Chapter 9 summary: Stephanie puts Silverbolt's idea into practice and deals with Drag Strip. Continued from Chapter 7. Title inspired by Taipan Kiryu.
Interlude : Romeo Must Die
When the request came over the communicator they had given their director, Drag Strip was inclined to refuse. The Seekers – all six of them – had said something about stormflying later on in the day, which was fine for them but wasn't weather Drag Strip wanted to be caught in.
At least, not unless he had Autobots to harass or teammates to play with. But Dead End was on watch, which meant he monitored screens when anyone looked his way and read through an e-book otherwise, and Wildrider, who hadn't been called for, was halfway through Maximum Overdrive and didn't want to leave. So Drag Strip had started to say that he would do it another time, when Tony mentioned that they needed to get some close-ups of him. "And please try to be here soon," he said. "You'll need to be in makeup as well."
The director called it "makeup" through long habit, but Drag Strip thought of it as a good polishing session – humans going over his chassis with brushes and rags and soft buffing pads, touching up paint, cleaning out his wheel-wells, using rubbing alcohol on his glass, until his frame gleamed smooth as enamel and bright as a mirror. He always looked dazzling afterwards, like part of the sun fallen to earth.
And the best part was that it was all perfectly legit. No Autobot could interrupt – which wasn't the case when the Stunticons had previously demanded cleaning or repairs from other human facilities. So Drag Strip left the base shortly afterwards, looking forward to being taken care of and fussed over. Close-ups were good too; if that was all they'd be filming, perhaps he wouldn't need to do any scenes with the Aerialbots.
Who were all still active, though it wasn't for lack of trying on Drag Strip's part. He'd switched a loaded gun for an empty one the day before, but he hadn't realized that one of the human crew checked all the props before the cameras started rolling. The substitution was discovered, though Stephanie said nothing to him or the 'bots. He guessed she didn't want to scare them and was too intimidated by him to take him to task about it.
Oh well, next time I'll keep the gun in subspace until it's time to make the switch.
Clouds blanketed the sky and Drag Strip sensed the change in the air, which felt thick and hotter than usual, but he could always tell the crew to turn on one of the big fans when his polishing began. He drove on to the site at his usual speed, noticed the three Constructicons poring over a blueprint – probably how to protect the sets from the worst of the rain – and slid into a smooth perfect sideways halt just outside the makeup room.
That was a large shed about as makeshift as a Constructicon would ever let himself get away with, but it was large enough for Megatron to stand in, and there were plenty of mirrors. Whenever Dead End wasn't being filmed he could be found before the mirrors, admiring himself in a sad way, probably contemplating how his flawless finish would turn to rust eventually. Drag Strip, having no such hang-ups, just admired himself. Though his attention was drawn away from the mirrors when one of the crew asked if he would transform and get up on the blocks so that they could make sure his undercarriage was clean.
"Why? Do I have to do a flip?"
"We might need one," Tony said from the door. "But if you want to get to work right away, that's fine."
Work can wait, Drag Strip decided. For now, cleaning and proper attention. He transformed and rolled up on to the blocks, a primitive replacement for a proper car hoist, but they allowed the other human to wriggle under him and set to work on his undercarriage. He wondered where the rest of the crew were; he felt like getting a fresh coat of polish and wax.
No reason I shouldn't, he thought. There were no other 'cons to share his cleaning session – for some reason the Seekers had passed up on stormflying and had stayed in the Nemesis, but Skywarp hadn't followed him out. So the crew could devote their full attention to him.
Heels clattered on the bare floor and Drag Strip tore his gaze away from the mirror. Stephanie came in and stood just inside the door, watching him.
Not for the first time, Drag Strip wondered just how Stephanie expected to exert any authority over the cast. She was far too small and weak to maintain any kind of physical control, but even if she had been Skywarp's size, it wouldn't have made much of a difference. Drag Strip had been beaten halfway into stasis lock by Motormaster on more than one occasion, so nothing less would have made an impact on him.
He'd half expected Stephanie to yell at him or try to embarrass him in front of the rest of the cast, but she hadn't done that either. So he kept pushing to see what else he could get away with, even though a tiny voice in the back of his mind told him that that wasn't a good idea. Natural order of things, he told himself, the strong superior to the weak. Besides, if I keep this up maybe the Aerialbots will leave and we can forget all this romantic slag and make a Shakespeare movie where everyone fights a battle and dies. Except me.
"Drag Strip, I'd like to talk to you," Stephanie said abruptly, straightening up.
Here it comes, Drag Strip thought. The human under him was still working on his undercarriage, so he wasn't going anywhere. "Looks like you got a captive audience," he said.
"No, I think we'd better do this away from the sets," Stephanie said. "I'd rather none of the Autobots hear it, so let's go for a drive. Come on." She turned and walked away.
Drag Strip rolled off the blocks, nearly knocking over the human scrambling out from under them, not that he cared. Stephanie can't be firing me, can she? Of course not. We've done too much filming with me in the lead role, and there's not enough time left to find anyone else to play me. I mean, play Romeo. As long as he wasn't being fired, he didn't care what Stephanie said.
Must be something pretty bad for her to want to do it away from the sets, though, he thought as he drove out of the makeup room. Stephanie and Tony were climbing into her pickup. Oh, he wants to join in too?
No paint off my aft. Drag Strip was used to other Decepticons either hating him or being irritated by him, so human disapproval in any quantity meant nothing. He could listen to whatever the producer and director said with a smirk on his face, and it would be amusing to watch them getting more and more worked up at their failure to force him to do as they wanted.
The pickup's engine coughed into life and it took off, taillights blinking as it slowed down to get past the gates. In the gloom of the overcast day, the red glow looked even brighter, like optics. Drag Strip followed, wishing Stephanie would speed up. It was one thing to chew him out and another to bore him with slow driving.
And it's not as though there are any speed limit signs out here, he thought as Stephanie headed out away from the sets and up into the hills. Five miles out, ten miles… c'mon, c'mon, let's get it over with. They were in the shadows of the mountains now, or what would have been the shadows had there been any sunlight. Now the storm threw a far greater haze over everything, and the wind spun eddies of dust along the winding road. Drag Strip decided he would definitely have to be cleaned up and polished once they were back on the sets.
Stephanie kept driving as the road grew narrower. There was a sheer drop on the right, just the kind of thing Wildrider would have loved to jump to see if he could reach the rocks on the other side. To the left, the road hugged the side of a cliff but forked just ahead, peeling off between two of the hills. Drag Strip had just decided to yell at Stephanie to stop and talk to him, because the drive was a waste of time, when the pickup's taillights came on and began to flash.
She braked ahead of the fork in the road, and Drag Strip halted behind her as she scrambled out. "Something's wrong, it'll just be a minute--" she shouted back at him.
Something's wrong, Drag Strip thought. She'd braked but he heard the low rumbling sound of a powerful engine coming closer, picking up speed. He transformed – or tried to. Nothing happened.
His diagnostic took nanoseconds to complete and a red warning flashed up on his HUD even as he threw his transmission into reverse. Mode lock? How the frag did that--
The car barreled out of the side road towards him, moving so fast that it was a blue and white blur. Break--no, Sideswipe, was Drag Strip's last thought before the Lamborghini slammed into him. His forcefield negated the damage but could do nothing about the kinetic energy of nearly a ton of metal traveling at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.
The impact flung him off the road. He flipped over, jolted and disoriented, and felt himself falling over the edge of the drop, falling into the ravine below, falling--
The ground hurtled up to meet him and the impact blasted his consciousness apart. Everything went black.
The story continues in Chapter 11…
Yuki Hikari: Dead End's and Wildrider's voices are the most distinctive – Dead End has a faint British accent and Wildrider speaks with a broad Western twang. I could probably distinguish the other three, but that's because I've watched their scenes over and over again.
Yes, if you're used to fanfics, you'll be a bit surprised by the cartoon. And I don't just mean the animation and technical inconsistencies. :)
demonicSuperCow: I thought Breakdown might have mispronounced "predicted" too, but I wasn't sure about it. He's an appealing character, isn't he? When he gets a chance to be afraid and kick aft despite it.
Fire From Above: Now I have to look up this "F-U-N song". Wildrider is consistently entertaining, though. I just completed the "Drinking Energon" fic, where he plays a major role, and he was even more funny when he was drunk as well as loopy.
tomorrow4eva: Yes, I didn't really buy the Autobots combining into "Menasor". And shouldn't they have had Autobot energy signatures? But it was great to see Starscream being suspicious – he's such a conniving mech that of course he picks up on that kind of thing in others.
Prime's offer to Motormaster is magnanimous and even kind from one perspective. But from another, just what kind of future will the Stunticons have as traitors, and what will they do on the other side of the fence? At least two of them would have to be lobotomized to get them to follow orders and drive safely and be protective of humans and everything else that one needs to do to be in the Autobot fold. They don't really have a choice about being what they are.
On top of that, add the fact that the Autobots are not going to be nice to the Stunticons (because they have little if any reason to be) and joining them will be the worst possible thing Breakdown can imagine. And he's got an active imagination.
Taipan Kiryu: I like Dragoness_Eclectic's fic which explains that the Constructicons deliberately sabotaged the Stunticons' forcefields. Even so, though, you'd think the Autobots would have taken more casualties. The Stunticons hit the ground pretty easily in that fic… poor 'con cars.
That's one of the things I like most about Motormaster. No matter how badly beaten or outnumbered he is, he doesn't give in, especially if his team is present. He's their strength, just as Dead End is their calmness.
I'm glad you liked the way this fic fitted in with the episode. First time I've used an episode like that, I think. And I hope you enjoyed "Romeo Must Die"!
