Predatory

New Revelations

"I... know... nothing!" sputtered the clone before his helm was forcefully thrown straight back into the bucket of acid. It was diluted with some sort of base agent to counteract the burning just enough that it kept his faceplate, optics, brain module and audio receptors intact, while still inflicting a tremendous amount of pain. Apparently, Nickel had concocted the solution herself and was quite proud of it. She had beamed with pride when we went to retrieve it not half an hour ago. I made a mental note not to get on her bad side, she had an affinity for poison, acid, and anything chemically destructive. Apart from that, she called everyone "darling," "sugar, and "honey," which she meant sincerely, but was still quite unnerving.

"Stubborn son of a glitch, ain't ya?" Helex taunted as he held the prisoner under with one of his massive arms. His face was split in a sadistic grin, clearly enjoying the job he had been assigned. Tarn believed firmly in the idea of team participation and group contribution. Kaon obviously got to shock the clone in his alt-mode. Vos had been the one to tie him up earlier, he was apparently good with knives in addition to his face-plate. Tesarus had gleefully been given the task of dismembering his legs, which was one of the more unconventional torture methods I had heard of. Personally, I thought it was a waste of time, but then again, I was thinking of efficiency, not effectiveness as Tarn had so eloquently put it. 

Eloquent, yes, that was the perfect word to describe Tarn. He was quiet to the untrained optic, and extremely submissive if you didn't know him. But the past week had shown me that he did very much have many strong opinions, but he did not voice them. Voices cause conflict, and conflict is what Megatron wants to rid the world of. So why cause it? His manners were impeccable, and I knew all about impeccable. He displayed the perfect New Vosian behavior that I had grown up in. New Vos, or The Capital City, was known to be the home of the rich elitists back during Cybertron's "golden" era (though to 95% of the population it was Cybertron's darkest hour) and the standard for how a gentlemech should act was carefully dictated in a twelve-volume series of books written by the Functionist Council themselves. I, of course, had read them, everyone had to read them if they wanted to survive that twisted city's rules. And Tarn fitted every single regulation to the point I sometimes wondered if he had grown up elitist. But I didn't mind, it meant I knew what I could expect from him, so all in all, he was not bad company to keep.

Even here in a torture chamber, he still was standing perfectly postured, his head held perfectly erect, and his servos folded on his left hip absolutely correctly. He was not fazed by the bloody scene in front of him in the slightest, and to be honest, neither was I. The D.J.D. was clearly holding back, I knew that. I had seen the clips of videos that were broadcast over all of the television screens in the remaining cities and bars I had visited throughout the war. Everyone had seen them, and everyone knew on no uncertain terms, the price that you would pay for treachery. This was barely scraping the surface of their cruelty. 

I remember the first time the D.J.D. had ever killed a traitor. Everyone had been forced to watch the broadcast, Megatron had been proving a point at the time to those who still doubted his reign, and he had made the D.J.D around three years after the war began. There was mass panic and hysteria among the crowds planetwide from Autobots and Decepticons alike. I saw several soldiers faint within the first minute. Many vomited, and most tried to look away. Understandable if you had never seen someone dismembered and killed before, but I had learned from my time with the Madam that gore was nothing, the meaning behind it was the point. I had felt more inspired by the team than terrified. My only two friends at the time, however, were less enthused. Lightning and Strike were duobots, and were inseparable at the time, and the only friends I had ever had. Lightning was freaked out by the whole thing, and Strike couldn't watch the video without vomiting and shaking. I remembered rolling my optics in disdain. After all, we were loyal Decepticon soldiers, we had nothing to fear.