False Captivity

-After his confrontation with Quickswitch a few cycles back, Whirl has finally found himself back on the familiar streets of Nyon. As per usual, he didn't bother checking in with anyone or letting anyone know he was even back in the city. Instead, he spent the majority of his time slumming it up in his regular, seedy hang-outs doing shady illegal drugs with shady people. The last thing he remembered was stumbling through a dimly lit street, completely zonked out of his mind, and then smacking 'face' first into the ground before blacking out.

An undeterminable amount of time later, he comes to and finds himself looking at new surroundings. He can't remember much, but he knows this isn't the same place he passed out in. "What..? What happened?"

-Upon waking it is right for Whirl to be a little confused. After passing out in an alley the way he often does, he probably expected to wake up in that same alley, perhaps a few feet away from where he remembers, but still in the same general area. Instead he will find himself strapped to a medical table. It's tilted slightly upwards so he can get a pretty good view of the room, which is a very neat, if somewhat cramped, area with several shelves and various medical equpiment.

Whatever drugs had caused him to pass out last night has been cleaned from his system. In fact, Whirl is quite clean now as though he hadn't been lying in an alleyway at all. Despite being on a medical table, he probably feels like he's in really good health. Any injuries that he had been sporting have been tended to. From a little bit behind him some machines are beeping in soft, rhythmic tones. As far as he can see, he's alone.

-In regular circumstances, Whirl would be relieved to see himself in such good condition; it's been a long time since he's been cleaned up like this. Unfortunately he's unable to even notice such things as the fact he's been strapped down overrides everything else in his mind. Immediately he begins to struggle, bucking and jerking every way he can in a futile attempt to free himself.

"What the hell is this..." He glances around the room, a sense of panic filling him as he takes in all the medical equipment that surrounds him. "Hey! What's going on here!? HELLO!? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?"

-"I told you that you were treading on dangerous ground Whirl," comes a voice, growing slightly louder as the speaker draws closer. Whirl will recognize the voice as Panacea's. Her words might have seemed sinister, but her tone was sad. Seconds later she appears in front of him, rolling a little stool so that she can sit down. "How do you feel?" she asks kindly.

-"Dangerous ground? What are you talking about!?" Whirl struggles harder against his restraints, pausing only when Panacea herself comes into view. What the heck happened? Did he pass out and get run over or something? Why would she bring him here and do.. this to him? "How do I feel? Well, I'm a little pissed off if I'm going to be honest. Mind explaining why I'm strapped to a table in this creepy place?"

-"It's understandable that you're angry," Panacea says. "But, you also get angry at the slightest provacation. That's not /healthy/, Whirl." She keeps her voice soft. "I found you completely passed out in an alley. You're not doing yourself any favors you know."

Oh, and in addition to being all cleaned up and everything, Whirl will notice that his energon reserves are full. Physically everything had pretty much being taken care of except for the minor detail that he's not free.

-"What is this, an intervention?" Whirl scoffs and looks at the straps holding him down. "You're a great medic, I get that. You fixed me up when I was near death. Mostly." He looks back at Panacea, "but you're not my psychiatrist. What I do and how I do it is none of your business and you have no right to tie me up and.. and what? Lecture me about my poor life choices? You're just wasting your time!"

-"It's not just you, Whirl. This whole planet is sick. Medics fix people who are sick." Panacea shrugs her shoulders. "I don't need to be a psychiatrist to tell you that the crap you're putting in your system makes it harder for us to fix you physically." She stands up and checks whatever machine has been beeping and moments later it stops. "I figure I have just as much 'right' to bring you here as you did holding that small fellow hostage the other cycle," she says pointedly, coming back around to look Whirl directly in his large, yellow optic.

-Whirl's focus doesn't leave Panacea, the cyclops straining a bit to keep his optic on her even after she stands up to silence that terrible beeping noise. Optic flickers slightly when she meets his gaze. "That was... different. That six-changing freak of nature is a violent psychopath who tried to murder Blast Off. He's insane, controlled by the Senate, and hangs out with Autobots who we all know are monsterous in their own right. That mech he was with, who knows? Maybe he's some pervert that brain-washes people for the Autobots."

-"Vengence doesn't help anyone. It just causes more problems," Panacea says evenly. "You might not care very much about yourself, and you might not give two Shanix about the planet, but I do." She sighs deeply. "Getting yourself slagged beyond repair certainly wouldn't help Blast Off any, and you were running a pretty big risk trying to tangle with the six-changer."

She sits herself down on the stool again and leans forward slightly, looking over Whirl's entire frame. Of course, she keeps a certain amount of distance; even though Whirl is restrained it would be foolish to get too close. "Do you have any headaches or anything?"

-Whirl can't help but feel a little uncomfortable as Panacea examines him. It's not every cycle he finds himself strapped down to a table getting looked over by a femme. "I'm not afraid of that freakish jerk! I've gotten my hands and face cut off, I've gotten shot, stabbed, burned, bludgeoned, beaten, maimed, you name it. Whatever he could do to me has already happened at one point in my miserable life. And let's say he DID kill me or whatever, so what? This messed up world will keep on spinning."

He tries to look skeptical when Panacea asks him about headaches. "No, I don't. Should I? Did you do something to my head?"

-"The only thing I 'did' to your head was to remove any harmful drugs that were floating in your system. Sometimes that can cause headaches. That's all. If you don't trust me on that, you can always have any other medic check you." Panacea actually looks quite sad about his other words though. "You have done a lot of suffering, this is true. I doubt I even know the half of it. Probably not even a quarter. But you have to ask yourself, why did you survive all of that just to rush into danger and to be so reckless with your life?" She shakes her head. "Anyone could have found you in that alley."

-Whirl does indeed have a slight headache but he's not going to say anything about it just to spite the femme. This line of questioning only serves to make him even more uncomfortable as it brings up certain emotions and thoughts he'd rather not have. "Why, you ask? Why!? Because sometimes I want to die. Is that what you want to hear from me?" He looks away from her as he continues, focusing on a random spot on one of the machines. "I've seen terrible things. Experienced terrible things. I've.. done terrible things, things I wish I could take back. I feel like I'm cursed to wander this sick, sad world forever with nothing but the guilt and shame and anger of everything that's happened to keep me company. I throw myself into these situations because I hope that maybe, just maybe, I'll finally get the sweet embrace of death I so deserve."

He said Panacea wasn't his psychiatrist, yet here he is telling her all sorts of things.

-"It's not my place to say if you 'deserve' these things or not," Panacea says softly. "But if you don't really care what happens to you, why would you be angry about being /here/ instead of in that alley? What difference would it make?" she presses, though the pressure is gentle. "I don't know what you did that brought you down this path. I doubt you had any choice of losing your face and your hands. But you can choose /now/ what to do." She lowers her optics for a moment. "You were hurt and so you try to hurt others. That's self-defeating though, because if you think it's okay to hurt others, then how can you say it wasn't okay to hurt you in the first place?"

-"Maybe it was okay to hurt me! Maybe it was totally justified! I don't know, okay!?" Whirl snaps, defensive and angry at this conversational topic. "I'm not going to lay here and play Fifty Questions with you, I've already told you too much." He looks at her again, his optic flickering, the mech clearly frustrated. "What are you trying to accomplish with this?"

-"Too much for what?" asks Panacea, her optic ridges going up. "Listen, when I said I hated violence, I wasn't joking, or embellishing. I loathe it!" She frowns deeply. "You, at times, seem to revel in it. But you are clearly not mindless. So why is that your choice, time and time again, to resort to it? Violence is the curse of our people, the sickness, and until I can understand it, I can hardly hope to cure it!" Her words have become impassioned with her brand of zeal. Usually she seems reasonable, even laid back, but not now.

-"Is that what this is about?" Whirl begins laughing. It's a patronizing laugh for sure, one meant to be at Panacea's expense. "You're upset because I'm a violent person and violence is bad, right? You DO know what world we live in, don't you? Violence is the only way for anyone to make a statement. Oh, and you think it's bad now?" He laughs again, shaking his head. "Just wait until the Decepticons start a full blown war! Violence will be the least of your concerns, there will be things like mass genocide to worry about. You'll never be able to stop it, you'll just have to accept that."

-"The war started because people cannot accept things. Since they're busy 'not accepting' then I'm going to as well." Panacea says. Some people can't tolerate being laughed at, but apparently Panacea isn't one of them. Or she's really damned good at hiding her feelings. "Most people don't like to suffer, but they seem pretty content to dish it out to others. I can't understand this." She shakes her head a few times. "So, since you know this is what our world is like, and since you KNOW that it can't be changed, perhaps you can enlighten me as to /why/."

-Whirl shrugs, or at least he tries to. It's kind of hard when you're /strapped to a table./ "Why? Because.. that's just how the world works. I don't know! No matter what happens, there will always be violence. There will always be a stronger power pushing the weak around. That's life. It's nothing personal, that's just how it is."

There's some more struggling against he restraints. "Are we done here? I think we're done here."

-"We'll never know unless it's challenged," says Panacea, apparently not to be detered. She stands up rather straight. "You're done?" she asks, pursing her lips. "And when I let you go, what do you think you're going to do." Yes, she said when, not 'if'.

-Last time Whirl challenged the system, he got mutilated beyond repair so.. yeah, he's not really feeling it so much anymore. "Well, I'm probably going to do exactly what I was doing when you found me. Maybe I'll bump into Blast Off and we'll have a conversation, or maybe a gun fight. I don't know, I'm not psychic."

-Panacea seems content with this answer. "Alright, hold still for a moment and I'll let you out of there," she says pleasantly, as though he really had come just for a minor repair or something of the sort. "Just think about it." She starts with the legs clamps first, click and click. "And if you see Blast Off, give him my regards."

-Whirl really wants to thrash around and maybe 'accidently' kick Panacea in the face to teach her a lesson about trying to restraint a wild turbostallion like himself but thinks better of it and decides to comply. He remains still as she takes her sweet time unstrapping him. "Oh yeah, you bet. I'll try not to mention the whole 'you kidnapping me' thing."

-Panacea stands back for a second and looks Whirl in the face again. "That, Whirl, is entirely up to you," she says. "I'm not going to try to threaten you into silence." A bit unhinged, perhaps, but at least she's trying not to be hypocritical here. Then she continues to release him, unfastening the clamp closest to her, then leaning over him to undo the far clamp. If Whirl checks his systems he will find that she didn't even inhibit his weapons or anything. Nothing 'natural' was removed or tampered with.

-If Whirl was a really bad person, he would've slashed the femme with his claws as soon as they were freed but he's not so he doesn't. Hell, he realizes now that he didn't even have to wait that long, he could've shot her with his torso guns at the begining of their conversation. He sits up and slides his legs off the berth. "Well that was... fun."

-And maybe some day, he'll be able to believe he's not such a bad mech. "It might have been rather inconvienient for you, but again, there are many worse ways you /could/ have woken up," Panacea says. "At the very least you're well energized." As if that's some consolation for being held. Actually, it kind of is. "Take care of yourself." Her lips twist in a slightly ironic way as she gestures towards the door...which was behind the table where Whirl couldn't have seen it before.

-It really is. In fact, after all is said and done, Whirl is much better off physically then he was before. Mentally? Ehh, that's iffy. Panacea has given him a lot to think about. "I'll do what I can, but I can't make any promises." He turns to see the door and sighs, feeling kind of stupid for originally thinking he was trapped in here with no way out. As he makes his exit, he can't help but mumble something. "Oh yeah.. thanks for everything, by the way."

-"And thank /you/ for your...patience," Panacea says, inclining her head. "Just remember, you might laugh at my ideas, but I'm not your enemy." And, if she /is/, well she's a very minor and somewhat benevolent enemy.