Backtalkers and Backstabbers

[Bonecrusher/Bane Crusher]

Month 1, Week 3, Day 6. Mess Hall on Ship. Open, please join in! Any 'Cons around will be in for a show.

Bonecrusher sits at a table in the mess hall, glaring darkly into a cube of energon. Three weeks since the attack and he still hasn't gotten over how little combat he got before being taken out of the picture. Sure he got to wail on Kup some, but he didn't get to kill him, or even disable him! Not to mention that he encountered that stupid, slagging, overheated, prettyboy car again and didn't get a chance to tear his fragging face off!

With a snarl, he sweeps the energon cube off the table with an arm, sending it flying. If he's lucky, it'll hit someone.

[Wreckage]

Bonecrusher may find some amusement since his errant drink does, indeed, find a target. Wreckage stands utterly still right where he was when the cube hit him. He is fortunate it failed to detonate, but he is still a mess; the last time he had this much energon dripping from him, it had all recently drained from an Autobot's fuel lines.

He looks down at himself, then, slowly, he turns his gaze on Bonecrusher. One brow plate rises high, nearly vanishing under his golden brow crest.

"Problem?" he queries flatly.

[Bonecrusher/Bane Crusher]

Hitting Wreckage with a cube doesn't even cheer him up a little. What a waste of energon.

"Your face is a problem," he growls, shooting a glare at Wreckage before crossing his arms on the table and trying to spontaneously manifest eye-beams of pure hatred to set the tabletop on fire.

He's totally not moping. And he most certainly not sulking. Such terms are far too undignified and pathetic to use to describe a fierce Decepticon warrior such as himself! He's just quietly raging and stewing in his own hatred. Yes. Even though he's not even really looking for a fight at the moment. He wanted to kill Autobots. If he tries to kill a Decepticon on Ship he'll just end up with his control device locked on again, and that'll just ruin his day even more.

[Wreckage]

No Decepticon warrior mopes or sulks, of course; not openly. He broods, as Wreckage often does, for moping is an Autobot thing to do.

"You are welcome to try rearranging it," Wreckage says with a magnanimous sort of shrug as he shifts his weight and turns. The malicious part of him can hardly resist needling Bonecrusher when he knows the other heavy is limited for retaliation. "If you can." But rather than approach Bonecrusher, he instead goes to the back of the mess hall, seeking a storage closet and whatever it might have that he can use to mop himself dry.

[Slugslinger]

"Did I come at a bad time?" Slugslinger asks in a deliberately obtuse tone, frozen just on the corridor side of the doorway in an almost overdone pose of dimwitted uncertainty. One hand braced on the door to keep it from closing in his face, he has the other half-raised as if ready to sling an apologetic gesture and run. After all, these two are built fit to paste him and even an idiot shouldn't be dumb enough to stick around when they're quarrelling.

He hadn't actually planned on stopping by the galley, but he couldn't resist peeking in when he heard voices like industrial machinery growling at each other as he was passing by on his way to more interesting areas. He half-hopes they'll still get into a good brawl right here – so long as he has time to get out of the way.

"I mean," he goes on, "I don't wanna interrupt anything important, you know."

[Bonecrusher/Bane Crusher]

Bonecrusher grunts at Wreckage. "Even I couldn't beat the ugly out of you."

That's rich coming from Bonecrusher, who looks like a demonic insectoid owl-pug at the best of times, and is currently a one-eyed insectoid owl-pug with some scarring along the eyeless side of his face. Acid wounds have an unfortunate resistance to healing perfectly on a cosmetic level. It does mean that when he turns to glare at Slugslinger he can almost appreciate the jet's asymmetrical face.

Almost. He'd still love to cave it in with his fist. "Go choke on your own bearings."

Having deprived himself of the remainder of his own ration of energon, Bonecrusher returns to sulkingbrooding, drawing a sharp fingertip along the tabletop with a squeal.

[Wreckage]

Wreckage seizes a towel of some sort and sets to mopping up the worst of the energon collecting in the narrow seams and hollows of his midsection plating.

"Accepting defeat so soon, Bonecrusher?" he wonders as he makes his way back toward the table, patting away the mess before it can dry and turn more problematic. He spares Slugslinger only a glance, preferring to see how the jet handles Bonecrusher. "How unlike you."

[Assault/Arthur Aldrin]

It is not long before another jet follows after Slugslinger. Assault walks into the messhall and at first he had intended to simply get a cube to replenish his energy levels. But it would seem that he is about to get some entertainment along with his refreshment. An optic ridge quirks up as he glances at Wreckage, but then has a little smile pull at the corners of his lips before he shifts his gaze to Bonecrusher instead. "You are not just going to let Wreckage get away with such words, are you?"

[Slugslinger]

Slugslinger, letting Assault barge right on past him since he hasn't actually entered the galley just yet, doesn't answer Bonecrusher immediately. He watches the other jet instead and wonders if maybe giving someone else the chance to be the arrogant jerkwad will be more entertaining than being that arrogant jerkwad himself. As much as he wants to grin, he stifles the urge and just stares after Assault for a moment like the Seeker is completely off in the head. Then he looks back at Bonecrusher with slowly-dawning irritation.

"I don't bend that far," he says as though Bonecrusher should have known it.

[Bonecrusher/Bane Crusher]

Screeee. Bonecrusher's claw scratches another gouge into the table as he hunches up, muttering, "Shove it," to Wreckage.

Screeeeeee. He gives a low growl and does his best to ignore Assault, imagining ripping the nose off right off his stupid, smug face for sticking the thing where it doesn't belong.

Screeeeeeeeee-bam! His fist slams against the table, and it take a considerable amount of willpower to stop himself from getting up and tearing Slugslinger. He grinds out, "I could make you bend that far."

He hates them all so much, fragging, annoying, slag-sucking, rusted-up- But he will stay put and not try to kill anyone and maybe someday he will get this slagging device out of his head. He returns to digging gouges into the tabletop in a seriously ineffective attempt to vent his bubbling pot of rage before it boils over.

[Starscream (Movie)]

There are suddenly three jetformers in the room where there had been two. The third is quite short for a jetformer from his reality, due to his unusual transformation and the jointing of his legs, but he towers over Slugslinger and Assault nonetheless. Starscream slips quietly into the galley, then ignites his jets.

He flies at Bonecrusher, far faster than is strictly safe inside a spaceship with people around. The others may be caught in his jetwash. He extends the twin blades on his right wrist as he slams feet-first into the berserker, talons digging into Bonecrusher's back. There's a horrible shriek of metal on metal as the blades plunge between his shoulders, skewering him with one blade on either side of his spark chamber. If either Decepticon so much as twitches, Bonecrusher will cease to be angry at the world very quickly. As things stand now, the MPV is face-down over the table with Starscream crouching on his back.

Screamer extends his free hand to turn Bonecrusher's ugly little face toward him and leans down so they're eye to eye. "Violence is the language you're most fluent in, so that is the language I'm speaking to you. We've known each other for millenia, Bonecrusher. I've come to expect you to act like a petulant hatchling, and even tolerate it. But you will not undermine my authority over the tactical broadband, and you most definitely will not do so in combat. Do I make myself clear? The correct answer is 'Yes, sir,' or 'Yes, Lord Starscream.' "

OOC: Ganking of Bonecrusher with permission.

[Wreckage]

Wreckage, near as he is to Bonecrusher, is somewhat more than caught in the jetwash; as Starscream bowls over the other heavy, Wreckage is clipped across the face by an errant limb. More than the force of the blow, the shock of it, and the shock at Starscream's sudden appearance, staggers him back and clear of the combatants. He has a fine view, however, and his vague dislike of the overbearing lieutenant commander notwithstanding, he can appreciate the precision in this brutality. Even admire it.

He still maintains his distance and keeps silent. He knows this discipline well enough to hold his peace – old habit, learned when it was Lord Megatron handing down the punishments.

[Assault/Arthur Aldrin]

Assault had expected Bonecrusher to fly into a fit of seething rage and attack either Slugslinger or Wreckage. Should the berserker have gone for the blue Seeker himself, though, he would have done a tactical retreat while barking over the comm channels for Brawl to go tackle him. But no, it would seem that today was going to be far more interesting.

Assault steps aside at the howling of jet engines right behind him and watches Lord Starscream as he flies past and proceeds to put Bonecrusher in his place. It is so vicious that Assault can't help but wince, yet he never takes his optics off the spectacle.

[Slugslinger]

Slugslinger doesn't have to feign his completely gobsmacked look when yet another jet rockets past him. He scrambles to duck clear, holding onto the doorframe as if it'll somehow stop him from being swept along in the searing-hot wash, and then the newcomer slams into Bonecrusher. Slugslinger has seen many things in his time; this brand of insanity isn't one of them. His left optic looks as big and round as his right as – Starscream, right, this is the Starscream he has to deal with here – as Starscream pins Bonecrusher with some nasty-looking pointy bits on his arm.

"And here I thought discipline back home could get rough," he squawks, gulping. He looks at Assault, as the nearest person, and puts on a terrified tone. "Is this normal?"

[Bonecrusher/Bane Crusher]

Well, things have taken a sudden term from bad day to worst day. Bonecrusher howls as Starscream's weight drives him into the table, and he almost rears up in an attempt to toss the jet from his back. Luckily for him, a series of blaring warnings flashing red across his vision freeze him in place, and he gets to live for another moment.

He glares darkly up at Starscream, wishing with all his hatred that he could vaporize the jet's head right now. He wants so much to spit out abuses and insults and threats, to tell Starscream once again where he can shove it, to do anything but submit. But he's not that stupid, and for just this moment Starscream commands what Megatron once did to keep him in line: his fear.

"Yes," he growls quietly, wanting to dig his claws into the table but fearing that even that tiny movement might shift something in his chest to a deadly degree. After a pause he spits out, "Lord Starscream."