Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers or any of its characters.
This is part of the "More Than A Leader" series, which will be about Optimus Prime and his relationships with the Autobots. It will mostly on the view of the said Autobot and how they perceive Optimus, whether he is a hero, friend, fatherly figure, brother, leader or something else to them.
This one-shot can stand alone, without support or continuance from the other soon-to-come stories. You can read the stories in whatever order you wish.
Meet Smokescreen. He cheats, gambles, schemes, tricks, lies and laughs at your face at the end of the day. Not so hard to like the guy, huh?
Place Your Bets
Smokescreen thinks that Optimus Prime had the worst kind of luck.
Sure, in battle, he is somehow able to dodge bullets fired by the Decepticons, all of them narrowly missing him, even direct shots from Megatron, one of the best Decepticon shooters out there. When forced to choose between two buttons to press to nullify an extremely explosive and dangerous device that could destroy them and all of the Earth with them, Prime managed to chose the right button with only one second left before the device detonates, saving them all. He has survived from life-threatening injuries, avoided pranks set by the twins, endured the intense football games with the Dinobots and evaded falling debris caused by Wheeljack's experiments.
If anything, Prime should be the Autobots' lucky charm with all that luck of his. But Smokescreen begged to differ.
When it comes to betting, Prime is the unluckiest mech that Smokescreen has ever met. He always got the worst cards, the worst chips, the worst predictions in any kind of game, whatever game that Smokescreen has selected to his choosing. He, one way or another, always ended up on the losing side, bringing the rest of the mechs on that side down with him. The rest of the Autobots delighted to tease their commander, usually changing their bets to the opposite side the moment Prime decided on his side. Jazz jokingly started calling Prime names, such as "Our poor, dear unfortunate leader" or "Optimus the Unlucky". Prowl and Ratchet both told him to ignore such trivial matters. Finding this more amusing than pitiable, Ironhide merely patted his baffled leader on the shoulder and deemed it as a jinx or that probably his Creator built him with an anti-luck chip.
Interestingly enough, Optimus doesn't seem to be too bothered by his "bad luck curse" as the Autobots have now dubbed it. Once in a while, he would still go and make a friendly bet with Smokescreen, gambling on the little things, such as an extra day off, a free energon drink, additional polishing oil and so forth. And he would pay up without any complaint or resentment once he lost, like usual. He chuckled at Jazz's names, nodded along with his lieutenant and chief medic and shook his head at a grinning Ironhide.
Not that it really mattered to Smokescreen. He was just the businessman, the dealer and collector of the bets.
One day, however, Prime made a bet that even Smokescreen wouldn't bet on.
" I wager that Ironhide will kill neither Sunstreaker nor Sideswipe today," he said. And behold the shocked expressions on his troops' faces when they heard that.
Earlier in the morning, the twins had broken into Perceptor's workplace, stole some glue, paint and other much needed materials. While most of the Autobots, including Ironhide, were deep in recharge, they snuck into the old mech's room. When Ironhide woke up, he found his room painted with many foul Cybertronian (and English) words and his armor covered in gooey, sticky toilet paper, courtesy of the glue. It was safe to say that Ironhide has been biding his time, waiting patiently to give retribution a little push in his favour. And with his and the twins' upcoming patrol later that day, the probability of Ironhide's payback was certainly assured.
Smokescreen shrugged. A bet was a bet. If Prime lost, it was his fault. The majority of the mechs were betting on time, on how long it would take for old Ironhide to catch the pranksters and murder them. But with this new bet laid out on the table, they all scrambled against their commander. Some grinned, asking Prime to give them their extra vacation days now, since there was absolutely no possible, conceivable way that Optimus Prime would win this bet of his.
It came as a shock to all that Optimus Prime did indeed win his bet.
The Decepticons had launched an attack on a factory near the twins and Ironhide's patrol, momentarily distracting the revengeful mech from delivering his proper punishment. And while bantering bullets from each side, a stray bullet hit the balcony above, causing it to crush down on Sideswipe, knocking him out. As much as he wanted to kill Sideswipe, Ironhide was unwilling to hurt a mech already injured.
How could he, with Sunstreaker agitatedly fussing over his brother even after reinforcements had arrived and Ratchet dragging all three of them to the med bay? The medic had swore that if any of them get into another scuffle, whether it was among themselves or the Decepticons, over the next few days, he would personally remove their processors and circuits and put them in backwards. And this was rather frightening, considering Ratchet was someone who knew their body structures even better than them and also happened to be someone who wasn't afraid to carry out his threats if necessary.
And so, the infamous bet was ended. All those who had bet against Optimus lost, surprisingly for once. It seemed that even Optimus was stunned by his unexpected fortune. But those that had lost the bet did not deny or feel the need to resent their commander for that unmistakable wide grin of his for the rest of that day.
However, Smokescreen was interested as to how Prime was able to win with all that ill-fated luck of his. He couldn't have known that the Decepticons would attack today and particularly at Ironhide and the twins' patrol at that too (though even if he did know, Prime would never do such a deceptive thing; that was Smokescreen's job). He couldn't have known about that single shot that would bring the the balcony collapsing down. Nor could he have known about Sideswipe being knocked out because of that one shot. And he certainly couldn't have known about Ratchet drugging Ironhide and Sunstreaker unconscious for the entire day so the med bay could have some peace and quiet.
He didn't know how Optimus did it but what he did know was that Optimus Prime was one very lucky mech.