A blissful and a bit absent smile crossed his triangular face-plate as Swindle checked his main monitor – his bank account history displayed on it. Nothing boosted the merch-mech's mood more than looking at his income. Swindle used to do that every now and then, especially in the morning, although a quick glance at the evening gave him a good-night recharge and sweet recharge-visions. To be honest, any time was a good time for knowing that credits were coming his way.
Swindle would have gladly stared at the numbers some more, if not for an insisting 'ping' of his communicator. With a slightly annoyed exvent he logged off from his account and checked the incoming call. It could be some important customer with more credits, but no... It was only a voice-chat request from the Death's Head.
"Lockdown! Which rare circumstance do I owe this pleasant surprise call to?"
A potential customer was still a potential customer, even if the bounty-hunter tended to be outright… stingy. But whatever credits he was willing to spend, Swindle was willing to take them, so he went right into business mode – not that the merch-mech ever truly shut business mode down.
"Greetings Swindle, I have an offer for you but it is nothing we can safely discuss over the comms. I'm sending you coordinates, meet me there in two megacycles, if you can be here earlier, all the better."
Now, that was a surprise. Lockdown tended to be blunt and to the point but this was beyond brief and smelled like some sort of trap, however unlikely it was that a mech like Lockdown was actually playing along with some sort of ambush scheme. At least as long as there was no bounty on Swindle's helm. As far as he was aware of, there currently wasn't any, but still…
He quickly checked the Cyber-Net, better be sure than sorry.
oOo
In less than two megacycles the merchant-mech's ship was already docking at the Death's Head airlock.
The docking procedure went without a hitch as expected. What was not expected, was that Lockdown wasn't awaiting him on the other side. That was a new one.
Something was definitely up and Swindle considered for a brief moment to just return to his ship and fly off at full speed. But then the Death's Head was far better armed than his vessel was armored and Lockdown's ship was faster anyway.
Weapon ready, Swindle went to search for the elusive bounty-hunter. He had to be somewhere after all. Well, best to go for the bridge since Lockdown had sent his call likely from there. Though this was weird as well, from the bridge he could have sent an actual vid-call, so why had it been voice only?
Lockdown was not on the bridge, now that wasn't suspicious at all... So far, however, there had been no attempt of an ambush either. Whatever had happened to the bounty-hunter between their last chat and now, it didn't bother the sells-mech that much. But if the bounty-hunter had really disappeared that meant only one thing – a free shopping spree on the Death's Head! Swindle couldn't help but smile as he walked straight to the 'trophy room'.
"About time you show up!" The bounty-hunter's snarl pulled Swindle back from his daydreams of shameless looting.
Swindle rebooted his optics in surprise at the sight in front of him, then he rebooted them again. There Lockdown was, online and in the metal just…
"Don't you dare to laugh! Or I... won't pay you!" Lockdown growled.
That threat was enough to kill the manic giggle that had been shaking Swindle's vocalizer.
"Fine," he still couldn't help but smirk, "but pray tell me how did 'that' happen?" He gestured at 'that'.
"I was hunting down some bounty, fragger didn't know when to give up though, so I had to hand him over in pieces. And I thought to myself 'nobot will care if one or two pieces are missing' so I kept one of his mods and installed it. That creep was some sort of researcher specialized in organics, the mod looked actually quite useful, but it must have been damaged."
Swindle briefly thought that Lockdown's helm must have been damaged too since no sane bot would ever install an unknown, organic-based mod to his own frame before reading the manual or doing at least some research on that thing. Still the bounty-hunter was lucky, situations like that often resulted with mecha not only immobilized but also offline and in pieces. And Lockdown was only... stuck... in some white, sticky, organic mess attached to both walls of the room and also to the ceiling. Of the black, spiky mercenary in the middle were only helm and one servo visible under the white restrictions.
"Aww, and you called me, of all mechas, to help you out? I'm flattered."
"I have quite a number of enemies, and if nothing else, you at least can be paid not to spread this story. Get me out of… this," Lockdown cast the sticky webbing a disgusted glance, "and I'll share that last bounty with you, cash straight on the servo."
"You're paying with cash?" Swindle's big optics glimmered with sudden interest. 'Why didn't you say so earlier?" He walked a little closer checking the organic-trap from different angles. Not close enough to touch it, of course, that would be less than careless. "But tell me, my friend, how much are we talking here? 12,000? 15,000? You know that I like knowing the terms before I make a deal."
"No, we are talking about 23,000. That creep seriously fragged off, or freaked out, someone in Autobot high-command. But check the bounty note for yourself, the datapad is still on the workbench."
Oh, how lucky that Lockdown had suggested checking on the bounty! Thanks to that Swindle had a legitimate reason to turn away for a moment, hiding his beaming face-plate from the merc-mech's optics. 23,000 credits? Laying round somewhere on that ship? And the ship-owner disabled and helpless? That was almost too good to be true!
"Hey, you were right, this guy looks kinda nasty," Swindle joked from over the energon-stained workbench, trying to keep his excitement in check. "So, you had already collected those 23,000 credits? Did you count them? We should do that first, where did you say you keep them?"
Lockdown glared at Swindle rather pointedly: "So you can take them and run off? No such luck Swindle, I put the cash into the trunk of my altmode, so unless you get me out of here neither you nor me can get at it any time soon."
Swindle only broke into his defensive, fake laughter: "Where did you get that idea from? I'm here to help you. For, let's say... 75% of that bounty."
"50% and that is already pretty generous for barely having to do a thing."
Lockdown still kept the glare up, but Swindle knew he was in a rather desperate situation. There was no telling how durable this organic webbing actually was, and no guarantee that the Death's Head wouldn't be found by anybot else in the meantime. Even if the holographic camouflage was up, the ship's generators couldn't power it forever. And Lockdown had just said so himself, he had enemies a plenty, who would jump to any opportunity to get back at him. It was pretty telling that his first thought had been to call Swindle – the mech simply had no friends.
"60% and let's shake servos on that, hm? I mean, if only you had a free servo," his attempt on joking was totally ignored, the merc-mech apparently was not in the best of moods, no wonder.
"55% and that is my last word." Lockdown now outright growled, but Swindle knew it was all for show.
"57%, or, as you said yourself, you won't be able to enjoy your credits any time soon. Do we have a deal?"
The white, tattooed face sticking out of the organic web turned heated up, Swindle didn't know whether out of anger or embarrassment.
"OK, fine," the bounty-hunter finally agreed with a heavy exvent. "It's a deal, you greedy, little piece of scrap. Just remember to keep your mouth-plate shut afterwards."
The merchant cast him his million-credits smile: "Discretion is my policy."
"I thought it was 'no refunds'."
"Haha, that too."
He walked over, judged the web yet again and then unleashed his two laser-cannons with an ominous snap.
"What are you trying to..." Lockdown stared at the purple light of a loaded weapons far too close to his face-plate for his liking. He never finished, Swindle aimed at the sticky structure right over the mercenary's helm and fired.
"Primus fragging be damned, Swindle! Have you gone crazy? Stop that at once!"
"Hey, calm down, it worked, didn't it?" Swindle pointed to melted strands of webbing that had formerly connected Lockdown's cocoon to the ceiling.
"I'm not paying you if you destroy my ship!" The bounty-hunter snarled, nodding his helm in the direction of the hole that the shot had punched into the wall. "Try to be more subtle or I swear, the deal is off!"
The merch-mech didn't like the criticism, especially from Lockdown who definitely wasn't a master of subtlety himself either – his trophy room, with a collection of cut off frame-parts and dry energon stains everywhere, gave that away pretty quickly. Swindle shrugged, for 13,110 credits he could stop himself from commenting on that.
He pondered on other options for a moment and then just grabbed the bounty-hunter's servo – the one that wasn't wrapped with the white stuff. He pulled. The cocoon with Lockdown gave a bit but the effect was still pathetic. The web after all was still attached to the walls on both sides.
"Try harder," the mercenary ordered, he could probably touch the floor with his tied-up pedes by now.
"I would if you agreed to those 75%"
"57% is the deal you agreed to, Swindle, don't think you can haggle with putting up that half-afted performance!"
"Fine," the merchant let go, the restrains were loosened but far from undone. "I'll try another method."
Lockdown obviously wouldn't budge, at least not concerning the payment. But maybe there was a different way to make a little more money out of this whole situation? Swindle went over to the shelves with Lockdown's tools and trophies, pretending to be only interested in getting a suitable cutting tool. Some of those mods there looked expensive and Lockdown probably wouldn't even miss them. "I don't see anything useful in here," he chattered unnaturally loud, hoping that the other mech didn't hear the sound of the dimensional compartment on his chassis being opened. "But I think I have a towline at my ship. I'll go get it, hang on in there, I'll be right back."
Swindle was about to duck by Lockdown towards the exit, when he was suddenly tackled to the floor.
"Did you really think I wouldn't notice you snatching my Berulian neutrino amplifier? And would just let you walk out with it?"
"I thought I might rig something up with it to help you." Swindle wheezed out of his vents – Lockdown was heavy.
"Oh? Then you wanted to 'rig' something with the forcefield-generator and the Voxian fuel converter too?"
"Fine, I'll put them back, now let me back up!"
Lockdown shot him a glare that could be easily read as 'I've killed for smaller things' but being still trapped in the cocoon he didn't have much choice. He moved away from the merch-mech under him, or at least tried to but... Swindle's armor had come into contact with the sticky, organic substance when Lockdown had thrown himself at him. Now, the webbing had gotten attached to both of them, making it impossible for the mercenary to get off and gluing the merchant effectively in place.
Both of them stared at each other in silence for a few cycles as their situation slowly sunk in.
"Brilliant! Just brilliant!" Swindle would have thrown up his arms in exasperation, if he could so much as lift them.
"Do you have anything in your dimensional storage box that can get us out of here?" Lockdown tried to find a solution.
"I might! If I could open it, with this disgusting stuff smeared all over my frame and your lead-aft-hulk being plastered all over me!"
"Stop wriggling, you're making it worse!"
"I'm not wriggling, I'm trying to transform!" Of course that only ended with the white stuff getting under his armor and between his seams. Swindle shivered with sheer disgust. It so wasn't worth those 13,110 credits, credits that now were even more unlikely to get to him anyway! "It's all your fault! And I demand reparations!"
"All my fault that you attempted to make off with my mods?" Lockdown barked out a joyless laugh. "You better think of something to get us out here fast now, Swindle, because I am losing my patience."
The merchant rolled his big, purple optics theatrically. "Do you expect your threats to work? Really? Under these circumstances?"
He could see those red, cold optics narrowing.
"Let's see. What if I do that..."
Instead of finishing, the mech tillted his head to the side, just enough for one of the spikes on his neck to dig into Swindle's face-plate.
"Stop that!" The small merch-mech struggled to escape by shifting into a more comfortable position but the only thing that had changed was that stupid spike now painfully pressing at his left audio-receptor. "Seriously, stop it! I'm trying to think here!"
"You better think harder because after I'm done with annoying you, I might get hungry. And I am currently contemplating how long I will be able to stave off starvation by sucking your life-energon out of your neck cabling."
Was Lockdown joking? Swindle stared at the grim, pale face-plate above him. Nope, the mercenary was not joking at all.
"I might have an idea," the arms dealer exvented, "but... it will probably cost you extra." Lockdown didn't even deem that worthy a response apparently, so Swindle continued: "Starscream is owing me a favor, I will contact him and…"
"No!" Swindle was taken aback by the vehemence as Lockdown's engine outright growled at the idea. "Are you insane, to call the worst backstabber in the entire Decepticon army over while neither of us is able to so much as move a digit?"
"He actually likes buying his backstabbing weapons from me, you know? He is far too smart to… wait a nanoklik, you took a bounty on him, didn't you?"
"He'll shoot me on sight."
Swindle let out an engine roar. "I'm guessing that Ramjet, Sunstorm, Blitzwing and Lugnut also won't be too happy to see you." This time Lockdown didn't need to answer, Swindle had met those Cons in the brig aboard the Autobot Elite Guard ship – every single one of them brought there by a certain hunter. "You just keep driving bots away, don't you?" He mocked, but to be true, the thought of calling any of those crazies made Swindle's plating crawl. "Maybe at least your ex-partner would be willing to help?"
For just a moment Lockdown seemed genuinely surprised: "Hangnail? I don't think so. I took him apart for parts."
„He is offline?" That explained why the mech had never come by to pick up the AF300 rifle he had preordered and prepaid. "Aw, he was such a good customer."
Apparently there was not a single Decepticon Lockdown hadn't run over to collect a bounty. Where did this leave them?
After a moment of uncomfortable silence Swindle spoke up again: "Then how about that newbie Autobot ninja, what was his name again? Howl? Crawl?"
"Prowl," the merc-mech corrected, sounding somewhat bitter. "And he told me he'll kill me, if I ever call him again. Seriously Swindle, an Autobot? In the best case they'll lock both of us up and confiscate all your merchandise and my trophies."
"But you worked for Sentinel before," Swindle pointed out.
"That won't stop him from having both of us publicly executed!"
"So not only you have no friends but half of this galaxy is out to get you? And you had to drag ME into this?" By now Swindle's voice was starting to give away his burning frustration.
"Why don't you call one of your customers?"
"Are you kidding me? How professional would I look with you stuck on top of my chassis!"
No, no customers – they needed someone, who was competent, preferably someone who would be distracted by the organic nature of the webbing for long enough to not rob Swindle blind. And if Lockdown would get shot in the process, well, too bad. The hunter had it coming for being so annoying!
"I got it! Blackarachnia! She probably knows more about this stuff than anybot else!" Now it was up to Swindle to glare. "Please don't tell me you are on her 'Kill On Sight' list too."
Lockdown thought for a long, long moment, leaving Swindle to wait in anticipation.
"We didn't exactly part ways favorably last time we met, but it was her who zapped me… it is very unlikely that she would rush to our aid," the mech admitted grudgingly. The fact that the femme had gotten one over him last time obviously sat wrong with him. Swindle didn't care, he had enough.
"Perfect! I'm calling her. We'll offer her half of your half of the bounty and she'll be here in no time."
It looked like Lockdown was about to protest but he just nodded reluctantly, Swindle at once linked into the Death Head's communication systems for the necessary signal boost and waited with held vents for the low notification ping that his comm call was accepted.
"Yes? Who is there?" Blackarachnia picked up the call almost instantly, which hopefully meant she was close by.
"Why if it isn't my favorite half-organic ladybot? Blackarachnia! It's been a while! How are you doing, sweetspark?"
"Oh, it's you..." The voice on the other side sounded disappointed at best. "What do you want, Swindle?"
"Can't an old, Decepticon friend just call to hear your pretty voice?"
"We're far from being friends," she cut him off, "and you're not calling anyone unless you want something. So, get to the point or I'm hanging up. I'm kinda busy, you see."
From Lockdown's deadly glare Swindle knew it was time to discuss the offer.
"Hang on, pretty! Because I have a special offer, just for you. There is somewhere you need to be – and I'm telling you, it's easy credits!"
"Swindle, I told you I'm not a playbot for your sick, organic-fetishist customers to hire!"
"It's nothing like that, I swear on my merchant´s honor! I just found myself in kind of a sticky situation here and I need your expertise in…"
"I'm hanging up now."
"Oh, for crying out loud! There was an accident with organic webbing material and we need you to tell us how to dissolve this mess!" Lockdown barged into the comm-channel.
There was a tense silence, then finally the femme spoke again, her voice low and full of suspicion: "Who else is there with you, Swindle?"
"Just my customer."
"It's me, Lockdown."
From yet another pause they both knew Blackarachnia was checking the newest bounties on the Cyber-Net. Swindle couldn't stop himself from adding: "I know what you're thinking but he did not put a gun to my helm."
"I didn't have to," the hunter cut in, shushing the merchant with one vicious glare, "I just offered him credits," a quiet 'ouff' escaped Swindle's mouth-plates as the bot on top mercilessly pressed him to the floor. "but he failed me. Now I make the same offer to you. It's a fair trade."
"How many credits are we talking about?" The femme inquired, still giving no sign she was even considering to help out.
"5,945!" Swindle replied, before Lockdown could even open his mouth.
"That is... an oddly specific number."
"That is what Lockdown will have left after my fee has been deducted," the merch-mech purred, sure that Blackarachnia was intrigued enough to consider the deal. "We're sending you coordinates."
"Alright. Don't touch anything before I arrive." With that she cut the line.
"A little late for that." Lockdown commented drily.
oOo
Another megacycle had passed and the spider-lady was still not on the Death's Head. Lockdown had been acting awfully quiet while his frame had been uncomfortably heavy, and all the smalltalk attempts from Swindle had ended up sort of awkward. Talkative as he usually was, the merchant had been one step from starting to chatter about the cosmic background radiation.
"What is keeping that femme? She can't possibly be still checking whether there are any bounties on her helm?" Lockdown finally lost his patience.
"Which is… odd, actually. I mean, there IS no bounty on her helm. I thought that aft Chinnimus Prime had bounties on about every active Con out there."
"Heh, not on that one… You didn't hear that from me, Swindle but there are rumors she is his ex."
"No way! So that mech is what? Sentimental?" Swindle chuckled.
"Pit no, turned out he hadn't seen her after her 'accident' and when they met next time, he was so grossed out by her organic tissue he only didn't faint because he was too busy running away screaming."
Swindle burst out laughing, and Lockdown couldn't help but join in, at first with only an awkward cackle but contagious as it was, it transformed into uncontrollable giggle. Soon the two mechs were shaking with laughter, sending pleasant vibrations between their glued-together frames. It didn't look like they were able to stop themselves, and yet...
"What's so funny, boys?" A cold fembot's voice asked and the laughter died down within a klik.
"We uh… just talked about what a complete fool that Sentinel Prime is." Swindle smiled at the femme winningly.
And Lockdown nodded hastily.
"Funny, 'cause I could swear I heard something about running away screaming." She shot both of them a judgmental look moving her four optics from one to the other, the spider-claws on her back ready to attack. "My organic senses are not all that bad."
"What can I say? That mech just doesn't know what is good. I mean there are tons of mecha who would pay handsomely for…." Swindle didn't get any further because his face-plate got violently shoved into the floor by Lockdown.
"So the deal, can you get us out of this?"
"Of course I can." She crossed her arms. "This is a spider web, slightly different from my own but still works the same. The important questions is," a shadow of a smile danced across her purple lip-plates, she stared down at them as if cherishing this moment, "what did you two intend to use if for? I thought you boys would be smarter than to play with white, sticky stuff without any... protection?"
"That was just a minor mod malfunction," Lockdown protested at once.
"And I would like to stress out at this point that he didn't purchase it from me. All my merchandise comes tested with a manual and optional installation assistance for a minor extra fee." Swindle remarked smartly, for which Lockdown shoved his face-plate into the flooring again.
Blackarachnia only shrugged: "Whatever you want to call it."
Swindle really wished he could rub his burning face-plate, if there was any scratch on it he would charge Lockdown all his remaining 5,945 credits for reparations!
The spider-lady crouched down to the two, so both could see her face-plate from a very close distance. "First, I'll need to make sure the webbing is no longer sticky."
"And how are you gonna do… ack?!" Swindle's vents suddenly began to act up when the femme blew some strange powder over the two of them.
"You never knew when to stop talking," she mocked.
"Tell me about it." Lockdown grumbled, while Blackarachnia made a short deal of the strings holding the cocoon to the walls. The two mechs were almost free. Almost...
"Now you only have to get your sorry afts to the washrack. A hot decontamination shower will dissolve the molecular structure of this substance. Stay in there 'till it washes off completely," she ordered.
"How are we even supposed to get up like this?"
"Oh, you don't have to." Now the femme's smirk turned outright sinister. With a swift kick she sent the cocoon rolling towards the door. "You're welcome!"
oOo
It took almost two more megacycles until the last of the webbing had molten of their frames and out of their joints – two miserable megacycles in a pit-hot washrack close to overheating and, even worse, still in the company of the sourly bounty-hunter.
"Just so you know, I want my pay as soon as you can bring the cash out!" Swindle coughed solvent steam out of his venting system as they shoved each other for exiting the washrack first.
"I'd have expected that Blackarachnia would be waiting out here for us for the same reason," Lockdown remarked, while considering whether even to pay Swindle for his 'non-helpfulness' during this entire ordeal.
"She is a femme! She likely got distracted by some other shiny trinket in the meantime," Swindle snorted. If she didn't stick around, she wouldn't get any of the cash, it was as easy as that.
"Other shiny trinket?!" Lockdown repeated as suddenly something clicked in his processor. "Slag!"
He rushed to his trophy room, Swindle followed as calmly as ever. He didn't even reach the entrance and he already heard a string of ugly swearwords coming from the inside.
"She took my titanium switchblades! And my cadeesian hacking adapter box, too! That glitch!"
Swindle had to admit that the femme had a good optic for expensive stuff.
"At least you didn't have to pay her. That reminds me though: My pay!"
It was pretty easy to tell what was going on in Lockdown's processor right now – but the bounty-hunter couldn't just get out of their agreement – he must have known that keeping up a business relationship with Swindle for the future was more important than saving on some cash right now. Lockdown, nevertheless looked like he was wringing innermost energon from his own fuelpump as he handed the credits over. Swindle quickly counted the chips, it was all there – all 13,110 credits. A wide smile spread across the merchant mech's face.
"A pleasure making business with you," he purred stuffing the case with the chips into his personal storage dimension. "It's been a blast but I gotta fly. See you around!"
"Didn't you forget about something, Swindle?"
"Oh, yes!" The merchant turned around, still beaming. "Thank you!" He reached out his servo to shake Lockdown's... hook?
The bounty-hunter's optics skipped between the grining face-plate and the offered servo. Then, with a move quicker than lightning, the mech grabbed the merchant's forearm and pulled Swindle close, very, very close.
"My weapons! Now!"
"Oh, right! I still had that neutrino amplifier." Swindle's smile never slipped as he opened the storage compartment again to sift through, finally pulling out the item he had been searching for. "One neutrino amplifier, coming up."
"That is not a berulian mod, that is a gagaxian one and half of those wires look rusted!" The bounty-hunter snarled.
"Huh? How did that happen now?" Swindle chuckled nervously and stuffed the mod back into the compartment.
Before he could pull out anything else, Lockdown's left hand shot forward and emerged inside the dimensional compartment.
"Hey!" The merchant squeaked and jumped up. "That's my private parts! Take your servo out of there!"
"There is my private stuff inside!"
"That doesn't give you the right to stick your digits inside me!"
Lockdown's angry face shifted into some unknown expression, something between disgust and embarrassment: "You just had to make this awkward, hadn't you?"
The merch-mech only squirmed as the bounty-hunter finally fished the missing mods out and let the compartment snap close.
"And don't forget, Swindle, our agreement includes you not venting a single word to any mechanism about this whole event."
"Yeah, yeah, as if I had any interest in my customers learning about this entire debacle. Shouldn't you be more worried about that femme running her vocalizer?"
"Heh, with which of my clients would she talk to anyway? Sentinel?" Lockdown barked a laugh.
"Yeah, good one." Swindle gave a mocking wave as he slipped back into the airlock to his own spacecraft.
oOo
A few megacycles later, at the Autobot base on Earth, Prowl wondered why Blackarachnia of all mechanisms had sent him a folder with photos. As his curiosity finally won over suspicion, he risked to take a look.