Secondhand Headhunting

[in_the_cracks]

When the PIN flash fades, all is pitch black in the room where Evil!Telrim and her new guest have arrived. Unfazed and laughing with pleasure at her success, the Controller stands, and moves across the room confidently, shoes ringing on the cold metal deck-plates. She finds the light controls with ease born of habit, and the lights flicker on to

Comments

[darkladyb]

Kyle Crusher's only reply, it seems, is to bleed on the floor from the cut on the back of his scalp. It's not the first bloodstain he's picked up from somewhere.

[in_the_cracks]

The Controller notices the blood with a slightly disdainful sniff, and then strolls into the ranks of crates. She remembers exactly where she's stored an emergency kit or two, and shortly she's back with a handheld device that hums and glows and does a very neat job of sealing up that cut, once she's rolled the human over.

That done, Telrim rolls him back and regards him from her haunches. Her mouth twists as she realises that she can't simply infest him. It would be so easy, and so much simpler to crawl into his skull and wrap around that human brain. She'd know everything she wanted to in moments, and then when he woke she'd be in such a negotiating position...

But that's no longer an option, she knows, feeling the human inside her skull watching, patient and determined to take any opening. She will certainly not take an unconscious host and leave this Natasha with PINpoints and Dracon beam.

So there's nothing to do but pull a chair away from the table over there, and settle down to wait.

[darkladyb]

It doesn't take long. Kyle Crusher may be an organic being now, but he's never been weak.

So it's just some minutes later that he's laying there, outwardly unchanged but inwardly listening for any hint of where he is.

[in_the_cracks]

One might expect the Yeerk to be patient. But as short a time as it is, it's long enough for evil!Telrim to spot a couple of folders on the table that she vaguely remembers.

So to the distant hum of the running freezers and the lower, subtler thrum of the deck below and around and above them is added a nasty chuckle and tearing paper as she gleefully edits her predecessor's handiwork.

[darkladyb]

He growls at the first hit, and then slumps at the second though he manages to twitch a bit before he goes still.

[in_the_cracks]

One might well twitch after contact with a Dracon beam. It's not quite true that those weapons were modified solely to make them more painful - but it is a happy side-effect. Well, evil!Telrim likes it.

She lowers the beam, and studies her truculent candidate. "It would be so much simpler just to make you obey," she mutters, and then shudders at an attack of opportunity from within. "Keep trying, human," she snarls aloud. "You might just convince me to stay for your torment."

[darkladyb]

Crusher is still and silent, but he's already doggedly fighting toward consciousness.

[in_the_cracks]

Her host's bout of rebelliousness quelled for now, the Yeerk checks her beam's settings, and amuses herself with inflicting some small punishment on the insolent human. While keeping an eye on the prisoner, obviously.

There's not much to see from the outside, but Natasha is shortly wishing the man would wake up and distract the Yeerk.

[darkladyb]

Crusher can feel the futility of trying to struggle. All he can do is think. So think he does. Of death.

Death of organics crushed under his feet.

Death of other Cybertronians as his hands crushed vital relays.

The excruciating pain of his own death at the hands of Optimus Prime, and exactly how it felt.

[in_the_cracks]

Telrim notices his old host unconscious in one corner and regards her with dispassion; she's useful now only as a backup plan. His gaze pans around to Asfil, where the Hork-Bajir Controller is examining one of the wooden sculptures on the other side of the room.

"Successful?" Asfil asks, snaking a glance over his shoulder.

"Of course." Telrim's distracted, becoming aware of the thoughts being thrown at him from behind. His gaze un-focuses as the Yeerk stops to soak in the memories of death and pain, curious and hungry. But he doesn't seem disturbed. Startled, somewhat, but not horrified. Not by the suffering of lesser beings. The best Yeerk would be fazed by the unending reel of horrors that Bonecrusher's memory holds.

This one, however, lacks the capacity. This is the half of Telrim that was pleased with the enslavement of worlds, a willing hand in chaotic slaughter and iron execution, in psychic assault of some species and the genocide of others.

I'm impressed, he muses lazily in the Decepticon's mind. I did wonder what it would

[darkladyb]

Crusher pauses and regards him with brooding menace, then, for reasons he can't really put a finger on, he starts thinking of crushed slugs.

And then of the time he saw a couple of them making more slugs....

[in_the_cracks]

Animals? Are you trying to disgust me out of here? the Yeerk sneers, some of its revulsion bleeding over. It's just mild disgust mixed with contempt, but at least it's not happy.

Telrim pulls himself to his feet, refocusing on the outside world as Asfil turns toward him. The Hork-Bajir looks his new form over and remarks in Galard, "He doesn't look like the artsy type."

"You know so little about humans," Telrim replies in the same language, matching the other's trace of humour with condescension.