Kitbash
Allegiance: Decepticon
Function: Doctor

"If you don't like my work, fix yourself next time."

Profile: Decepticon medics get a bad rap. In the first place, the very idea of a medically trained Decepticon calls to most minds disturbing images of experimentation and cruelty, not healing, thanks to the examples of warped specimens like the mostly-apocryphal, all-loathsome Flatline. In the second, they've been vanishingly rare for five million years, ever since Megatron realigned his forces to favor airpower and high-mobility shock warfare - as rare and near-mythical as female Decepticons, which were also almost unheard of from that time to the fall of Galvatron.

No one knows this better than Kitbash, who is both female and a physician, and who has been serving, all but unnoticed, among the Decepticons since the time of Scorponok. She's not given to philosophical reflection, though - she's a doctor, not a psychologist - and so the uniqueness of her position in the cosmos is almost entirely lost on her. All she cares about is that the odd attitudes it tends to cause in others make her job harder and thus annoy her. But then, many things about being a Decepticon make her job harder and thus annoy her, and if she were to catalog them all she wouldn't have time to do anything else.

Kitbash learned both of her core skills - medicine and survival - in the Quintesson arenas. She wore the Autobot brand at the start of the Uprising, but when the newly minted Grand Army of the Decepticons linked up with the Autobot resistance to complete the liberation of Iacon, a dashing young army officer called Megatron saw her in action and offered her a place in his regiment. Kitbash accepted readily.

Over the ensuing aeons, she served the Decepticon banner first with pride, then with disillusionment, then with bitter cynicism, and finally with a sort of indifferent resignation, as her role became more and more peripheral and the doings of the Decepticons more and more questionable. She's still not entirely sure how she feels about the return of Megatron and the establishment of his New Order. On the one hand, it's just what she's been hoping for since the wars began. On the other, she's not sure she could take another disappointment.

Abilities: Kitbash is highly skilled in two different forms of Transformer medicine, at first glance incompatible, but in fact highly complementary. On the battlefield, she's a master of the field-expedient repair, using whatever parts and materials come to hand to make her patients' damaged parts more or less work again. Give her a properly equipped hospital and enough time, though, and she's just as adept at building exquisitely crafted custom replacement parts that work as well as or better than the originals they're meant to replace. In this role she's as much a perfectionist as she is devoted to the principle of "good enough for now" in the field - which is to say to a fault. She'll take six months to build a replacement arm actuator if you let her.

No delicate flower, Kitbash is more than capable of defending herself, and her patients, in a battlefield situation. She's an excellent shot with her pair of heavy blaster pistols and she isn't shy about it - "first, do no harm" isn't part of her personal medical ethic - and she's capable of projecting a temporary forcefield to ward off enemy fire while she's working on somebody. She's also equipped with a wide range of medical tools, from laser cutters to cryonic microsealers, and has very sensitive close-range scanners with a full suite of diagnostic modes. Her alternate mode is a high-speed quick-response ground vehicle, built to get her to the front as fast as possible, and her agility in both modes is better than average.

Weaknesses: Kitbash's field repairs don't last forever, but without close supervision, her time to complete a formal workshop repair might. Her vehicle mode is stymied by uneven terrain. Though she's a genuinely dedicated medical professional, her bedside manner is poor.

STR 5 INT 8 SPD 8 RNK 3 END 7 COR 8 FRP 5 SKL 10

[Kitbash is a notional repaint/retool of the Transformers Animated version of Arcee - recolored in surgical green and black where Arcee is pink and white, and with a somewhat more streamlined head.

Neat! I look forward to seeing this character.

“They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on.”
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

>Neat! I look forward to seeing this character.

Well then.

Art by--well, it's in the image already, innit. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Holy crap! That looks awesome and TBH I almost forgot about this entire story, what with all the cool stuff happening elsewhere. (I am rereading Cantata for the nth time, where 5 < n < 10 or thereabouts.)

Takes me back, in a very good way.

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

Colors are all wrong, otherwise I could've seen her as a Docwagon in her alternate form. Seems fitting with the "no problem shooting the hell out of someone, particularly in a medical situation" thing.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

LAST EDITED ON Sep-04-17 AT 02:55 PM (EDT)
 
>Colors are all wrong, otherwise I could've seen her as a Docwagon in
>her alternate form.

Kitbash's job is not to transport patients. That ambulance nonsense is for people better suited to heavy lifting. :)

(Also, to be fair, "Docwagon" is itself a perfectly good name for a medical Transformer. "REO Meatwagon" not so much, unless said Transformer was for some odd reason specialized in treating organics rather than other Transformers. Also Trauma Team is clearly a combiner similar to Defensor.)

I forget, was there a "cheap and shitty" competitor to DocWagon in Shadowrun, similar to the Trauma Team/REO Meatwagon thing in Cyberpunk? Trauma Team:REO Meatwagon::DocWagon:? Or did DocWagon cover that downmarket segment itself with its service contract level spread?

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Well, "cheap", but...CrashCart is probably what you're thinking of? They were a "competitor", but it turned out they were made to subordinate people for the Universal Brotherhood/Insect spirits. The first book about Dirk Montgomery shows all of that...private detective, RABID anti-cyber and wielder of a Colt Manhunter.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

The closest I can come is something I did for SUperguy's "Road Race From Hellâ„¢" arc, many moons back. An ex-con named Ari Ohara was hired by an evil corporation to drive their prototype assault vehicle, the Bleedwagon.

I pretty much did the whole thing so I could justify using the line "Ari O.'s Bleedwagon" ;)

>I forget, was there a "cheap and shitty" competitor to DocWagon in
>Shadowrun, similar to the Trauma Team/REO Meatwagon thing in
>Cyberpunk? Trauma Team:REO Meatwagon::DocWagon:? Or did
>DocWagon cover that downmarket segment itself with its service
>contract level spread?
>
Might be in the novels, but I never saw any, so, yeah, I'd agree with the covered by its level spread. In fact, given the way the corps do business in the game, I'd not be surprised if DW (or perhaps its parent) had quietly used teams of runners to ensure its monopoly.

15 Minutes and some Bad Photoshop Later, and I can rather say that the colors go good on her.