"Four crates of overcharged plasma rounds, check; five ion rifles, check; one Volatile Wormhole Contain-"
Swindle paused over his clipboard, optics distracted from the delivery contents by a sharp glimmer of orange twinkling out of a corner of them. Lowering the board, he leaned in over the stacks of crackling rounds and peered in between the rows, narrowly missing singed eyeridges from stray lightning bolts leaping up from the ammo.
"Hey, Chop!"
The red spider turned towards Swindle's voice with a more annoyed look than usual, calling one of his servov Minicons back into his shoulder joint while it was in the middle of counting his payment.
With a glare harsh enough for four optics (convenient, considering the number staring over at him), Swindle held up a servo with a glowing digit. "You trying to slip something past me?"
Two of Chop Shop's optics rolled while the others shuttered. "Nah, mate, your processor's just glitching like it always is."
"Funny," Swindle said humourlessly, twirling the glow on his digit as he strided towards Chop Shop. "Except I remember pretty well what happened the last time I let you slip by some unlisted items in one of my shipments."
Chop Shop's fangs appeared, propping out of his insufferable smirk. "Ya' sure it's not your aft that remembers it?"
As a matter of fact, Swindle's aft did still sting from where an Enforcer decided to brand him with a taser following the last 'random container search' at the Iacon outpost (and the dormant Scraplets they found inside said container). He resisted the urge to rub at his rear plates, distracting his servos by fiddling with the strange orange ring as sarcasm took root in his voice. "Oh, what a damn pity such comedic talent is wasted on a glorified errand boy!"
Chop Shop's smirk soured, and his top optics narrowed. "Y'know, I could easily just give all my discounts to your brother-"
"Like the Pit you will!" Swindle yelled, pointing the ring at the spider in protest. "Payday can't even tell a damn shanix from a unit!"
As his anger boiled, Chop Shop couldn't help but laugh. "Chill your cores, Swindle. I'll talk with the delivery drones, find out what it is..." Now it was his lower optics that narrowed, squinting at the orange band on Swindle's hand. "Probably just an iron sight that fell off..." he mused, switching around to find the drones in their unfortunate habit of wandering to Primus-knows where.
"Yeah, you better..." Swindle grumbled as the ring slid onto his longest digit, fitting snugly around it. Now left alone in the warehouse, he held it close to his optic; taking in the radioactive shine and the unfamiliar symbol on its surface.
Pulling his hand back again, staring at it from a distance, he thought it went quite well with his armour. His vanity was what saved him from getting slammed in the faceplate by a sudden blinding light streaming out from it.
When his optics stopped burning in their sockets, there was a very ugly face looking at him. He would have thought Chop Shop had returned early if it wasn't for the distinct orange hue, or the wavering light that proved it was only a hologram.
"Give... the ring..." Six horns clicked together as the projected beast hissed at Swindle, curling a gnarled hand out towards him and almost phasing through his body entirely.
Swindle tried to act like he wasn't on the urge of leaking coolant everywhere. "Uh, I have a strict 'no deals with scary light shows' policy, so no." Even when he used his most polite tone, the creature wasn't up for negotiating.
"GIVE IT TO ME!" The orange light streamed outwards, blooming into a blinding supernova that almost swallowed Swindle whole. The entire warehouse seemed to burn in a blaze that snuffed out after a nanoklick, yet Swindle swore he could feel heat on his armour. Once he'd taken his servos away from his faceplate he saw the projection was still snarling at him, beamed out from the ring itself.
"W-What the frag?!"
"Last warning, little machine," the creature snapped. "Remove the ring... or I'll rip it off you."
Swindle glanced at the ring, then the beast, then all around wondering how the Pit someone hadn't coming running from all the noise. Then he made some very poor decisions like he usually did- in this case it was bursting out in laughter.
"Yeah, okay, 'cause a little hologram is the stuff of true nightmares around here. Unless you've got a Sparkeater lurking around nearby, you're gonna have to try a little harder, buddy."
His optics closed for another round of chuckles, which he ended up choking on as something rammed up into his chin.
"Is THIS hard enough?!" the beast boomed, shaking the air with his voice as if he was just a few inches away.
Swindle's HUD eventually cleared of glitches after his unceremonial landing upside down in the middle of a now-broken pallet stack. He was just a few inches away.
"You... but you were... and the ring... and..." Swindle could only splutter, scurrying backwards on his hands as the glowing creature paced forwards. He was starting to regret deactivating his weapons to lower the risk of getting scanned and stopped.
"Larfleeze doesn't have to make sense to you, machine," he snarled, almost scarring the ground with his approaching steps. Well, at least the thing had a name. Swindle would know who to swear revenge on from the Allspark.
"Uh, Larfleeze, that's an... interesting name," he stuttered as his back hit against solid wall, leaving him trapped on the floor. "Y'know I had a girlfriend called Lightfreeze once, maybe you know-"
"Shut up and hand over that-!" As Larfleeze lunged an arm towards him, his fist slammed into something solid and sent him falling forwards from momentum. As if glass had stretched out between them, the creature was squashed against a shimmering orange forcefield.
"What the...?" Swindle blinked, certain he was seeing things even before he noticed the one ring suddenly multiply into ten over all his digits. Tendrils of light leeched out from all of them, projecting the shield in front of him. The more Swindle marveled at the ring, the more solid the wall of light seemed to be, almost completely blurring out Larfleeze's ugly mug and the fury spreading across it. He pushed back onto his peds with a smug grin.
"Aww, big scary baboon isn't so scary without his pwecious wing, huh?" Swindle waggled his digits and grinned wider, almost starting to dance before he realised the wall only reached a certain height- and that Larfleeze could easily jump higher than it. As he landed his feet came within striking distance of Swindle's chin and he only just managed to roll out of the way as the light wall and the extra rings fizzled out into nothing. Though he was caught off-guard by the lack of metal crumpling under his two-pronged toes, Larfleeze recovered quickly enough to kick Swindle in his nearest servo. Forced sideways, Swindle's other servo flew upwards with a flurry of orange bullets shooting out from the remaining ring on his middle digit. Most missed Larfleeze but one managed to home in on his chest, leaving a tiny scorch mark on the fabric covering it.
So the ring either had a mind of its own or it just knew Swindle was in the mood to shoot someone. No wonder Larfleeze wanted it so badly.
Well, Swindle wanted it more.
"Get your own damn... magic jewellery, you freak!" he yelled, trying to will something else into the ring as he paced backwards. Light dribbled out slowly, then congealed in the air as the outline of something heavy. Larfleeze was practically drooling rage over his horns, digging at the ground, about to charge at him...
He cleared half the distance when the hammer crushed into his side and sent him flying into the Volatile Wormhole Container, almost knocking it over and sucking the entire spaceport into a black hole in the process.
As Larfleeze groaned, stuck in the alien-shaped dent in the Container casing, that gave Swindle an idea.
The contents of the container were everything needed to create a stable wormhole to be integrated into a Space Bridge gate- electromagnetic matter with non-uniform refractive indexes, letting light curve around it. If the materials were suddenly exposed to air, they would merge to form only a temporary wormhole that would disappear after a few nanoklicks-
While Swindle tried to remember all his academy physics lessons, Larfleeze was cracking his bones back into place. In a sudden rush of panic, he pushed another volley of orange bullets through the ring to connect with the container casing. Larfleeze paused, watching the lights fly right past him with an almost condescending look before they burned through the metal. There was a hiss that blew up into a whine as a vortex blossomed into existence, peeling the container into shreds as it sucked at Larfleeze's back. His mouth dropped open in a screech, but the pull was too strong to let him dash towards Swindle- instead he was left struggling futilely along the floor as he scratched along it.
Swindle couldn't help a little wave of goodbye with his ring hand as the alien went flying to Primus only knew where. The reality rip took a few other crates and a section of a wall along with it before the swirls finally faded, collapsing back in on itself with a low boom that shook Swindle's frame.
Chop Shop was making his way to the entrance when he noticed the new opening in the wall, and then decided to use it as a shortcut. Both him and the Minicon perched on his shoulder stared at the warehouse-turned-warzone as Swindle admired his new accessory.
"What the Pit happened here?!" the spider asked, kicking aside a few stirring lumps of rubble on the ground. Swindle was jolted out of his trance, and he put on a look of outrage for turning towards Chop Shop.
"You tell me- out of nowhere the VWC malfunctioned and blew the hole you're standing in through my damn wall!" he claimed, gesturing towards the Dinobot-sized opening and, as usual, refusing to take any responsibility for it.
Chop Shop's Minicon started to root through the rubble as his master peered curiously at the broken outline, and where the VWC used to be sitting. "But... the supplier swore they weren't any glitches-"
"And my carrier said I was her favourite kid, yet Payday was the one who got an apartment in Iacon for his sparkday," Swindle huffed with servos on his waist, tactfully hiding his ring hand from view. "Life's full of disappointments."
One row of optics darted down at where the orange glow hovered, but thankfully all Chop Shop did next was shake his helm. "Well, Swindle, it was a Volatile Wormhole Container, what the Pit where you expecting? Damn miracle it didn't explode in transit..." He walked forward and slapped a clipboard into Swindle's chest. "Anyway, quit your moaning, I've solved the mystery. Apparently the ring got put under 'Miscellaneous' on an entirely different page."
As Swindle flipped through to the last page, ring hand resting on the edge of the board, Chop Shop eyed it curiously. "If we're heading back, we might as well take that off your hands-"
Swindle slapped the board down and backed away, as if he'd just offered to sell his T-Cog on the black market. He forced his guard to lower at Chop Shop's raised eyeridge appraising him. "No, no, that's alright..." Swindle said, trying to keep his twirling nonchalant as his hidden optics filled with a reflection of orange light. "I think I'll hold onto it."