#pharma has literally done nothing that wasn't eclipsed by the actions of other ppl who were accepted in the autobots

[lord-squiggletits]

You know, I feel like Pharma had the right idea about the rust plague. Oh there's a group of supersoldiers at the door who were handpicked by Megatron and specialize in torture threatening to kill everyone here? They're also complete powerhouses that can wipe out a ship of 200+ bots? Ok, but how well are they against a disease that slowly makes them fall apart? Can Tarn talk it away? Is Overlord immune to every illness? At that point I'd be willing to make a few sacrifices to find out, it's not like the alternate is any better.

Lost Light but-Pharma-is-there au where whenever they run into op enemies and everything seems hopeless, Pharma suggests making another plague. Megatron refusing to get off his ass to help fight off the consequences of his actions? Let me just use this little disease I've been cooking up for this exact scenario :)

Yeah I mean the problem is that Pharma was dealing with Tarn-- JUST TARN-- all by himself, and bringing in Ambulon and/or First Aid wouldn't have helped because they're not any better fighters than he is! If anything, getting them involved might've just gotten them all killed since First Aid would probably try to call for help and Ambulon... well, on the alt Lost Light, the DJD didn't care about going in List order and just killed all three of their targets plus everyone around them besides, so who's to say seeing Ambulon wouldn't have just made Tarn kill them all immediately, blackmail deal and List order be damned?

Pharma stands no chance against just Tarn, much less all of the DJD together, based on physical prowess alone. Even if he somehow managed to kill Tarn by himself, there's the whole rest of the DJD to cope with too.

With the rust plague, there's basically two options:

The request to evacuate is honored and Prowl pulls them out of Delphi, saving everyone bar a few who die to the red rust. Maybe if they're lucky, some pieces of Delphi are still infested with disease particles and the DJD get infected when they come looking for Pharma.

The worst option, Tarn/the DJD come to collect, rampage through Delphi and kill anyone they find, but get infected in the process (likely Kaon, Vos, and Tarn first, since they need to transform to fight or torture, and Tarn has his addiction). A shitload of people at Delphi die, but the DJD are infected and die either immediately or eventually.

But like, if Pharma didn't use the red rust, his only options would've been to try and beat the DJD head on (literally impossible) or ask for an evac on his own (the DJD can cut off those signals and hunt you down anyways) or just keep harvesting t-cogs (nothing gets better and Pharma keeps having to kill people).

So like, fucking genuinely what exactly was Pharma meant to do in this situation? Yeah it's easy to go "he could've found a solution that didn't kill anyone" but bro was literally under a blackmail deal delivered by Tarn himself in the flesh FOR AT LEAST TWO WHOLE YEARS STRAIGHT like yeah I think under psychological and moral torment that intense for that long, feeling like escape is completely impossible and will be punished with death, I too would go nuclear and pick an incredibly violent/messy solution if I saw it as my last resort to get out (kind of) unscathed and not being blamed for my own torture and suffering.

Also, re: that last paragraph, honestly all I could think of was this meme:

But also fun fact, I actually do want to write some variety of a "Pharma lives" AU in which he actually gets to live his dreams of slaughtering Tarn and the DJD like diseased animals, so... stay tuned. Eventually.