Something itches at his insides, clawed digits tracing his spark chamber from the inside out, toying with the sea green essence of his being, and it takes Tarn an embarrassingly long time to figure out that it's anxiety.

It prickles under his plating, causing a sort of almost-itch just enough underneath that no amount of scratching can release the pressure building and growing, just out of reach.

He wonders if this is the feeling that traitors get when his voice lowers to that special pitch, when his vocaliser drops and synchronizes with their sparks, harmonising and changing the frequency ever so slightly, almost tricking the spark into keeping up the pace, making it glow brighter and ever brighter, until the pent up energy escapes via blowing a hole through said traitor's chassis.

Primus, he hopes so. This feeling is abhorrent, and it won't go away no matter what he tries.

Tarn's digits twitch involuntarily, and he has to resist the urge to tear his mask off his faceplate and throw it as hard as he can.

What in the universe does Megatron mean stand down? That's not how it works. That's not at all how war works, you don't fight for four million years and then decide to defect to the enemy faction, that's not how it works.

Tarn's traitorous spark won't stop quivering, as if it's on the verge of a spark attack, as if his internal misery is fighting to be broadcast to a captive universe, to wage war on all the cowards that listened to this... This bad comedy.

Every strand of CNA that makes up Tarn's frame seems to be aligned, synchronised in the singular goal of scorching the grounds that Megatron once tainted with his power. The king of Decepticons, who created them devoid of empathy.

Four million years of all Decepticons devoting everything to the cause, only for Megatron to leave them all to bleed.

The thought makes the anxiety change into cold fury that settles in Tarn's tanks, the different almost unnoticeable, aside from the imagined digits inside his spark chamber, swapping from tracing the insides out to squeezing it until every last drop of rage has been wrung out and poisoned his energon supply.