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Pretty, was Trepan’s first thought when he saw the blue-white jet speeding through the sky. Its lines had an elegant grace to them despite the sheer size of the vehicle. He had a thing for sharp curves like that, back in the day.
He didn’t have time to form a second thought before he found himself on the ground. The jet (tank-jet, as he later came to learn) sent out a volley of missiles, which the Autobots responded to in kind. Trepan’s light frame stood no chance and was easily knocked down by the overlapping explosions.
For the split moment where he laid on the ground, Trepan wondered if playing the helpless little medic was truly the safest way forward.
…yes it was. Alright, moment over. Trepan picked himself up.
Through the dust and smoke he spotted their attacker. A massive bot was locked in combat with Fortress Maximus. Well, “locked” was perhaps too generous a term. The Decepticon must’ve had some type of reinforced armor, if the way Maximus’ fist crumpled like an organic limb was any clue. Props to the Autobot general’s dedication at the face of obvious defeat, though. If Trepan was a more honorable mech he might even feel inspired.
Another volley of projectiles sent Maximus flying. Disappointingly, he landed close enough to Trepan that it would seem suspicious if he did nothing to help. He crawled over to his commander and went through the standard procedures. The actions were familiar enough that he spared just one optic for the repairs, leaving the rest to freely observe their attacker. Trepan quietly enjoyed the show as his hands automatically closed up broken fuel lines.
“Stop him,” Maximus choked. “Primus, save us... What has Overlord become?”
Overlord… so that was his name. How… intriguing.
Trepan really hoped a stray missile didn’t take him out right now. It would be a shame to die just as things got interesting.
—
They both survived, Trepan and Maximus. They were prisoners now on the planet Elba. Not the worst outcome, all things considered.
Fortress Maximus certainly didn’t think so. Or maybe he did, who would know? The mech was too distraught over having watched his entire command get torn to shreds to form a coherent sentence. He was oddly protective of Trepan, likely due to him being the only other survivor around. Trepan tolerated the way Maximus hugged him as he cried. Providing comfort was a routine almost as familiar as all the repairs.
He didn’t have to coddle his leader for long. Trepan was taken from the cell not long after. The Decepticons were in desperate need of a medic, and their Autobot prisoner was apparently the only option. No additional details were given beyond threats of violence to get Maximus to hand over his last remaining follower.
Trepan was marched through the facility by a seeker—Overlord’s lieutenant, probably. The hall was lined with identical reinforced cells, all echoing with pitiable wails of the injured. Trepan took note of the numbers on the doors. He did his best to map out his surroundings since his guard didn’t bother to blindfold him. A helpful oversight, or perhaps he was so unthreatening that it was deemed not worth the effort.
An elevator ride brought the three back up to the ground floor where more Decepticons gathered. They were all pacing in apparent anxiousness. One of them approached.
“What is happening? Leozack, is Overlord alright?”
So it was Overlord who required a medic, Trepan thought. How odd, he wondered who could’ve hurt that monster enough to need urgent repairs.
“He’s fine,” Overlord’s lieutenant, Leozack, though his quickened pace betrayed his confidence. “Just going to make sure.”
More Decepticons noticed them and joined in trailing the two as they quickly moved through the long halls. They eventually reached a large door with the sign Hall G written across the top. Trepan was pushed in and Leozack followed him through, closing the door in the face of the other Decepticons.
“Overlord must be really hurt for you to be doing all this.”
Leozack glared. He dug his spear pointedly against Trepan’s back as they resumed the earlier pace through even more halls.
“He needs a medic and you will help him. Don’t think that you have a choice. Refuse, and we will kill everyone. Understood?”
An unnecessary threat—he didn’t intend to refuse. “What happened to your medics?”
“We don’t have any medics left! But you. You’re a non-combatant medic, right? You are sworn by oath to help anyone, Decepticon or Autobot.”
“Of course,” Trepan lied, “it is my duty to heal anyone who needs it.”
Leozack nodded. He shifted his spear and replaced it with his hand, a somewhat gentler way of marching the captive Autobot along at break-neck speed.
They passed many more rooms before finally rounding a corner coming upon a rather gruesome scene. What once might’ve been a research lab was in complete disarray with bits and pieces of dead mechs thrown all over. Energon covered the floors, walls, and even the ceiling. Trepan recognized the tell-tale sign of medic hands among the bodies.
“Did Overlord do this?” he asked.
“No, we shot them. They betrayed and hurt our leader. Those Elban scientists were supposed to help us but they…”
The seeker cut himself off. They stopped in front of a room labeled G-6: Experiment Lab.
“Look,” he said.
Trepan stepped inside. More dead bodies. An entire research team seemingly gunned down where they stood. Trepan’s gaze swept over the mess until he spotted a large, cylindrical tank with a shattered door.
“They were testing something,” he mused, picking his way over to the tank. He recognized the tubes that snaked around and inside the vessel. It was used to contain a person, an experiment.
“They said it was ununtrium. These scientists…” he gestured to the dead bodies, “...they created an impenetrable substance. The idea was to infuse ununtrium into matter to create our own Apex Armour. That was the Apex Project. But we only had so much ununtrium, and Overlord volunteered to infuse himself because he imagined it was the only way to save us all. Something went wrong.”
Leozack’s voice got increasingly distressed.
“The scientists said it would only hurt during the process, but it didn't stop there. Even after Overlord coated himself and his alt-modes, when he left that tube... the pain didn’t end. He kept screaming and crying that he was melting alive! Those scientists must have planned this all along. In our horror, we shot them all... Frag, we should have kept them alive and made them fix this!”
Trepan bit his glossa. Never worth it to call warbuilds idiots to their face, even if it was true.
Leozack suddenly grabbed the medic’s shoulders, spun him around to stare into his eyes.
“But you can fix him, can’t you? I don’t care what you just lived through. This is war: superweapons get used, bots die. You are bound by oath to help everyone. Now, you have to help our leader!”
Technically, Trepan never swore the oath. Even if he did, he’s seen enough medics treat the oath as more suggestion than law.
Leozack took his silence as hesitation. “You cannot imagine the pain he is in and was in during that entire massacre!” he stressed, “he collapsed and couldn’t stop writhing, and when he got to his feet, he wanted to end himself. My sister and I begged him not to, convinced him to let us get a medic to help him. For the love of Primus, just do something to stop his pain! He screamed his voice box to shreds and he can’t think straight...”
Trepan couldn’t help but feel a little suspicious. This Decepticon was showing an almost suspicious amount of vulnerability in front of an enemy right now, non-combatant medic or not. Either Overlord’s situation was truly that dire, or something else was at play.
Oh well. He didn’t exactly have any options.
“I already promised to help your leader,” Trepan spoke gently, comforting, “if he is truly suffering as you say, I must do all that I can to relieve his pain.”
Leozack nodded and stood, leading them out of the destroyed experiment lab. They entered a room labelled G-9. It was dimly lit, the air itself tense. At the center of the room was a large chair, its single occupant sat slumped with his head bowed. Beside the chair was another seeker who shared Leozack’s frametype—his sister? She trembled where she hovered, fussing, concern clear in every move.
Trepan observed the sitting mech. Overlord looked nothing like the monster that slaughtered all of Maximus’ crew. There was no question that it was him. There was no forgetting that wonderful frame. Still as large as he remembered, but missing that sense of overwhelming strength. He didn’t even look up when they entered the room. The only movement from the mech was a near-imperceivable tremor in the servos.
Overlord looked weak. Leozack was telling the truth after all. Trepan was simultaneously hit by a wave of giddiness and an equal disappointment. It was always exciting to have the powerful types at his mercy, and this one… Well, he was halfway to the grave already! But the part of Trepan that saw death flying his way and thought “pretty” was sad to see this mech in such a pathetic state.
He walked up to the massive Decepticon general. He kept his movements slow, obvious, cautious of Leozack and his sister’s eyes watching his every move. As he drew near, he heard soft murmurs rolling past Overlord’s lips.
“Kill me... kill me... kill... me...”
Trepan forewent the nearby stool and climbed directly onto Overlord’s thigh. The mech didn’t react.
“Wait! What are you…”
Trepan paused and looked back. The other seeker had a servo reached out, hanging in the air, seemingly unsure if she should drag Trepan away or let him work.
“I’m examining my patient,” he explained.
“If you do anything to him…”
“You’ll what? Kill more prisoners? I know. Leozack already made that very clear.”
“Lyzack… it’s alright,” Leozack placated, “he’s a medic. He said he would help.”
“An Autobot medic,” she hissed.
“We don’t have a choice!”
Lyzack hissed again, but her arm dropped. She backed down but still glared at Trepan with suspicion. Good choice. She likely realized that there was nothing Trepan could inflict on her leader worse than the living hell he was already in.
Trepan went back to his task. He peered into dim, pink optics. Optics that were a brilliant crimson in his memories.
“You poor thing,” Trepan quietly breathed, “every pain receptor must be active.”
To the seekers, “it is as you described. He is very weak; the stress is on the verge causing spark failure.”
“Can you help him?” Lyzack asked.
“I just might…”
Trepan looked down at his hands. He flexed his fingers. The sensation of regular medic tools shifting beneath the plating was a familiar one. But even deeper, hidden behind all the innocent scalpels and medical clamps, he felt his long-neglected needles begging to be used.
He triggered the transformation sequence inside his left hand. Five sharp needles slid out from his fingertips, gleaming in the overhead light. It felt smooth as solvent, satisfying as a stretch after thousands of years curled in a space too small. He tapped the needles on his thumb and forefinger together, loving the delicate sound.
“You’re very lucky to have found me,” he addressed the siblings without looking back, “I might be the only person left who can solve your problem.”
“What do you mean?” Leozack asked.
Trepan reached around and behind Overlord’s neck. His right hand delicately smoothed across the base of the helm to look for a seam. He found a few which he carefully probed with the sharp needle tips.
Nothing. Not even a little give. With any other patient his needles were unstoppable, but the ununtrium infusion protected against the intrusion. A shame, he’ll have to play nice.
“I was a neurosurgeon back before the war,” Trepan explained, “I can’t remove the pain, but I can remove his perception of the pain.”
It was far from the cure that the lieutenants sought. They all knew that.
“Do it.” Leozack commanded. “Fix him.”
Trepan pulled himself up to speak gently into Overlord’s audials. “Can you open this for me, dear?” He tapped the panel at the back of Overlord’s head.
Whether it out of desperation or misplaced trust, the Decepticon obeyed without protest. Now that the impenetrable barrier was out of the way, Trepan was presented with the intricate beauty of another’s mind.
His needles might as well have moved out of their own accord. Injecting felt like the most natural thing in the world.
The first thing that hit Trepan was pain. Overwhelming, crippling pain that would’ve killed a lesser bot. Being the expert that he was, he easily sectioned the sensations off in his own mind. That small adjustment altered the foreign pain from utterly debilitating to merely observed. He still felt all that Overlord did, but it was akin to hearing someone speak in an adjourning room, rather than tasting the words on his own lips.
He wasted no time getting to work. Trepan was a little rusty, but old routines quickly fell in place. His own processor deftly combed the foreign mental landscape to locate the central pain receptors.
Ah, there you are. He reached out with his field to gently soothe that twisting, agonized mass. It spun so erratically, unable to contain the pain that was every nerve in Overlord’s body crying out for help. Trepan’s earlier assessment was correct; if left as is, Overlord’s spark would give out from all the built up charge.
Trepan angled his needles—Primus, he’d forgotten how good it felt to twist and wave and probe around inside his subject’s mind—and caressed the link between Overlord’s pain receptors and the rest of his awareness. The solution was clear, but Trepan hesitated.
Being useful as a medic kept him safe. Overlord’s condition alone made Trepan indispensable for these Decepticons. However, if he were to simply edit a few connections here, make the powerful, indestructible general care for him personally… Well, love was one of his favorite emotions to play around with back in the day.
It was easy, so easy. Just the tiniest little adjustment, no more than a planted seed posed to bloom into something more.
After his little project was put in place, Trepan went ahead and shut off Overlord’s pain receptors.
The result was instant. The persistent trembling in Overlord’s frame simply stopped. Trepan could feel the body underneath him relax. The massive mech let out a shaky sigh.
“It’s gone,” he rasped.
Thanks to the still-active connection, Trepan watched from Overlord’s eyes as he blinked and raised his head.
He saw Leozack and Lyzack, hovering on either side. Their expressions were a mix of shock, worry, and wonder. Lifting his gaze higher, TrepanOverlord saw—
“What did you do?” Overlord breathed.
“I shut off your ability to feel pain.” Watching himself speak through someone else’s eyes was… odd. “It’s not a permanent solution, but it’ll keep you alive for now.”
Through the connection Trepan felt Overlord’s relief, mixed in with a twinge of gratitude and just the lightest twinge of affection.
Trepan kept his glee from slipping through their joined minds. He extracted his needles and mumbled a few words about being exhausted from the task. It wasn’t exactly a lie—he was terribly out of practice and it was a very taxing operation. Thankfully the lieutenants jumped in to answer their lord’s questions. Trepan let himself slip down to rest. A massive hand kept him from falling. It was gentle, just holding him there almost without thought. Trepan had to suppress a giggle.
Perfect. Oh, it was perfect. Overlord wouldn’t suspect a thing. Soon he’ll have the warlord wrapped around his little finger. It was the best bodyguard and/or attack dog anyone could ever ask for.
He’ll be safe. Hah! Here on this miserable prison world with one of the most powerful Decepticons at his beck and call. He’ll have access to anything he’d ever want! Trepan was truly growing tired of the meek and helpless role he played. This felt right. This was where he belonged. Pulling the strings, as he should be.
Oh, he was excited for the events to come.