Script Title: Gone Fishing

Warning to Audience: Seduction, awkward social issues, weird power issues, dubcon?

Show Rating: R

Continuity Stage: IDW

Characters: Nautilator/D.J.D.

Theatre Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

Acting Motivation (Prompt): In the More Than Meets The Eye comic, there exists a Seacon with the voice of Megatron, and a group of sadistic murderers who idolize all things Megatron. Naturally, they have to cross paths. Prompts written for Candy From Strangers have finally been separated out here.


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Nautilator - First Date

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The first time they tried to meet him somewhere that wasn't the Peaceful Tyranny, they honestly thought they could pull off the business-before-pleasure thing. Kaon coolly delivered the invitation, double-checked that the officers' mess at the station had Nautilator's name down for special admittance, and then went back to monitoring the List with the glow of a job well done. One of the List aboard the same station Nautilator's ship had docked at? Excellent. A fantastic opportunity!

An opportunity for what was a touchy subject among the Justice Division members. They trusted each other as much as Decepticons ever did, and they shared an unprecedented amount of intimate information with each other simply due to the close nature of the unit. The Peaceful Tyranny was a relatively small ship for five mechs to spend a lot of time on without becoming closely acquainted with each other, and quite frankly, they liked each other more often than they liked most of the Decepticons they met. The problem with hunting the List for justice was that they didn't spend much time around people who weren't utterly despicable. Besides each other, that was.

And now Nautilator, but they weren't really spending time with him. They were fragging him silly. Um, technically he was fragging them silly, but again, it was a sensitive subject. The Justice Division was perfectly willing to talk with each other about how hot Megatron's voice was, or what they wanted to try next time, but bring up anything related to Nautilator separate from 'that Seacon attached to The Voice' and they started avoiding each other's optics. So he seemed like he might be sort of interesting as a person himself, beyond just the focus of their voice fetish, but none of them wanted to be the first to suggest the idea.

Tesarus had hinted at it, especially after the thing with the toy. And the hog-tying. Not to mention Nautilator pulling out the coolly-enraged Megatron voice and talking about him to the rest of the unit as if Tesarus were on the List and awaiting his personal judgment. Tesarus hadn't been the only one going a little rubbery inside over the swishing mix of fear and danger-driven lust that had created. Oceans of domination kink had appeared overnight. Yes, he'd been a bad Decepticon. A bad, bad Decepticon who should be punished.

Vos' sadism had been triggered in the most delightful ways. He did his creepiest staring whenever Nautilator even vaguely entered the conversation, now. Helex joined them both in bring up that particular subject frequently, although he hemmed and hawed around it. Kaon just pulled out his most persuasive no-optic cyberpuppy looks.

After a few months of his unit acting like smitten, lust-crazed hooligans, Tarn had reluctantly agreed to try this whole…getting to know Nautilator thing. Like, outside of a berth. Maybe even without the voice they all adored. He really didn't know about this, but since the others were so determined to try things a little differently, well…

It was weird, okay? The D.J.D. unashamedly worshiped all things Megatron, and Nautilator had Megatron's voice, so they'd sort of, kind of (definitely had) pressured him into their berths. Which was fun all around, and they made sure he enjoyed it so he'd come back to play with them. Despite, uh, their various bits of interpersonal stupidities, of which there was an embarrassing plethora to dwell on. Dealing with a normal Decepticon as an equal took far more effort than they'd ever admit to, and mechs didn't get much more normal than Nautilator. Aside from the unusual voice and the fact that he was part of a gestalt, Nautilator had 'Dumb Grunt' practically written across his forehelm. He was a genericon; cannon fodder that filled out the ranks, every soldier barely independent enough to be considered a separate person.

Yet the Justice Division spent an alarming amount of time trying to understand him, and then consistently screwing up what they thought they'd figured out. Tarn was convinced Snap Trap had some kind of scoreboard, at this point. He resolved to destroy the captain if he ever found evidence of it.

The only good part of the mess was that Nautilator had a deep and abiding passion for continued survival. The D.J.D. attempting and failing to be nice to him usually so terrified him that he didn't figure out just how much they were bending over backward to keep him happy. Tarn had the sinking feeling that everybody else knew, however.

Anyway, the D.J.D. had been seeing a lot of this dumbaft, stupid Seacon - but they didn't actually know anything about him. Even for them, murderous bunch of sadists that they were, that got a teensy twinge of awkward. Social stuff? What was that?

They had a hard enough time coming up with small talk between bouts of interfacing Nautilator's bolts off. Anything more than that, and the Justice Division started to get somewhat fidgety. It wasn't that they were scared or anything. They were just that nervous about fragging things up. They had no idea how to handle Nautilator's infuriatingly mysterious normalness.

They'd done their research, if watching old drama vidshows could be considered research. Vos voted it some form of obscure torture. Regardless, they eventually got the idea of inviting Nautilator to the officers' mess on the station during a particularly vigorous fire-bombing of the planetary surface. It'd be visible through the wide windows. The genocide of the natives would be beautifully vivid from there, and they could sit and watch it together. A lovely, er, date. Thing. Ish.

Primus help them, they had no idea what they were doing. They had plans and no clue how to implement them.

Unfortunately, all the planning in the universe couldn't stand up to a member of the List who could run faster than they could. The slagger led them on a merry chase around the station, in and out of an escape shuttle, and when they finally pinned him down -

"We're going to be late," Kaon hissed.

Tarn glanced down at him. "Late for what? Oh, for the love of…" He'd obviously just checked the time. Their victim quailed as the leader of the D.J.D. shot a poisonous look at him. "You will not escape justice because of mere timing!"

Tesarus pouted. "But we're supposed to meet him in twenty minutes when the strafing starts."

"We can't go back on this," Helex added. "He really didn't want to meet us outside the ship. I think he doesn't want to be seen in public with us after, uh." He shot Tesarus a look.

The grinder ducked his head and hurriedly shoved their victim's arm into his torso tunnel. The screaming helped blot out the lingering shame. Yeah, it'd take a long time to live down that incident. It wasn't so much that he and Nautilator interfacing had been broadcast halfway across the galaxy. Exhibitionism on that level was something to be a little proud of, honestly, except that Nautilator had refused to speak with the D.J.D. for almost two years afterward. Even that might have been okay - teehee, flustered Nautilator was cute - but Tesarus shuffled his feet guiltily because of the fact that Soundwave had sent an icily polite note requesting it never happen again. Specifically, that the voice of Lord Megatron no longer be put into undignified settings that required a certain Third-in-Command to waste his valuable time scrambling to edit that famous voice into something less like Lord Megatron himself.

Taken to task by one of the original founders of the Decepticon Cause for associating Lord Megatron's voice with a sex tape. Tarn had been mortified.

Tesarus would have felt a lot worse about the whole thing except that it had led to the tying up and the toys, and he couldn't quite manage to regret that. It wasn't Lord Megatron's name that he moaned when he overloaded anymore, and he wasn't the only one. No matter how hard the others pretended, the walls on the Peaceful Tyranny weren't getting any thicker. Nautilator's name echoed in the halls some nights.

Vos uneasily asked if anyone had Nautilator's personal comm. frequency to let him know they'd be late. Of course, they didn't.

"Snap Trap changes the ship's entire roster numbers around at every port," Kaon said dryly. "I can't blame him." The captain of Nautilator's ship played a dangerous game of keep-away with the D.J.D., much like someone holding the Pet's current sparkchamber chew-toy out of its reach. Snap Trap couldn't actively keep his subordinate and the most dangerous unit of killers in the Empire separate, but he made his disapproval plain through passive-aggressive means.

"We…will think of something." Tarn gritted his teeth and glared at their victim, who seemed terribly confused by the argument going on above his head. "There is business to be attended to, first."

Okay, yeah. Screaming and begging for mercy, the traitor could do. Being asked his opinion when Helex and Kaon got into an argument about whether to talk with Nautilator about the weather formations or unit formations later? He had no idea what to do, then. Optics glazed with pain and the sort of terror those with no formal etiquette training got, he found himself pressed into deciding for the D.J.D. whether talking about genocide was too violent a topic for a 'casual date atmosphere.' He voted 'yes' just to make Vos stop staring so intently at him.

It was almost a relief to go back to torture after that.

Inspiration did hit! The D.J.D. ended up only being ten minutes late, and the entire unit breathed a deep sigh of relief when the door to the officers' mess slid open. Kaon might have hinted that the rest of the station's officers should find themselves elsewhere during a certain timeframe right about now, and like magic, the room was clear but for a lone mech sitting with a cube. He seemed to be staring out the window at the burning planet. The empty room made the hunched shoulders and slumped look stand out.

"I don't think he expected us to show," Helex murmured.

"We are late," Tesarus said back. "He probably gave up. Why doesn't he ever call us? Our comm. frequency doesn't change."

"A question we can ask him, after we apologize for our tardiness," Tarn decided as he strode forward. Vos and Kaon flanked him, and the two titans hurried to catch up.

For a few moments, Nautilator didn't notice their approach. None of the hardened killers closing in on him would admit to taking the chance to drinking in the sight of the cute, tweak-able little beastmode legs, or the helm ridges they all liked to trace their fingers over, or the stumpy feet. Helex might admit to the feet. He really liked Nautilator's legs and feet.

But the Seacon did eventually notice their approach, shaking himself out of melancholy thoughts and glancing in their direction. He promptly fell off his chair, spilled his energon everywhere, and scrambled under the table with a shriek of fear.

The Justice Division stopped. "Uh…"

"Nautilator..?"

"Are you trying to give me spark failure?!" the smaller Decepticon wailed. He peeked over the top of the table, flinched, and sank out of sight again. "You're - you look - you're covered in - "

They looked at each other. The spatters of fluids and burnt tubing did sort of stand out in this light. Oops. "There wasn't time to rinse off," Tarn began.

Nautilator's optics came up long enough to blanch a pale pink. "Tesarus?" he asked in a very high-pitched voice. Megatron after taking a punch somewhere delicate. Megatron being grossed out and try to stay calm about it. The unit flinched, already wondering what they'd screwed up this time. "You have…there's a hand in your…" He gestured gingerly. "In you. I can see the fingers."

Tesarus nervously smiled and folded his arms in front of his grinder, trying to hide whatever Nautilator had spotted. Blast, he'd forgotten about that! "It happens sometimes. I have to go through a cleaning cycle to, um, get the smaller bits out." No biggie, just a cleaning problem. Some neglected personal hygiene, that was all. He'd keep the table between him and Nautilator and discreetly pick the pieces out while everyone else watched the show outside.

Pink paled even further toward white. "…oh. That's…oh. Interesting." A hard swallow, and those optics wandered in horrorstruck curiosity over the rest of them. The gore was bad enough, but the smell. The Justice Division was so used to it they were only now realizing it wasn't normal for mechs to wander around smelling like a recycling plant crossed with a torture chamber. Kaon reeked of burnt copper and internal part. Helex was even worse. The richly visceral scent of melted metal practically smoked off him.

And in his smelter -

- in his smelter -

Nautilator swallowed. He swallowed again. His optics took on a fascinated, dead calmness, and he stood slowly, those optics locked on the reinforced glass front of Helex's smelter. Tarn and Kaon reflexively stepped in front of the titan, but they were too late. "Is he still alive?" Nautilator asked, extremely calm. Megatron asking exactly why an officer had failed him.

Their sparks squeezed. Not a good voice to hear, from Megatron or Nautilator.

"Well…" Helex wrung his hands. All four of them. "Yes? But only a little."

"We were in a hurry," Kaon said, and somehow it sounded both pathetic and silly when said out loud. Sure, they'd just shoved one of the List into Helex for later, because they had a…thing. With Nautilator. That's what normal Decepticons did, right? Wasn't there such a thing as a 'working date'?

This wasn't going so well.

Facing that appalled look, there really wasn't anything any of them could say. Because even as Tarn thought about it, a muffled thumping came from inside Helex, and Nautilator's optics took on a haunted look that twisted something like pain under the tank's spark. The small Seacon tipped to the side slowly and peered around Tarn's bulk. Helex glanced down and used his hands to cover the face pressed to the glass, but it kept moving.

When Nautilator had looked his fill, he mumbled an excuse and walked steadily toward the door, stumbling only a bit.

The D.J.D. just stood aside and let him go.


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