/ tf_matrix/738 .html and pretty much in story as well.
Jazz is alive (you should be used to this by now) and bonded to Prowl.

Turning a Con 01: Confused femme is confused.

Primus hates me, thought the young Decepticon from the bottom of the crater made from her landing...if you could even call it a landing. The jolt of the crash-landing had woken her out of power-save, and though she thought she might be detecting other Cybertronians, her Friend-or-Foe systems were so badly damaged that she was neither transmitting that information, or able to receive it, so she wouldn't know what faction a mech belonged to until he was in visual range.

Though on a social level she was kind of excited at the thought of being able to actually talk to someone of her kind, any flicker of hope was quickly extinguished - most other 'Cons would rather beat the slag out of her than anything else, and the Autobots...they'd eat her spark for breakfast!

Gonna stay right here in my hole, maybe I won't die that way.

It was well past dark when she heard someone approach, the foodsteps very quiet.

"Are ya coming out, or am I comin' in?" A strong male voice called out to her in the Decepticon dialect.

She peered up over the edge of the crater, golden optics glowing against the dark of the night. She knew better than to assume that just because the steps were quiet that it must be a very small mech or drone ... after all, she'd gotten her name for all the times she'd inadvertently managed to sneak up on the adults when she was having a bad recharge.

"Depends," she replied, trying to sound more bold than she felt. "If you're just gonna beat me or something, not gonna go out of my way to make it easier for you."

A bright blue optic band greeted her look around when she didn't see anyone where the voice had come from.

Oh frag

"Ah don't plan on beat'n ya, but ya are coming out and with us," the silver mech not much taller than her informed her, still keeping to the Decepticon dialect even though she could see the Autobot insignia on his helm.

She was so slagged.

"Primus really hates me," she murmured, looking around to try to see just how many constituted 'us' - maybe she'd be able to run successfully? Or at least she would be far enough away when they killed her that her spark could escape to the Matrix instead of getting devoured.

She did recognize the silver Autobot, though the information was in some of the damaged sectors of her memory chips, and all she could remember was that he was some sort of high rank. There was no information on the heavily built dark green scout-class that was standing further away with a heavy blaster aimed at her. They made two points of a triangular trap. A third must be somewhere, even if she couldn't see him.

Deciding to take her chances at escape, she slipped down back into the bottom of the crater, shifting position quietly before scrambling out the side without an apparent guard, only objective being 'away from the Autobots'.

The silver one leapt, tackling her into a roll than ended with her on her front and him straddling her hips as he grabbed for her hands. The extra weight was enough to cause one of her multitude of patches to fail, this one being her left knee, a sickening crunch as shoddy welds pulled apart and inferior replacement parts collapsed under the strain.

She hit the ground with a warble of pain, but otherwise holding still. She'd always learned that struggling made the beatings worse, and maybe this way the Autobot would at least be merciful enough to make her end quick, utterly convinced that one way or another, she was going to die.

He got her wrists and pulled them behind her, locking them in place before he rolled gracefully to his feet and reached down to pull her to her feet.

"Ya got'a designation?" he asked with a strangely jovial tone.

There was a horrible screech of metal rubbing against metal in ways it was never meant to as she was pulled to a standing position again, muting her vocalizer against the cry of agony she wanted to release.

Balancing, more or less, on her one good leg, she quietly replied, "Darkstalker, sir." As far as she understood, everyone rated at least a 'sir' from her.

A disgruntled sound came from the silver mech and he glanced towards the green one. "Hound, come balance'r."

"Right-to," the working-class accent responded as his weapon was quickly stowed.

She listened to the larger mech approach, then a set of rough, strong hands were on her shoulders as he stood behind her. It took all the need to balance and most of the weight off her. When her gaze followed the silver mech as he knelt, she saw a repair kit come out of subspace and set on the ground next to her injured knee.

"Mah designation's Jazz," the silver one supplied as his claws worked to assist inspecting the damage he's caused.

The entire knee assembly was fragged, cheap parts and shoddy workmanship that would have eventually given out anyway. Utterly confused by the actions of those who were supposed to be her enemies, she couldn't help but ask, "Why are you...?"

Her optics dimmed as a "Low Energon Pressure" message flashed in her HUD. She only had enough to function to begin with, so the leak opened by the damage of the rest of her knee was causing her to lose what little of the precious fluid she had.

"We're Autobots," the mech behind her, Hound, said as Jazz began to work on making her leg functional enough to walk on. He shifted a bit, wrapping an arm around her chassis so he could continue to support her while he reached into his subspace and brought out an energon cube. "Drink okay?" he placed it to her mouth.

Hound's answer clarified exactly nothing, but she sipped on the offered cube, the energon sweeter than any ration she'd ever had before. Had she been lied to about who the Autobots were her whole life?

"Always been told Autobots would eat my spark...or is it that mine wouldn't taste good enough to be worth it?" Whatever Jazz was doing, it made her knee not hurt as badly. Maybe instead they were going to make her be their slave or something? Maybe it wouldn't be as bad as being dead?

"Slaggin propaganda," Jazz growled from the vicinity of her knee. "We're Cybertronians, same as ya, not monsters. What have ya been up to, that ah haven't even heard ya designation?"

"Of course not. Who'd hear of a nobody, a failure so bad that she can't even manage to die properly? Would have thought that asleep so long, I'd have fallen into a star or black hole by now..." With everything she'd ever known practically turned upside down, her processor ached, threatening to lock up under the stress.

The silver mech looked up at her, an odd expression on his face that she couldn't place other than it wasn't very pleased.

"It's mah job ta know everybot," Jazz informed her. "Try ya leg now."

Carefully, she gradually placed weight on her leg, testing to see if it at least worked. It still hurt, but she was no stranger to pain, and at least it seemed like she should be able to walk on it.

"I think I'll be able to walk on it," she told him, hesitating before adding, "Thank you."

"Good," Jazz nodded and stood as he subspaced his kit and motioned for her to follow as Hound let her go and back off a bit to play guard again. "Diego Garcia isn't far. Ya managed ta crash just outside our perimeter. Hav'a heard of Ratchet, Autobot CMO?"

"The name sounds familiar, but the references all point at a damaged sector...can't get anything more to pull up." She followed him, still favoring her right leg and feeling awkward with her arms restrained behind her. "Might be good to visit a real medic for a change, though..."

Jazz chuckled, a mixture of playful mirth and dark amusement in the sound. "If ya'r as fragged up as ah think, yar not gonna get out of his domain for'a while. Obey'm and he'll treacha well and fix'a up good as new. Be difficult an' he'll intraduce ya to 'is wrench collection."

Darkstalker gave a little giggle at the phrase 'introduced to his wrench collection'. "Is ... that good energon like, a regular thing around here?" she asked, half expecting to have to repay Hound somehow for the cube earlier.

If Jazz caught the implications of her question, he might have to add "replace fuel filters" to the extensive list of things he was pretty sure was fragged up with her.

"Yes and no," Jazz gave her another looking over as the human-built facility came into clear view, dimly lit for the night-cycle. "That was a field ration, not the good stuff we usual have."

Wait...they didn't consider that the good stuff? It was like a hundred times better than anything she ever remembered having. All the processing power going to the ongoing 'What the slag?' that this night was becoming was even causing her to not notice the pain in her knee as much.

She kept her optics open and her body language submissive as she was walked right through the heart of the facility, past guards who looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and wariness and several strange bipeds that were small even by her standards. The biggest of the organics didn't even reach the top of her knee.

"So this is your new pet?" a deeply annoyed mech voice came from inside one of the buildings when they approached close enough to trigger the automatic door.

She felt a powerful medical scan run over her before she saw the chartreuse mech in the well lit medical bay. His hands were on his hips and he was glaring at Jazz rather than her.

"Still working that part out, Ratch," Jazz shrugged and guided her to stand in front of the medic by her elbow. "Hound will stand guard until Jolt comes on shift."

"So just how 'fixed' do you need her?" the big mech glared at an utterly unphased Jazz.

"Fixed enough she's not likely to short out on me talking," Jazz shrugged.

"Fine. Scat you," the medic pointed out the door. "I'll comm you when you can talk," he grumbled, taking custody of her by the arm and walking her into the back, to a room with no windows, only one door and a setup that spoke clearly of being designed to give no opportunities to escape.

She wanted to take offense at being called a 'pet', but given how things had been so far, there were much worse fates than being a pet to this weird Autobot.

The medic's gruff tone reminded her too much of past encounters with other 'Cons, and it tempted her to turn to Jazz and beg him to shoot her, exposing her spark so there was no possibility of the shot missing. But considering everything the silver mech had done for her so far, she would just have to hope that he'd been truthful about compliance making things go easier with the medic.

As far as the scan went, the shorter list was probably the things that didn't need at least some amount of repair or maintenance.

She instinctively flinched as Ratchet took hold of her but otherwise gave no resistance, unsurprised at being treated like a prisoner, since that was what she was. She gave no resistance as she was picked up and laid on the berth.

For a long moment the medic grumbled and muttered to himself, various scans running over her frame again before he shook his head and began with setting up an energon drip.

"You've been on your own a while, I expect," his tone was surprisingly kind. "Designation's Ratchet."

She nodded cautiously. "Yeah. Not quite sure how long, slept through most of it, to save energy." After a pause, she added, "I'm Darkstalker. Not sure yet if being on this planet means I'm really lucky, or just that Primus hates me that much."

Though she was truly an optimist at spark, long centuries of experience had taught her that optimism only brought extra pain when things inevitably came crashing down.

She wanted to just curl up in a ball on the berth, but didn't particularly want to find out just what Ratchet would do to her with that wrench collection Jazz had mentioned. For all she knew, he could end up disassembling her part by part, leaving critical systems for last, leaving her conscious and feeling every minute of it.

"Well Darkstalker, I'd say you're lucky you crashed where you did," Ratchet told her conversationally as he turned off the sensor receptors in one leg and began to work, all but rebuilding it from the tip of her ped on up. "I doubt you're going to meet Jazz's special brand of conversation, given you aren't Intel, and the Cons are in no position to fix what you need fixed. You're going to be stuck on this berth for at least a decaorn, assuming I have all the parts I need. Whoever your last medic was didn't deserve the title, even if he didn't have any equipment."

"Doubt any of 'em I'd have met would have even cared enough to bother. Only reason I got patched up last time was 'cause the last cleaning drone had gotten smashed in a fit of anger and they didn't want to have to clean up after themselves. And I think the only reason he'd become the ship 'medic' was because he was the only one who knew one end of a welding torch from the other."

She reached one hand up to rub at her helm. "All this weird is making my processor ache..."

Ratchet huffed without breaking from his work. "If you think today is weird, you're going to crash before you're out of medbay. When was the last time you had a proper fueling, as in you had full reserve tanks?"

"Um...never?" she admitted nervously. Not only that, but what she'd had available to her had been about one step more nutritious for her than, say, dirt. "Sometimes I could get a little extra if the others didn't finish theirs..."

"That would explain why your self repair systems are all but non-functional," he grumbled. "Was your entire unit that ill-supplied, or just you?"

"We weren't exactly well supplied anyway, but I'd always get the short end of things." He didn't seem too bad so far. "I think maybe everything I was told about Autobots was a lie."

"Most likely," Ratchet didn't contest it, even without knowing exact details. "Whatever you told Jazz certainly put him in a mood. Probably a good thing you came in alone, really. He'd have torn them apart for treating a youngling like that. Just about everybody here would. There are too few of us already."

"Oh no, none of you have to do anything like that. Not over me." Not worth anyone putting themselves in danger.

"The medic snorted. "Good luck stopping it. These mechs do what they feel is right."

"Ratchet? What's going to happen to me?" she asked.

"For the next few orn, I'll be rebuilding you," he told her with a grunt as something twisted and burnt came out of her leg. "On that subject, do you want your adult software upgrades?"

"I guess I am old enough for it now, aren't I? Might as well, at least I shouldn't have all my programming scrambled in the process."

"All right. Then you'll go to Jazz, who will decide what level of threat you represent and the value of your information. Unless you want to ask for asylum or defect now, which means you'll talk to Prime, then Jazz, but he'll be limited in what he can do to you unless he can prove you weren't sincere. After that, it's mostly up to you and how you act. Though from what I've seen, even life in the brig would be better on you than how you've grown up."

It took a minute for the rest of Ratchet's words to sink in. "Wait ... you mean I don't have to be a Decepticon?"

The medic huffed. "No. No you don't have to be a Con. There are several defectors in our ranks. You'll be judged on your actions, not who commissioned you."

"And if I'm not good enough to be an Autobot either? If I really am just a failure at everything?" She wasn't sure she could continue existing without any social connection to her kind, like if she were exiled or something.

However, it could be simply that being chronically under-fueled and shoddily repaired had been the barriers to allowing her whatever talent she had to blossom.

"No such thing," Ratchet said with enough fire to make her cringe. He made the effort to reign in his emotions. "Even if you are as useless as you seem to think, you'll find a place here to earn your keep."

"Can I please stay? I don't mind work, any sort. I just want to be useful to somebody. Please?" She knew she shouldn't dare hope like this, but maybe this time would be different. Everything had already been turned upside down since the moment she met Jazz, maybe now it was okay to hope.

"Technically that's Prime's choice, but he hasn't turned anyone away yet," he told her with a bit of a smile and went back to his work. "Can you read?" he asked gently.

"Yeah, I like to read. Didn't have much access to anything, but I'd read anything I could get a hold of. I'd like to learn new things too. They kinda gave up after figuring out I couldn't hit the broad side of a battleship when they started teaching me to fight. Is Prime scary?"

She'd never had anybody be this nice to her, so her unintended Bluestreak impression was, in a sense, making up for lost time.

"Only if he's trying to kill you," Ratchet laughed in real humor. "Prowl's the scary one, but he's not dangerous unless you attack his bonded or Prime. He just scowls. Of course, around here I'm considered the really scary one, but that's only because most of the mechs can't keep themselves from getting hurt doing stupid things."

"Mm...that makes some sense. Jazz said something about if I was difficult you'd introduce me to your wrench collection. But I don't want to be difficult. Be nice to not have to be scared anymore... Can't promise I won't ever do anything stupid that'll get me hurt, but I'll try my best to avoid it."

"That'll put you ahead of every mech and almost every human," Ratchet made a snort of amusement and approval.

"They actively look for stupid things to get into that'll get them hurt? That doesn't make much sense. Or is it they don't think about the consequences of the stupid things that seem like a good idea at the time?"

He smiled at her Bluestreak impression. It was cute when they were this young. He just hoped she'd grow out of it like he had. "Mostly the second, but occasionally the first while swearing that it wasn't a stupid idea."

The door slid open to reveal a white mech with red markings. "You wanted this, sir?"

Ratchet reached back with an empty hand and was given the datapad.

"Is this who Jazz brought in?" the new mech asked, peering around Ratchet's larger frame at the femme.

"Yes. She's planning to defect, but not before I'm done with her," Ratchet informed him evenly. "Darkstalker, this is another mech to be very good towards. First Aid is my SIC. He'll be handling some of your repairs, and you ever give him trouble, you have to deal with me in a bad mood."

"Hello Darkstalker," First Aid smiled at her and extended a hand while remaining out of Ratchet's way. "Welcome to Diego Garcia."

Darkstalker gave First Aid a shy smile, taking his hand to shake. "Nice to meet you." She liked how his smaller size meant he didn't seem to loom over her quite as much.

"You're definitely the most civilized Con I've met in medbay," First Aid grinned at her. "Youngest too, I think."

"Yes, she's the youngest by a significant margin," Ratchet told him, then looked at her. "He brought you reading material," he shoved the data pad at her. "Basic who's who, the best ways not to step on organics, the rues so Prowl doesn't growl at you too often, who not to trust outside of guarding your back in battle. Who's not available and why for after you get your adult upgrade. Some couples are open, but some view flirting with their lover as grounds for war. Any questions, do ask."

"I've always heard that organics were supposed to stay in some sort of 'Generator Facility'. Never been to one, though, just heard the adults talking about it...so why do you let them just run around? Do you just not have the right kind of building yet?" To Darkstalker, this seemed a perfectly innocent question, knowing nothing about the ugly truth behind the Decepticons' generator facilities, or that humans were even sentient.

She knew almost instantly something was wrong with the sharp intakes and sudden stiffness in both medics and the utterly horrified expression on First Aid's face.

"We let them run free because they are people," Ratchet said firmly, his vocalizer straining to keep his explanation from flying off the handle. "Sentient just like we are. The generator facilities are prisons where they are constantly tortured to produce energy for us. Autobots do not have such facilities. We gain much more energy from causing them pleasure in a one to one relationship."

The understanding hit her like a ton of bricks, and in her shock, the datapad clattered to the floor as it slipped from her hand.

"Oh Primus. I had no idea, I'm so sorry, I swear I didn't know!" And apparently that was as much stress as her processor could take as she crashed hard.

The two medics exchanged a look and began to relax. Ratchet eventually allowed a relieved smile to cross his features. "That actually bodes very well for her survival. Now get over to the other side and work on her leg while I reset her."

"Yes sir," First Aid nodded and did as he was told.