Title: A Night at the Opera
Continuity: Marvel Movie G1, slight AU that ignores the events of "Peace"
Characters: Arcee, Emirate Xaaron, Impactor, Kick-Off, Needlenose, Rodimus Prime, Sky Lynx, Spinister, Springer
Relationships: Needlenose/Spinister, Arcee/Rodimus Prime/Springer, some Nebulan/Nebulan, various other relationships touched upon or implied
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Action
Warnings: Violence. Robot swearing. Implied slash and het. Consent issues due to mindscrew.
Word Count: +8,400
Summary: Emirate Xaaron and Arcee go out for a night at the opera, because none of their respective partners appreciate the fine performing arts very much. Sequel to "Venn Diagrams".
"Won't go; can't make me," Impactor said flatly, testing the barbs on his harpoon with his thumb.
"Because you're hauling out with the rest of the Wreckers, you lunk," Springer reminded, giving him an affectionate cuff on the helm that Impactor obviously felt was too non-threatening to bother blocking. "The Knurds actually asked us to intercede in the conflict between the Dworcs and the Prpps." He shook his head. "It's bad when aliens are smart enough to know they're in a frakked up enough situation to need Wrecker 'help'. But I won't be around, either. Obviously."
Emirate Xaaron sighed heavily and mused, "Maybe Ultra Magnus is free, but oh, he is so very busy. Perhaps -"
"I'll go," Arcee chirped innocently. She was on vacation from her post on Earth. She could go.
Rodimus Prime looked up from his game of Go with Blurr on the lounge table, cycled a blink, and asked, "What?"
"Would you?" Emirate Xaaron asked hopefully, clasping his hands together. "Oh, that would be absolutely splendid, you are such a natural around Nebulans, after all."
Arcee gave Rodimus Prime a look that told him her halo was crooked, but she defended her offer, "None of you," she looked from Rodimus Prime to Springer, "ever want to go when I want to see the fine arts."
"I took you to that holo just last week, what's its name -" Springer started to say.
"Red Expendable Losers," Arcee supplied icily, her optics narrowed.
"It was a real tear jerker!" Springer protested.
"You cried because they blew up the anti-tank cannon at the end!" Arcee fumed.
"That's pretty sad," Impactor deadpanned.
Arcee's look turned to steely resolve. "The Firelord is a finely crafted tale of passion, betrayal, and revenge, and the music is acclaimed in 17 sectors."
"And the Suseians are matriarchal and will relate better to a female representative," Emirate Xaaron mused, rubbing his chin. "Yes, yes... this will do nicely."
Arcee stared out the diplomatic vessel's window, trying to ignore the bodyguard assigned to Emirate Xaaron. He was doing a better job of it than she was, his nose deep in reviewing his notes. Ever since the war had ended for good and the provisional government stopped being provisional, there were bodyguards around. Arcee thought it was silly, especially with Rodimus Prime, who she was sure would sooner rescue his bodyguard than need a rescue himself. To listen to Springer and Impactor, though, Emirate Xaaron could not take two steps without ending up in some form of improbable danger, so maybe the bodyguard was a good idea, after all.
She turned around to Emirate Xaaron and said, to make conversation, "I've never been to Nebulos before."
"I haven't, either. Don't expect to see too much of it," Emirate Xaaron said gently, a frown creasing his face. "The place is poison to our kind, I am afraid. We will be staying indoors as much as possible."
"Haywire talks about Splendora sometimes. You can tell he really misses it," Arcee commented wistfully.
"Haywire cannot be happy with what has become of Nebulos's government, but we must remain polite. The Nebulans are not allies of the Autobot Commonwealth, but their perspective could yet worsen," Emirate Xaaron sighed. "You have read over the dossiers I gave you, yes?"
Arcee nodded. She really was not much for diplomacy, despite technically being appointed as the Autobot ambassador to Earth, but if tagging along on Emirate Xaaron's diplomatic mission let her finally experience some culture and refinement, she would do her best.
"It is all for the better that Impactor and Springer could not attend, anyway," Emirate Xaaron confided to Arcee, leaning back in his seat and folding his arms behind his head. "I am not sure I could stop either of them from trying to murder Needlenose and Spinister in front of the delegates."
Spinister looked out the hangar window at Nebulos, sitting quietly as a helicopter, which was much of what he did anymore. Five centuries, a little more, and the world was still not his home. Those green fields were still strange to his optics, lined with pliant, yielding grass and soft dirt, the hard bedrock buried far beneath. The people he served were not his. The Nebulans were organics, and while Spinister would not underestimate them, he had become very, very familiar with their limits. What intel he had told him that the Decepticons were dead, and they might as well be, he supposed. Spinister had abandoned them, though he had never meant it that way. Now, he had no chance at all to set the story straight.
When Galen had died, Singe had been more overjoyed than one might expect at the death of an enemy. Spinister was to understand that Galen had deprived of Singe of his chosen bride. With Galen dead, there was no reason Singe could not return to Nebulos and woo her anew! No reason save that Singe was Spinister's flamethrower, and Spinister had a duty to the Decepticons. No reason save that Lord Zarak, Scorponok's partner, had banned the Transformer-allied Nebulans from ever returning to Nebulos, for fear of what more damage they could do to his planet. No reason save that the Nebulans had poisoned Nebulos, at first the energy sources: the oil wells, the coal mines, the radioactive ores, the electricity plants, and then the very air itself. Any Transformer who visited Nebulos would die slowly, except for Powermasters, who handled their energy differently, filtered through a Nebulan engine.
The idea was absurd, and Singe sulked, bitter.
When Megatron became Galvatron at the hand of the Chaos-Bringer, Needlenose had, in his opportunistic way, suggested that perhaps Spinister should reconsider Singe's plan. Needlenose said, "Look, organics put a big emphasis on who built whom, and Llyra isn't just anyone. Lord Zarak is her creator. With him out of the picture, that means she's Lady Llyra, head of the Council of Peers. If Singe shacks up with her, that means he's got the ear of the ruler of a whole planet, and what Singe has, you have, Spinister."
Spinister contemplated it, though the idea of dereliction of duty, even if it was to bring a planet under Decepticon control, albeit indirect Decepticon control, sat sorely with him. It tasted like treason. Needlenose sidled up against him, body barely touching, and he murmured, "And sweetie, it's a matter of public record that the Mayhem Attack Squad tried to execute Galvatron when he travelled back in time. Galvatron's going to see that someday, and he's not going to care if we were there for that mission or not. You know he won't. Galvatron is, oh, so erratic."
"We should kill him," Spinister said simply. If Galvatron was such a danger to the Decepticon cause that Needlenose would rather run off to Nebulos and hide than follow him, Galvatron was not fit to lead. A good leader should inspire fear enough to be followed, not fear in excess to make his troops turn tail and flee.
Needlenose looked aghast, wings askew, and he poked Spinister gently, as if to check that Spinister was still here, before sputtering, "Do you even think about what you're saying?"
Spinister supposed that trying to remove Galvatron generally did not end well for anyone involved, but he crossed his arms and glared at Needlenose. It was the principle of the thing.
He found himself on Nebulos eventually, anyway, despite his qualms. Spinister and Needlenose did not so much take over as Singe did. Llyra was fragile and emotionally damaged after Galen, her lover, and Lord Zarak, her father, both left her in what must have been such a mind-boggling way to a young Nebulan - away with ancient alien robot warriors! Llyra made a fine figurehead, though Spinister knew, if only because of their binary bond, that Singe really did love her.
Spinister had never meant to stay, cooped up inside to avoid Nebulos's poison, only making rare public appearances for parades and ceremonies. At least, he stayed inside to let the public think he was afraid of the poison. Singe saw to it that Spinister and Needlenose had no need to fear. Needlenose was the one who delighted in xeno cultures, wallowing in their artwork and games and fashion. Galvatron fell in 2010. They could have returned to the Decepticon army. They should have returned to the Decepticon army.
Needlenose pried at him and plied him, though, pointing out how scattered and demoralised the Decepticons were. They should wait until a strong leader arose, someone who was worth their support. Besides, their Nebulan partners did not want to leave home, now that they had it back. Singe had a family! Spinister thought that Singe would have burned even him, if Spinister suggested leaving.
No strong leader ever arose, not for long enough. By a thousand cuts, the Decepticons were whittled down by the Autobots, reduced to pockets here and there, and in the course of a scanty few centuries, centuries he could count on one hand, they were declared extinct.
At first on Nebulos, the Nebulans treated him as if he was Singe's tame Decepticon, beaten and conquered. The idea was ridiculous, but Spinister could work with being underestimated. Llyra, poor fragile Llyra, as Singe had thought of her, as Spinister thought of her when he was uncareful and remembered what it had been to be Singe too deeply, did not want to live forever, though with Decepticon technology, she could have. She wanted to live a natural life, ridiculous as that was. More ridiculous was that Singe went with her, not wanting to outlive his love by long. Singe left Spinister to his firstborn and heir.
So over the course of eight going on nine generations, Spinister passed into tradition, as did Needlenose, the only two weapons on Nebulos that were not locked in their Vault in the Arvassian Range. When a prospective heir ascended to Lord or Lady, Spinister was there, as if a part of the ceremonial regalia, and he was always there ever after, a part of the Lord or Lady's mind. When the Lord or Lady took a consort, Needlenose was there, the traditional consort's robot companion.
As long as they stayed on Nebulos, the Autobots could not touch them. Spinister was considered an extension of the body of Nebulos's ruler, now Lady Ashling, and Needlenose of the body of her consort, Peer Aelius. To harm Spinister or Needlenose was to declare war on Nebulos. Too many Autobots still had their Nebulan partners, if they could be called Nebulans anymore, their organs all but replaced by machinery. They were sentimental fools, anyway, even without their Nebulan partners. They allowed their hands to be tied.
Spinister was still nervous, if not paranoid. Staying in one, known, place did not sit well with him, he who preferred to shoot and move, but now he was trapped, which was worst of all. Even if he wanted to try his luck in space, the Nebulans would not let him go. He belonged to their history now, even if the centuries he had spent here were only a blink to him, the mental engrams of all his dead Nebulan partners just faint ghosts in the machine. Spinister was miserable, and he would be more miserable still soon.
Emirate Xaaron would be in his crosshairs, and Spinister could not pull the trigger.
Koraja had an enclosed spaceport, with purified air, where Transformers could stay for a time without Nebulos's lethal poison taking effect. Under Singe and the successive generations that had followed after him, the Nebulans had spread out over several other planets and made loose alliances with other organic species, forming the Nebulon Republic, if a Republic in name only. Nebulos remained the capitol, and Koraja remained the capitol of Nebulos.
Emirate Xaaron looked around with polite curiosity. Kick-Off, a security expert who had been assigned as his bodyguard for the trip, was quite good at going unnoticed in plain sight, which was not the same thing as unseen. Kick-Off simply acted as if he belonged wherever he happened to be and whatever he was doing was the most natural thing in the world. That slight confidence, combined with the fact that whatever he was doing tended to be boring and how he was a nondescript Autobot of the same mould line as many Praxians, made him utterly forgettable. The optics just slid right off him. Emirate Xaaron would not have noticed he was there if he had not been looking.
He could tell Arcee was not paying Kick-Off any mind at all, now that Koraja was before her. There was so much for a young Autobot to see on a new world. Her smile held an innocence that Emirate Xaaron thought had died with the war. Though they had to be on their way out of the spaceport and off to the adjoining robot quarter, the one area of Nebulos where Transformers could exist without dying, Arcee paused at one of the spaceport kiosks. Evidently the wares had caught her attention.
Kick-Off tensed. Emirate Xaaron could see it if no one else could. Arcee came away with a bundle of little brightly coloured organic things and exclaimed, "They're flowers from The Nursery - I saw that mentioned in the dossier. Suseians like flowers, don't they?"
"Oh, yes!" Emirate Xaaron agreed brightly. He leaned forward to smell them, having a vague idea that was what was done with flowers.
Kick-Off's hand stopped Emirate Xaaron's face, and his other hand took the bouquet out of Arcee's hands. He carefully took it apart, as Arcee stood, stunned. She blurted, "Where'd he come from?"
Kick-Off put the bouquet back together and handed it back to Arcee, giving only a clipped explanation, "Security check."
Kick-Off watched Emirate Xaaron and Arcee mingle at the reception prior to the opera. Arcee was just the darling of the Suseians, who were something like humanoid bees. One looked from Arcee and then over to Emirate Xaaron, asking in a language that was more dance than speech, "He is your drone?"
Inevitable as a stoplight turning red, Arcee's optics widened when she realised what meaning of drone was intended there, and she was clearly embarrassed, excusing, "Oh, no! He's my, uhm, brother-in-law."
Kick-Off knew that was not even the right word in Cybertronian, though it might have been in Nebulan. He wondered how it translated into Suseian, idly. What he really wondered, though, was where the... ah. He spotted them. Kick-Off stayed slouched against the wall and kept optic band on his charges, though he let his peripheral drift to the arrival of Peer Aelius. The dossier said he was a patron of the arts and widely known for his good looks. Kick-Off could have been fooled, but what did he know about Nebulans? Only a dozen different ways to subdue and disable.
No, the important thing about Peer Aelius's arrival meant that Needlenose had arrived, too. Kick-Off bet the slagger was feeling sorry for himself, stuck in some hangar on Nebulos, unable to stretch his wings. Wah wah wah. Crybaby did not; could not know what 'captive' really meant.
Kick-Off's mood sunk when he saw the Decepticon actually acting happy. He swept over to the Andegeans, chatting up the 1st rank science counsellors as if they were old friends. Yep, Needlenose looked perfectly at ease. Kick-Off would have killed to at least see one of the last Decepticons endure some form of hardship. He did not think he would be seeing the other Decepticon around here at all.
His little partner, Peer Aelius, did not stay too close to him, ranging far and away to pursue some previous conversation with the Eurythmans. Kick-Off squinted at Peer Aelius while he was in view, trying to decide if he was actually modified into a Targetmaster or not. Intel was not sure if modern Nebulan royalty went farther than the binary bond. Kick-Off heard that the Targetmaster process was a real glitch of a pain to endure. He almost hoped that little sucker had actually went through with it, just so Needlenose would have felt that agony all over again.
Lady Ashling was the last to arrive. One of her more popular nicknames was Ashling the Extinguisher, supposedly because of her great ability to extinguish conflicts within her Republic. Yeah right. Kick-Off thought, uncharitably, that it was probably due to that assassin her forebears had left her. Peer Aelius attended to her side at once, and there was a light in his eyes that Kick-Off could not place. Lady Ashling indulged him for a time, making her rounds to the names to know with him on her arm. They were just the sappiest little creeps, Kick-Off thought, no matter how circumspect and polite they acted in public, and he wished he could hurt them.
That was not his job, though. His job was to make sure no one hurt Emirate Xaaron. If anyone made a try on Arcee, too, he would step in, even if that was not in the mission mandate. They were Autobots, and none of his Autobots were going to get hurt on his watch.
Speaking of watch, it was time for Emirate Xaaron and Arcee to watch the show. With Lady Ashling here and her chit-chat done, it was time that the audience took to seats. Kick-Off would watch for the one he could not see, for whatever good it would do.
The Firelord was based loosely on the story of Singe's life, and it amused Lady Ashling to no end to see the female Autobot so enraptured by a tale of one of her enemies. Certainly the tale the writer had crafted was a stirring one, love lost to an unworthy rival, the protagonist and rival alike exiled to space, and more than enough on-stage combat to spice it up. Lady Ashling knew just how loose the adaptation was. Singe was there in Spinister's mind, not all of him, but an echo, as were all of Spinister's previous partners, and as she would be someday. The thought neither comforted nor disturbed her; it simply was, and it would be, no matter what she did.
Spinister pushed at Lady Ashling's mind whenever she looked at the Autobots but most of all when she looked at Emirate Xaaron. His resistance had blighted Cybertron for over four million years, the Decepticon whispered, hissing in the old reptile parts of her brain. If not for him, the Cybertron campaign would have been won long before the Earth campaigners awoke. Perhaps the Cybertron campaigners would have even found Earth and slit the Autobots' fuel lines as they lay comatose and made a vast pool of split energon for their slumbering Decepticon comrades to repast upon when they awoke. Spinister was a bloody-minded, murderous thing, though cold, and he made Lady Ashling understand why her mother had insisted upon learning to care for predatory birds, when she was a small girl.
Lady Ashling had tended a great Pouakai, their species reserved for royalty alone, from tiny hatchling to adulthood, where the vast predatory bird was almost taller than she was. The bird was fierce and clawed and pecked her often through the leather gloves, when the Pouakai was still small enough to hold on her arm. There was no empathy in its flashing golden eyes, only a keen hunger and the will to survive. Lady Ashling could not so much train the Pouakai as she could learn the bird's habits and release it to do as it would when those habits suited Lady Ashling. She was Mother in the Pouakai's eyes, the first thing it had ever seen straight from the shell, but she had never been able to convince the Pouakai that other Nebulans were anything but food. So when she took the Pouakai hunting, she took it alone in the forest preserves, until it was sated. The Pouakai was less pet than Lady Ashling's own personal burden to bear.
Inducing the Pouakai to stop viewing Nebulans as food would have been easier than convincing Spinister to take his scope away from Emirate Xaaron's head. He would not fire, she knew he would not fire, but if anyone knew he was up there in the darkness above the stage, the scandal would burn hot enough to melt metal.
Anyone like Kick-Off? The thought could have almost been her own, but Lady Ashling did not know that discreet Autobot bodyguard's name. Hasn't even looked in my direction.
Two intermissions later, in the third act, Spinister pressed into her mind again, unconcerned, There is going to be an attempt on his life.
Lady Ashling looked through Spinister's optics and saw the assailant. The only thing fast enough to stop it would be the speed of thought, asking Spinister, but whether he would or would not, she could not ask him to fire, because then the Autobot delegation would know he was there. Better to hope the outcry was not too great, that cooler heads would prevail in the investigation that would follow.
There was the pernicious thought that she sat back and did nothing because Spinister's desire for spilled Autobot fuel on the opera hall floor was her own, but she put the thought out of her head and back into Spinister's.
Needlenose groaned when Kick-Off jetted out of the woodwork and took the shot meant for Emirate Xaaron. Maybe groaning was outré, but no one would hear over the belting Eurythman soprano on stage. Where did Emirate Xaaron keep finding these guys, anyway? There could not be that many Autobots who wanted sucking chest wounds!
Kick-Off was ex-Actionmaster. Needlenose could tell, the way he moved. There was a technology that had gone nowhere, but what had they expected, losing their vehicle modes, hah hah! The depression caused by transformation lock was just too much for any Transformer to handle. They all ended up purging the Nucleon out of their systems eventually, though some junkies kept going back for more and more sips of Nucleon and then purging again. If Needlenose's imported scandal sheets from Cybertron were correct, Grimlock was nursing a downright nasty addiction to the power that Nucleon gave him.
Needlenose gathered up Lord Aelius and moved toward an exit, biding his options. Just because someone had shot at Emirate Xaaron did not mean he was the only one in danger.
Arcee had already drawn her blaster and was helping Kick-Off up, her look furious and intent. There was another technology that had never gone anywhere, either. Female Autobots! Oh, Needlenose had toyed with a female rebuild when they seemed like the hot new thing, but he was glad he had not. Arcee and Kick-Off sandwiched Emirate Xaaron between them, hurrying them toward the exit, pointedly the one Needlenose was not malingering near, while everyone else evacuated in a panic. Needlenose did so pride himself on staying cool as a cucumber. A little assassination attempt could not shake his style.
Spinister radioed Needlenose, who listened along, antennae skewing over what the other Targetmaster had to say. Oh, how interesting! Time to collect Lady Ashling, too, and regroup.
"The spaceport is right there!" Emirate Xaaron protested. He squirmed an arm out from under a bungee and pointed back at the rapidly receding skyline of Koraja.
"The assassin's back there, too," Kick-Off said gruffly. He had transformed, albeit a bit stiffly, into that same car form favoured by some Praxians, a Porsche 935 Turbo, right after he bungied Emirate Xaaron down to Arcee.
"Splendora has a spaceport, too," Arcee reminded. "Poor Haywire. He'll be so jealous when he hears we went. Well, probably not the part about being attacked..."
"Didn't sight who fired the shot. Bugs me," Kick-Off said, and he did sound deeply troubled, an unusual display of emotion for him. He put on a tough front.
"Me either, but it was a flamethrower. I mean, come on!" Arcee lectured, as if it was obvious.
"I have a flamethrower," Kick-Off said flatly. "Jazz has a flamethrower. The Dinobots -"
"We get the idea," Emirate Xaaron interjected dryly. He looked over at Kick-Off's injuries again, though he was unpleasantly sure that Kick-Off had suffered worse.
"I'll need to examine the damages once we have time," Kick-Off finished, voice curt and taut.
"So, since I don't seem to have any say in this plan," Emirate Xaaron said, feeling more annoyed the farther they drove from Koraja, "would you care to inform me what it is?"
Arcee started to say something, but Kick-Off cut in with, "No."
Arcee tried to the coax the workers at the Grax Communications Facility into listening to her request, though given the panic at the capitol, they were not too inclined. There was still a long drive across the Plains of Thok to reach Splendora, and she could start to feel the poison in the air seeping into her lines.
Kick-Off would not let Emirate Xaaron get that close to the communications workers. Arcee told herself that she was much better able to defend herself if anything happened, but she knew what a smooth talker Emirate Xaaron was. She wished Rodimus Prime or Springer would take a lesson or two from Emirate Xaaron's book. Oh, she loved her boys' witty one-liners, but a girl could not live on one-liners alone. So while Kick-Off was busy trying to figure out the make and model year of the flamethrower that hit him or whatever it was he was doing, Arcee grabbed Emirate Xaaron and pushed him at the Nebulan.
Kick-Off protested, "Hey!"
But Emirate Xaaron was already at it, inquiring, "I know this is much to ask of a descendant of one of the Taken -"
"You know?" the Nebulan asked dubiously.
Emirate Xaaron knelt down, to lessen the height difference, and he pointed to the symbol on a chain the Nebulan wore around his neck. "Yes. I am aware, and I am sorry. I was supposed to be negotiating a treaty to allow the Taken to return home for visits, in fact."
The Nebulan was clearly suspicious and standoffish, but he asked, "What do you want?" That was more progress than Arcee had been able to make with the Nebulan. She smirked smugly over at Kick-Off.
Emirate Xaaron turned to Arcee, shrugged, and needled, "Since you won't tell me what your plan is -"
"Just to call a shuttle to Splendora to get you out of here," Kick-Off supplied, frowning.
Emirate Xaaron snorted and corrected, "Don't be ridiculous. Call Sky Lynx."
Sky Lynx was bored with sitting on the tarmac quietly as if he was some dumb shuttle. He transformed to bird mode and stretched his wings, basking in how the glory of the sun fell upon his own magnificence. The Nebulan ground crews reacted with fear and anger, silly little creatures that they were, unable to appreciate what a rare treat was before their very eyes. He sprawled out luxuriously, fanning his wings and swishing his tail. Sky Lynx canted his head up and watched the sky, a habit he supposed he had not much need for now, but the war had driven such beastly instincts into him.
Emirate Xaaron, Arcee, and Kick-Off would be there any moment, but Sky Lynx did not bother looking for them just yet. They were but mere mortal Autobots and not blessed with his impeccable timing. He leapt atop a sturdy-looking hangar, ignored the uproar, and sat back on his haunches. Sky Lynx said aloud to himself, "I must say, I hardly expected Nebulan aircraft to look so very familiar. No, blast my optics, that really must be -"
The jet transformed and dropped down next to Sky Lynx on the hangar. Needlenose fairly beamed as he greeted without preamble, "Oh, hello there! Still without opposable thumbs, I see. They're only all the rage."
Sky Lynx removed himself from the undeserving ruffian's presence, scaling the control tower. He enjoyed being up higher than others, as if they were his subjects beneath him, though he would never tolerate one such as Needlenose in his realm. He advised, "You will keep yourself well away, Decepticon."
Needlenose laughed, an egregious and open display of mockery, and he had the unbelievable temerity to continue speaking, "Please. I wouldn't touch you with a laser pointer. I just want to say something that'll blow your little mind."
Sky Lynx was ready to leap down upon the Decepticon and make him eat those words in a consummate display of verbal mastery when he heard the sound of Autobot-grade engines, not the strange little things the Nebulans used in their vehicles. His head whipped around and he quickly and easily sighted Kick-Off and Arcee, who appeared to have a rather irritated Emirate Xaaron fastened down to her. Since Sky Lynx sighted them, they sighted the Decepticon miscreant.
Arcee's wheel-spikes were out just as soon as Kick-Off drew his flamethrower. One handed, he tugged the cords off Emirate Xaaron and dragged him off behind a refuelling truck. Arcee came up transformed with her blaster in hand.
"Now you should know all this attention shouldn't be just for little old me." Needlenose made a clicking noise, as if clicking the tongue he surely did not have against the roof of the mouth he was equally not in possession of, and he reached behind himself, nonchalant to the point of arrogance.
"Draw a weapon, and I shall -" Sky Lynx warned, teeth bared and claws twitching.
Needlenose unlatched his cockpit and drew forth the two Nebulans who had occupied it, Lady Ashling and Peer Aelius. Lady Ashling stood without trouble or sign of airsickness, clearly used to being carried by a Transformer, and she pitched her voice to carry, "Tell me you've examined the injury."
"Yeah," Kick-Off admitted, clearly unhappy. Leaving Emirate Xaaron behind the truck, he stepped forward and tapped his chest injury. The metal flaked and crumbled at the touch. He ground out, "Not your pet's usual ordinance, Lady."
Lady Ashling corrected coldly, "Not Spinister's ordinance at all."
'Spinister would not have missed,' is what she wanted to say, Peer Aelius was sure, knowing his love as he did. She would not, she was by far too diplomatic to ever say so, but she wanted to.
Eh, I'd say it, too, Needlenose chattered in his head. When Peer Aelius had shared Needlenose with his predecessor and father-in-law, he never had a thought to himself. He tried not to think about how it would be when his daughters were grown and one of them became Lady Ashling's successor and took her own consort, a son-in-law who would share Needlenose with him. Peer Aelius really, really tried not to think about it. His father-in-law had been more than bad enough.
But oooh, that crumbliness looks bad. Not going to touch that Autobot, Needlenose added and radioed Spinister the same.
Peer Aelius dug a little deeper into Needlenose's memories. Like many of Needlenose's past Nebulan partners, he was not as smart as the genius circuit designer, and he did not have a handle on all the concepts that Needlenose could comprehend, alien as he was, but he wanted to pry out at least a little understanding. Needlenose was quite old for a Transformer, as Peer Aelius understood it, alive before their war and established even then, and in his time, he had seen any number of medical traumas and unusual weapons. Decompiler stuck out in Needlenose's memories as most relevant to the situation, but Peer Aelius did not have long to examine what it meant.
Spinister was in view, which was never a good sign, and he grabbed Lady Ashling away. Peer Aelius held his breath, his second heart fluttering with fear. His love for his wife was something unshakeable, something no one not in his peculiar situation could really understand. He had not loved her when they wed, not really, though he thought at the time that maybe he did. He had been more interested in her power, and if love had not worked out, oh, what politician went without affairs?
The Lady's consort, that was who never cheated. The moment he was bonded to Needlenose, generations of consorts who had held unwavering, faithful love in their hearts bore down upon him, crushing and undeniable, but even if he could have extracted himself from those old ghosts and his then-living father-in-law, there was a greater and more powerful force there yet. Needlenose, who was ancient and terrible behind his social façade, loved Spinister in a way that Nebulans could not quite fathom. Needlenose loved Spinister, and Lady Ashling was of Spinister, so Peer Aelius had no choice at all. He would love her until he died. The first generations of Nebulan partners had not had it so bad. Needlenose's first partners, Sunbeam and Zigzag, held no love for Spinister's Singe and Hairsplitter, but generation to generation, the inexorability grew. Peer Aelius pitied his future son-in-law, too, he who would have his very emotions and self overwritten by something that came from beyond the stars.
Lady Ashling summoned her Targetmaster armour from subspace and transformed into Spinister's flamethrower. At Needlenose's mental nudge, Peer Aelius did the same, becoming Needlenose's solar-powered light-burst discharger, which was always a strange thing for him, going from the biped he had been born to an alien weapon.
If this is what I think it is, Needlenose thought slowly, clearly not liking where it was going, we are outnumbered. I'm not talking about the Autobots, mind you.
Kick-Off was not sure Emirate Xaaron was going to stay down in a fight like a good little useless politician. He did not want to touch him too much; Needlenose was openly disgusted by Kick-Off's damage. If the Decepticon knew something about it that Kick-Off did not, he did not want to risk spreading an infection. He also wanted to tear into Needlenose and make little tiny strips of him until he explained just what he was not saying. Kick-Off turned to ask Arcee if she could tie Emirate Xaaron down with the fuel truck's hose.
Her foot was flying into a... silvery cloud in what was a rather nicely executed kick. Arcee landed neatly, looking silvery herself. For a split second, Kick-Off thought the cloud had gunked her up. When he saw that slight wince out of her, he realised it had stripped the paint from her down to bare metal. His first urge was to wade into the thing, fists flying. Hand to hand combat, down and dirty, was where Kick-Off excelled, but Arcee was pulling back already, pumping shot after shot into it to little effect. He whipped out his flamethrower and gave it a whirl, for all the good that did.
Sky Lynx was still jumping and flapping around. Maybe the egotist thought he looked dignified and mysterious, but Kick-Off called things like he saw them, and Sky Lynx was freaking hyperactive, wasting his fuel instead of biding his time. One moment he was over on a radar tower, the next he had transformed to that dragon mode of his, winged over, and tried his flamethrower, oops, sorry, acetylene blaster. The cloud dispersed under the power of his blast and then reformed around Sky Lynx, going deeper than his paint, cutting grooves into his armour.
The two Decepticons were watchful. If this monster was their monster, they were doing a blasted good job of acting out cautious surprise. At least Kick-Off had learned that Nebulan royalty was still going through the whole Targetmaster process, not just the binary bonding. Good to know. Targetmaster partners had all kind of fun break points. Maybe Kick-Off could not touch the Decepticons without starting a war, but he sure as the Pit could get up in their faces and demand an answer. He gave Emirate Xaaron a glare, silently commanding him to stay put, and Kick-Off was off, scaling the hangar with an assist from his jet pack to go have a 'chat' with Needlenose. He was sure the two Decepticons were a couple of real hardcases to have survived this long, but he was going to put his bets on the one that actually seemed to know how to talk.
Once up, he took stock. Emirate Xaaron was staying down behind the fuel truck for now, Arcee and Sky Lynx were keeping that thing busy, though Sky Lynx's eerie howls suggested it was going deeper into him than just his armour, that creep Spinister was doing what looked like a perimeter sweep, the spaceport crews seemed evacuated, and here Kick-Off was, up on a roof with slotting Needlenose. He pushed close enough to Needlenose to feel the heat of his still-warm-from-flight jet engine, swept an arm back at the scene of the fracas, and demanded, "The frak is that thing?"
"I've been trying to tell you Autobots, I really have," Needlenose replied innocently. "But really, with the tough guy act you put on, I'm shocked you don't know!"
"I'll show you shocked," Kick-Off growled, every servo in him screaming to hit the Decepticon, hit him until he talked, and hit him until he talked no more.
"Decompiler," Needlenose finally supplied. "I'm quite sure it's a decompiler. Fought one once."
"Ssslaaag," Kick-Off hissed out, just a hint of panic slipping into his surprise, and he looked at it again. The thing sometimes took almost solid form and bored into Sky Lynx, a whirling spectral drill, or it lashed out in tendrils to try to trip Arcee, who recovered into a one-handed stand, taking a shot at the cloud with her other to disperse it before landing on her feet. Sky Lynx, practically a one Autobot platoon, was starting to look like caesium cheese. Kick-Off had heard, lived through, and done some pretty glitched up stuff, but decompilers were a story to scare Minibots, like the gauntlet of the Underworld. Lore said they had no true form but craved one so sorely they would tear into anyone, Autobot or Decepticon or neutral, and take its form for a while before splitting back into their wretched cloud state. The stories also said they were a result of Decepticon experimentation on prisoners of war, and that, Kick-Off did believe. He had never heard a tale that explained how to kill one, though, which supplied him with his next question. "How'd you kill it?"
"Magnetic containment bottle and gravitic collapse," Needlenose replied, sounding bored and matter of fact. He did take a step away from Kick-Off, however. "Lady Ashling's having what we need sent over straightaway from the nearest science centre - nice evacuation, too, eh? But the thing is, you're not going to like this, Autobot."
"I don't like any of this," Kick-Off bit out. The decompiler took a form like a dark shadow of Sky Lynx's own, skeletal and jagged, unfinished or long decayed, apparently having eaten enough mass away from its victims to coalesce, and it belched fire back at Sky Lynx. Arcee put a round into it from behind, and it dispersed again, just as a bellowing Sky Lynx reached his claws forward to rend it. His claws sliced nothing but smoke and air.
"You three," Needlenose indicated Kick-Off, Arcee, and Sky Lynx, "are all going to die. It's had a taste of you, now, and it's left little pieces of itself in there, eating away. That's how it followed you here. Your taste. Your precious little Emirate Xaaron might live, if you haven't touched him too much."
Kick-Off snapped and grabbed Needlenose by the throat, hollering with his voice pumped to full volume, "Like frag we are!" Looking out his peripherals, Sky Lynx now looked the part of a skeletal dragon, his armour all but eaten away, hanging loosely from his frame in shards, his struts blackened by the doppelgänger of his own blast. If Sky Lynx looked like a zombie, Arcee fought like a demon, transforming to drive through it, as if she could grind it to the ground under her.
Needlenose laughed as if being grabbed by the neck was just the most hilarious thing in the world, and it made Kick-Off squeeze tighter. He reminded, coy even then, "Touch me again, Autobot. Touch me again, and you know what it means."
"Damn and blast you," Kick-Off ground out, releasing Needlenose. Arcee was grappling with her own dark copy made of smoke. She headbutted it, and it bit out her left optic.
"Decompilers are made of the very same things we are," Needlenose observed. "That's why decompiler infection is untreatable. What kills them kills us, and they're too similar to us for our immune systems to target and fight." Then he held out a ray of hope twisted into gilded noose for Kick-Off to tie around his own neck. "Now maybe if you could get the brain module out before the decompiler spreads that far, you could transplant to a new body. I am only the best circuit specialist there ever was, if you'd like me to try with you."
"Stick your head in your afterburner," Kick-Off advised and jumped back into the fray. He had a goal now, at least. Get Arcee and Sky Lynx out. Tell Emirate Xaaron to get the slag out of Slaughter City. Let the Decepticons and their Nebulan chums worry about the mess.
Nebulos's poison and the decompiler's thousand tiny bites were slowing Arcee, but she would not give up. At Kick-Off's radio burst explaining what Needlenose had said, she and Sky Lynx disengaged and regrouped with Kick-Off. The decompiler hunted them relentlessly, no matter what twists and turns they took around Splendora's deserted spaceport. With a sinking feeling in her fuel pump, a thought caught up with Arcee, and she asked, "Where's Emirate Xaaron?"
"Left him behind the truck," Kick-Off replied, his voice clipped.
"I say, in range of those Decepticon urchins?" Sky Lynx sniffed, scratching at one of his flanks at an obviously irresistible itch, scratching until his talons came away with his own energon. He flicked the droplets off his claws in disgust.
"He won't stay down," Arcee said, frowning. She backtracked and turned a corner carefully.
The decompiler had coalesced, taking a form again, a slight figure in charcoal with a crowned helm. It looked oddly peaceful, even vulnerable, and it outstretched its fingers to touch Emirate Xaaron's own.
"Calm yourself," Emirate Xaaron instructed, mostly for the decompiler's benefit, the rest of the Autobots a distant concern at the moment. "I know what you need, and it isn't what you want. Take what you need of me and no more."
The decompiler's touch burned like acid, and he itched rawly and as it burrowed into him. The thing seeped along his circuits, stripping insulation and chewing through fuel lines. Primus, Emirate Xaaron could telepathically contact Primus, who was vast like the Mercury Sea and impossible to miss. Trying to find any other mind was like trying to find a rock thrown into the Mercury Sea and buried by the waves. If Soundwave had been able to do so in life, Emirate Xaaron had no idea how he managed it, but the decompiler was kin of his kin, kin of Primus, and it was inside him, closer than touch. He reminded, What you need. What you lack. Not what you want.
The other Autobots dropped to the ground, writhing in pain as the decompiler in them fled, taking the quickest way out. What the decompiler needed most of all was right here, and all of the decompiler wanted it so very badly that it could not bother to wait to devour the others, leaving their systems entirely. As his systems crashed and he felt his life seeping away, Emirate Xaaron steeled himself and marshalled his willpower, sidling up against the mind that was not his. Ravenous, it ignored him, but he reached for it, as if grabbing it by the astral scruff of the neck, and he threw it out whole.
His optics flickering dimly, Emirate Xaaron looked over at the decompiler, which lay sprawled and panting on the tarmac, much like himself. He reached out and tapped it, and a hollow gong resounded. Perhaps hollow inside, the decompiler was solid enough now, like any other Transformer. Emirate Xaaron managed, his voice distorted and quieted by the hole bored through his voicebox, "A soul. You needed a soul to bind you and make you whole. I had some of mine to spare. You could have just asked," he coughed up some fuel, which tasted sickly on his tongue, "nicely."
Then the new Transformer stiffened and turned to nothing but flat grey, dead, a hole between his optics. Spinister stood over the corpse and checked the kill.
"So I spend a week breaking up internecine conflict and come back with a few parts requisitions. You go to the opera and come back on life support. What gives?" Springer complained. His arm was missing, most prominently, so his damages were a bit worse than just needing a few parts requisitions, but he could have been up and walking if Topspin had not restrained him down to the operating table.
"It was a decompiler," Arcee sniffed and pushed the button for her pain drip again, that slight finger movement about as much as she could manage. Rodimus Prime had been so sweet, taking time away from his busy schedule to visit by her side. Time away from his rest cycles, Arcee suspected, as he would never shirk his duties to his people.
Better yet, Kick-Off and Sky Lynx were unconscious while Fixit and First Aid picked at their wounds. Arcee had decided she liked Kick-Off better when she did not know he was there. He was really dreadful company otherwise, so sullen and full of anger. Sky Lynx was arrogant to the point of obnoxiousness.
"Oh, you are making that up!" Springer protested.
"They're real. I've beat a decompiler," Impactor interjected, smirking, his hand on his hip. His injuries were not much worse than Springer's, but Topspin had him up and done before Springer. Arcee guessed Topspin did not want to have to deal with a hangar queen Impactor for long. Primus knew, she did not.
"You are definitely making that up," Springer grumbled, squinting at Impactor.
"Oh, he did," Emirate Xaaron confirmed almost absently.
Before Springer could question Impactor much further, Impactor left, never one to linger in a medical ward long if he could avoid it. Arcee added, "We'd be in better shape if the Emirate there didn't decide he just had to finish diplomatic negotiations with Spinister's gun while he was leaking his tanks out on a tarmac, half-poisoned."
"I didn't get to finish," Emirate Xaaron corrected, clearly put-out. His detox drip burbled.
"You tried," Arcee reminded. He was so stubborn!
"The issue of the Taken is important to both the Nebulans who remain in the Nebulon Republic and the surviving *master partners who remain with the Autobots," Emirate Xaaron corrected firmly. He looked over at Rodimus Prime meaningfully to catch his attention and explained, "As you personally know, there are many Nebulans or their surviving Autobot partners who would like to return to Nebulos and give the descendants of those Taken some closure, but as the treaties currently stand, only diplomatic visits are allowed. Families remain broken."
"I know," Rodimus Prime said solemnly, his optics downcast, and Arcee felt a pang. When Hot Rod's Targetmaster partner, Firebolt, died, she and Springer had held poor Hot Rod for hours until the shaking stopped.
"But the conditions Lady Ashling desires will have to be put to a vote in the Council," Emirate Xaaron continued. "You see, she specified that it is a grave annoyance to be forced to leave half of her awareness behind on Nebulos if she wishes to visit the Autobot Commonwealth for diplomatic visits. She desires visiting rights in Autobot territory for her binary bonded partner and her consort's partner."
"She wants visiting rights for Spinister and Needlenose? They were in the Mayhem Attack Squad! Oh slag no," Springer groused so vehemently that Topspin adjusted his sedative drip.
Rodimus Prime gave Springer a look and sighed, "And what? Haywire never goes home? Recoil? I never tell Professor Sparks's family what happened to him? I could go on... Springer, I'm not saying it's the solution, I don't like it either, but it is a solution, and we'll put it to debate."
Springer quieted, though he was clearly unhappy. Emirate Xaaron simply nodded, and he changed the subject, asking, "Does Security have any idea yet who set a decompiler loose?"
No, Security did not, beyond that whoever set it loose had covered their tracks via Grand Central Space Station, which was notoriously robophobic. Kup was hopping mad, and Red Alert was having a snit. Arcee chipped in when appropriate, filling in her parts of the story, seconding how Lady Ashling had denied any involvement. The Decepticons definitely acted confused, though they suspiciously took no damage at all from the decompiler. It was not a formal debriefing. There would be one when she was not seeing double.
Her attention snapped back in when Rodimus Prime asked softly, "Did they have to kill the decompiler?"
Emirate Xaaron's gaze focused on something far away, and a scowl took his face that knit his brows and made him look decidedly severe. "No. Their method of creation is an abomination, but the end result is a tragedy. You know how a Transformer smelted alive can be split into several new Transformers? If you split the lifeforce too fine, the bodies won't ignite with lifeforce at all, but if you split it just so, they're not quite alive, and they're left hungry and empty. They can't even keep their bodies together, falling apart into nanite clouds. They eat Transformers to try to fill to void inside themselves. I gave him enough of my soul, freely and as a gift, so that he could live on his own, no different from any other Transformer."
Springer broke in again angrily, "All the more reason to keep those murderers off our turf. Why we can't just -"
"Springer," Rodimus Prime said firmly. Then he looked back over at Emirate Xaaron and said more gently, "I'm sorry. Your soul. Are you... uhm..."
"Don't worry about me," Emirate Xaaron said, which was not the most reassuring thing the world for him to say, Arcee was learning. "Souls are resilient things. They grow back. Life-affirming things help, like helping one another through difficulty, laughter, the beauty of art, fine music -"
"Like opera?" Arcee asked mischievously. She would have grinned if she could.
"Maybe not opera," Emirate Xaaron admitted ruefully, "but I do have season tickets to the astro-ballet."
The End
Author's Notes: There being an opera called The Firelord is a goofy reference to Avatar: The Last Airbender.
The Autobot Commonwealth is a term ganked from Animated, though the name is all they have in common, like with the Nebulon Republic.
Arcee being Autobot ambassador to Earth is based off two things: 1) this is relative peace, and she's ex-military, and ambassadors are often ex-military, and 2) in Marvel, Arcee was built on Earth specifically to make human feminists happy, so she probably stands a better chance of relating to humans than most Transformers do. This is why Xaaron says she is a natural around Nebulans, who are quite humanlike.
Kick-Off as Praxian is based off this loose chain of logic: 1) Kick-Off looks like Jazz. 2) Jazz looks sort of like Bluestreak and Prowl, in that he has his front car half on his chest as a bust, and he sometimes has door wings, though he sometimes doesn't, depending how he is drawn. 3) Prowl and Bluestreak are Praxians. Therefore, Kick-Off could also be Praxian, because he needs even more reasons to be angry at everything.
Ashling as a name is a joke reference to Magic: The Gathering, but when you have guys like Singe running around, it apparently acceptable on Nebulos to give children incendiary names. Aelius as a name is a pun on Galen.
The Suseians are originally from the Japanese version of Headmasters. The Andegans are originally from "Transformers in 3-D". The Eurythmans are originally from "Carnage in C Minor". The Poukai in this story come from Maori mythology and may be derived from the Haast's Eagle. The decompiler is somewhat conceptually based on the Swarm in G2. There are reasons for this.
Needlenose and Spinister are Double-Targetmasters, such that they can have two Nebulan partners at the same time, so Spinister, for example, can be bonded to the old Lord/Lady and the young upcoming Lord/Lady at the same time. Being binary bonded is shown to really screw with a Nebulan's head in canon. Zarak, for example, almost kills his only child as collateral damage in one of Scorponok's plans and barely realises what he is doing before it is too late. So it seemed plausible to me that such mindscrew could extend to one's love life. Moreover, it seems like it would lead to a lot of squick if parent and child both share a mind via binary bonding with the same alien robot warrior, hence why Ashling and Aelius really try not to think about this too much.
There are no sparks in Marvel. While I will import in concepts from other continuities that don't directly contradict Marvel canon (such as random alien species - we never see that they aren't there, so they could be), I don't see any particular need to import sparks into a Marvel-based story. So they just have souls, and most folks just have to accept on faith that they have them, because they don't have a glowy ball of light in their chests to prove it.