Title: Even the Machine Soul Bleeds
Continuity: G1 Cartoon
Characters: Alkali, Fleetwind
Rating: G
Genre: Angst/Romance
Warnings: Artcrime. Drugs.
Word Count: +2000
Summary: Fleetwind the cowardly Seeker consults Alkali the chemical expert to resolve a perplexing issue when his emotions get the better of him.
Fleetwind wished his options did not have to be this way. Alkali was very, very dangerous. However, he had given his wing-mates instructions on what to do if he did not return in a certain amount of time. Fleetwind would never get a straight answer anywhere else, and with his head spinning into a death spiral, he needed some clean flight paths. His problem was emotional, and she was an expert on emotion but not an expert on psychological warfare, as most Decepticons in that field were. Screwing with minds was an art for her, not a day job.
Alkali's gallery was filled with as many macabre wonders as the tales had led him to expect. The war had been good to her art by giving her many Autobot enemies to use as blank canvases and even some Decepticons, too. Fleetwind suppressed a twinge of envy, thinking about what the war had done to aerial dance and how the fighting had all but slaughtered his art. He needed her assistance now. Jealously offending the one about to examine his chemical balance would do him no good.
Alkali was all smiles when she greeted him with a wave, expecting him for his appointment like a spike trap expected spilled fuel. She whisked over to his side and sized him up in a glance. He could hear the inhalation of her gas pumps; she was sniffing him. She paused, her pose stiff, and stated, "You reek of Constructicon."
The words came quickly, and they were true enough that they would taste of truth to her. Fleetwind explained, "They are assigned as medics at my station for now. All warriors go through them as a matter of course for doing our jobs." He knew that Alkali and the Constructicons had some feud, though he was hazy on the specifics, but his answer was innocuous, much as he was.
She leaned in, and he could feel the suction of air. Then, Alkali snorted and pulled back. She looked at him with another considering glance and acquiesced, "You smell like you're made of tinfoil. You'd be in medical often enough for repairs, fragile little thing that you are."
Fleetwind nodded eagerly but not too eagerly, just enough for truth. They said she could smell fear, but he had no reason to make it easy for her by over-acting.
Alkali accepted that slice of the truth, garnished with her own interpretations. She headed towards a side room and waved him along. Fleetwind paused only to look at one of her artworks: 'Swallowing Sky', a Seeker ever-falling, terror to span the clouds in his optics, terror caused by her chemical mastery. Was Fleetwind really wise to follow her, with that design line-mirror augur of what could happen to him on display? Fleetwind made firm his resolve. If he did not learn what was wrong with him now, he might find a far more permanent problem besetting him. His wing-mates could retrieve Fleetwind from here, if need be, and purge the chemicals from him before they killed him. 'Swallowing Sky' obviously had no such contingency plan, the wretched fool.
She led Fleetwind into a little work-room that much resembled a medic's private office. The chair, however, was anything but standard, looking like a barstool. Alkali caught him looking at the piece of furniture and explained, glowing with quiet pride, "That's an antique from Seltzer's first place."
"What happened to it?" Fleetwind inquired politely, showing interest in a possession she obviously prized. He also bought himself time to study the layout. The workroom was surprisingly scentless. Perhaps Fleetwind was just too used to the work of other chemists, like Mixmaster, who tended toward the sulphurous side. Why should Alkali not keep her workshop clean of both grime and air pollution? She was clearly sensitive to odours.
"We firebombed it," Alkali answered coolly.
Fleetwind scrambled. Had Seltzer been a friend? Had he walked into a trap? Fleetwind kept his expression neutral and said simply, "I see." There, he was not ignoring her, he had heard her, but he doubted that she could hold such a bland statement against him. Fleetwind was a just a Seeker. Surely, she did not expect him to mourn some likely neutral or Autobot sympathiser?
Apparently, the matter was nothing to her. Alkali waved dismissively and directed, "Sit down. Now, about payment? If I can record an emotion off you that's unique enough, that's the payment right there. Otherwise, it'll be the credits I stated when you booked the appointment."
"I am just a Seeker, Journeyman. Nothing special," Fleetwind demurred. He certainly did not need chememos, artists who drugged their victims like Alkali, after him for an emotion they could get from any Seeker. Life was complicated enough. Fleetwind was here to simplify a problem by removing extraneous variables.
Alkali tsked and mused, "Ach, don't be so sure. I can tell already that you've got a great capacity for restrained terror."
Fleetwind had no answer for that and let her go to work. She was brisk and business-like in action. He reminded her of the more competent and focused medics he had known. Alkali was not going off on any laughing tirades. She did not even make a point of using a rusted hacksaw for theatrics. Alkali drew fluid from his fuel tanks, keeping the glittering drops in clean vials. She also tapped his hydraulics and scraped samples of his lubricants from his joints. Fleetwind was a little puzzled when she went for the pneumatics, and it must have shown, because she reassured, "Need to check your gas concentrations. Even gasses can act as emotive transmitters."
That explanation satisfied him. Fleetwind did not know the specific uses she doubtless meant, but he well knew the use of gas as a weapon of war. War and art had an excellent amount of overlap.
Alkali worked efficiently, and it was not long before she took a sidelong look at her client. Amusement curving her mouth, she reported, "For starters, you've had some synth recently."
He let out a rattling chuckle and nodded. At that point, his companion's drink had looked safer than his own, so he had stolen that drink, synth and all. The winds had blown colour, vibrant as an aurora, that night, and the rustle on his wings had smelled of sweetest kerosene. He suppressed a shiver; he did not need another reminder of what has gotten him into this quagmire.
"I figured you'd know about that. Now, I'm picking up some really faint traces," Alkali said and pursed her lips thoughtfully. She ran a few more tests. Antennae arching above her head, the chemist scowled and pulled back after running quite a few diagnostic batteries. Alkali said, pouting, "You were hit with an aphrodisiac about a year back, but it's so heavily degraded now that I can barely identify the chemical family, let alone who might have made it. I'm just picking it based on traces of its by-products."
"I was aware of that," Fleetwind said. He was aware. Fleetwind made a point of being aware of that sort of thing. Focusing on the fact that his sudden lust came out of a can helped to kill unwanted attraction.
"Yeah? To each his own. Your base has been fuelling you on low-grade swill, but that's to be expected," Alkali snorted. Her reaction was cool and without interest.
Fleetwind was sure that she had seen stranger. His business was not to be one of those who were stranger. He wanted to be as thoroughly uninteresting and unremarkable as possible. Fleetwind folded his hands over his knee and leaned forward, wings twitching. Then, he asked, "Would either of those cause any emotional aberration now?"
Alkali laughed, "Now? Ach, no. Synth doesn't even touch the emotional circuitry, just the perceptive and sensory pathways, and the other stuff is long decayed. Looks like a quick-burn blend. You get a new winger in the barracks lately?"
Fleetwind paused. That question was a rather peculiar one to ask, and he tried to think why she might. However, his assignment was on the base's record, and he had no reason to lie. Fleetwind said, "No, it has been thankfully quiet."
Alkali snorted again and replied, "No? All right. Well, you know that you're in love, yeah?"
Fleetwind simply stared at her, a bit stunned, and muttered, "Can't be. He's dangerous." He could not be. No. Never. Fleetwind would have noticed something that important, that hazardous, that blinding.
"Ach, danger's as good a turn-on as any," she said and shrugged.
"Not to me," he replied fiercely, optics flashing. Fools could have all the danger they wanted, and let it take their heads. Fleetwind was happy with poor, scorned safety in its many guises.
"Sure, think you're different. Everyone does. They've done studies. They had subjects talk to a moderately attractive confederate in a dangerous situation and a not dangerous situation. They found the confederate much more attractive in the dangerous setting," Alkali explained. She leaned against a work table, hands grappling the edge.
"That's silly," Fleetwind said immediately.
"Not so much as you might think," Alkali corrected. "A dangerous situation creates an arousal stimulus. Usually it's interpreted as something like 'run away' or 'make with the machine guns'. However, you toss someone moderately attractive in, and suddenly perception's calling that someone a lot hotter than he or she really is. Apprentice's study."
He raised a hand to his forehead and said softly, "I suppose that explains High Command's legion of admirers."
"Bingo," she said, clicking her tongue. Alkali grinned and clapped ironically. "So he or she's at least a little cute, right?"
Fleetwind thought about that. Well, it was always nice to be on a medic's good side, and the fellow was a very skilled medic. He seemed to retain some vestigial sense of sensibility, rare for an engineer. He certainly did not go around bragging. It was not, really, what Fleetwind would normally call attractive, but it was something. Fleetwind admitted, "I suppose."
"Hold that for a minute," Alkali directed. She snatched up a few sets of electrodes and scattered them across his body.
"What?" Fleetwind asked, not quite making the request a demand. His optics widened, and he was startled at the sudden brandishing of medical equipment. Why was he still surprised by that sort of thing? Sudden medical equipment was a worrisome thing to become used to, though.
"You're in love, and you desperately wish you weren't. That's pretty special. All-natural, too," Alkali explained and stripped off the electrodes, her recording work done already. She snatched up a datapad from her work table, fingers flickering over the buttons, and held it out to him. The screen showed a picture of a delicate female Autobot, clad in that morbid energon pink that they so favoured. "She'll look good wearing unwanted love when I drug her up based on your record. Interrogation burned out her higher processes, but her emotions work just fine."
Fleetwind sagged a little, wings drooping, and said hoarsely, "You don't reveal your sources, do you?" Along with an unwanted attraction, added to the list of things he never needed was 'chememos tracking him down for source material'.
"Ach, do I look like a third rate apprentice? Of course not!" Alkali snapped. She was perhaps madly offended, but she was mostly amused. Then, Alkali's countenance turned shrewd yet predatorily welcoming. She offered, "You know, if that love is hurting you this much, I could do something about it." Alkali selected a pink elixir from the racks and held it out to him. "Make it go away. Maybe forever."
Fleetwind leapt from the chair and recoiled. The move was a bad one, but the matter bearing down upon him was all too much to handle, and he could come up with no better action in the short time allotted him.
Her smile did not waver, even as he bolted for the door. Perhaps the action was rude, but he had said more than enough already. Fleetwind could hear her voice, even as he sped past the frozen statues. Funny, her voice sounded like it came from the bar, even though she was in that back room. Alkali said, "Guess you want that love, after all, even if you think you don't. I'll let you know when pinkie's done."
The End
Author's Note: Fleetwind belongs to my friend Jaylynik. He is used here with permission. This is an old fanfic of mine, written 2006-09-10, and mostly just tossed up here to collect my fanfics in one place.