Title: Domestic Electronics, Pt. 12

Warning: This barely resembles Transformers at all. You're better off not reading.

Rating: PG-13 (for language)

Continuity: IDW/More Than Meets The Eye AU

Characters: Decepticon Justice Division

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

Motivation (Prompt): There was a translation error, and then Shibara drew a picture based on that error, and then I had to give it a story. It all went downhill from there.


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Everyday life is boring, or "The D.J.D. goes a'plunderin'."

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Ah, spring.

It sucked. I hated it. It was miserable, rainy, and on this particular day, really kind of chilly. Of course! Because I could expect nothing less of my day off.

And how was I spending my precious day off? Was I resting? Feet up on the couch, warm and cozy? No? But why not?

Because I was friggin' shopping, alright? Make my life complete, why don't you. Chores and horrible weather, all in one day. Oh, and who could forget boredom? It was just chilly enough that going out to actually do something sounded perfectly loathsome, because it just kept raining. Days like this made me restless and achy. And wet. Bored, wet, and unable to sit still: shopping at its best.

Well, if I was going to do it, I was going to do it in style. "Mush! Pull, ya bastards!" I raised my cutlass high and sneered at my pathetic crew. "Ne'er has the Conflicted Democracy been crewed by such a wussy buncha land lubbers! Ye couldn't pull yer flea-bitten carcasses out of the drowned rat that birthed ye!"

Tesarus and Tarn snarled angrily back at me for maligning their nonexistent mother. Little engines howled as they threw themselves into their traces, determined to prove me wrong. Kaon screebled and heaved on his hold as well, but Tesarus' pull took him right off his feet as the line pulled taut. He dangled for a second in midair before his hands slipped. The little router fell flat on his back, where he flailed for a moment yelling furiously in dial-up.

"Put yer backs into it!" I yelled harshly. "I'll throw the lot of ye t' the sharks yet, I will!" There were peeved engine revs back at me, but I pointed at them with the bottle in my hand, and they went back to pulling. Kaon gamely clambered back up to put his back against Tesarus and help push.

Vos rasped something high and insulting at me from aboard the newly-dubbed 'ship.' He was likely commenting on how hard Half-Assed Pirate Dialect was to understand when he didn't even understand English. He didn't actually speak Italian; he had a few pre-recorded phrases that he just kept playing back. However, he wasn't programmed with English at all. We were still working on the basics, like 'yes,' 'no,' and 'stop doing that before someone calls the police.' That last one was kind of important. Vos seemed to like getting me into trouble.

For which reason I felt absolutely no shame in being mean and not trying to translate today. "Shut yer rum-hole," I ordered him instead. "Take th' wheel an' steer 'er, or ye'll walk th' plank!" I pointed with my cutlass for good measure, and Vos grumpily subsided.

A passing employee cleared her throat behind me. "Sir? Store policy says you have to purchase produce before use."

Uh, embarrassing? "Right. Sorry."

Vos rasped a laugh as I tossed the bag of carrots into the cart and tried to casually set the bottle of soy sauce down like I hadn't been pretending to swig from it a moment ago. I shook the cart until he shut up. "Rum-hole! Shut it!"

Fortunately for my dignity and remaining good mood, WheeZee's ShopMart was mostly deserted. At 2 PM on a rainy Tuesday, everybody was either at work or safely at home, out of the downpour. I, on the other hand, was out of food and definitely out of patience. Kaon and Vos had gotten into three fights, Tesarus had put my left house slipper through his grinder, and the Pet had gotten to the right one. Tarn had caused two of the fights, force-fed Tesarus the one slipper, and smacked the Pet with the other until chewing happened. All before noon, and even after the Great Migration downstairs for laundry shenanigans. I was completely willing to sit on the basement steps reading while my dolts played hide-and-go-killed-each-other around the washing machines and under the stairs, but the rain had apparently filled them with restless energy, too.

One apartment was far too small for five electrodomestics and a Joe. Out into the rain we went, which resulted in bitchy, cold electrodomestics and a bitchy, cold Joe. But at least we were out of the apartment, and cooking warfare would occupy another hour once we got back.

Besides, shopping for food was far more fun when done as a raid for supplies. "Yarrrr," I said to my minions once the employee was safely out of earshot. "To the cereal aisle! Time to pillage Capt'n Crunch an' steal his wimmenfolk!"

Tesarus and Tarn roared - in miniature, so sort of like a baby lion attempting to roar - their enthusiastic agreement to this idea, although heck if I knew what they'd do with womenfolk. Both 'bots threw themselves against their puppy leashes. Since I'd tied those to the front of the supermarket cart, that resulted in Kaon nearly getting run over by the trolley's wheels as it skidded after them. Dial-up cursed Vos' lack of steering capabilities.

Vos rasped something back at him. For all I knew, it was Italian for, "I'll keelhaul your motherboard."

Whatever it was, Kaon started climbing the side of the cart with murder in his nonexistent optics. He reached the top and jumped down into the cart to seize the carrots as a rather bulky weapon. Vos armed himself with my new toothbrush. This was going to be an epic battle on the high seas, minus the seas and probably the epic as well.

"Yo ho, yo ho," I hummed while Kaon chased Vos around the inside of the cart, "a pirate's life for me - cool, Count Chocula's on sale. To Transylvania, ya scurvy seadogs!"

We were lucky the afternoon shift at WheeZee's was tolerant enough to put up with a middle-aged dude and four appliances running around their store with a cart full of stuff in tow. What was supposed to be a quick trip kept stretching out until even Tarn's pride dented enough that he looked tired. It was one way to wear them out, I supposed. After a while, I had to start pushing the cart, and the guys climbed up to perch in the front like hood ornaments. Every time I thought I was done, I inevitably remembered I was almost out of toilet bowl cleaner, or I wanted oranges, or Vos needed birdseed because he'd taken up pelting birds outside the window with it. Then Tesarus demanded tomatoes, so back to the produce department we had to go. But wait, Kaon urgently reminded me that the Pet was almost out of dish washing liquid. Back to housewares. Tarn had spilled the last of the milk this morning; to the dairy cooler.

By about the fourth pass by the cashiers, we'd given up on dignity and were wholesale surfing the cart: Tesarus, Kaon, and Vos braced in the front cheering, with Tarn standing on the child seat like the captain of the world's strangest ship. I had my feet up on the back of the cart, hanging off the end.

What? Just because I'd gotten older didn't mean I'd gotten any more mature. And I knew for a fact that Bob did stranger things in higher-end stores with his oddball Toys'R'Us friends, and most of them were my age or older. I made a point of remembering that any time some smart-ass told me to act my age.

"Really?" the store manager said as he checked us out. We'd apparently managed to scare the rest of the WheeZee cashiers off to their breaktime. Or maybe it was just a really slow, rainy afternoon.

"Yeah, really. Did you see that thing on Tumblr about the pool full of strawberry limeade and the slushie free-for-all at the Radison Hotel two weeks ago?"

"Yeah - no way."

Hiss. Tarn was the authority on managing idiotic behavior. He lived with me, after all. He paused in shoving groceries into plastic bags to give his two cents to the conversation. Hiss. Hisssss!

That summed up Bob's life pretty well, actually.

"C'mon, compared to that?" I gathered up plastic bags and puppy leashes. "Riding a cart around is just having fun."

We left the manager shaking his head incredulously. I hoped we'd make it out of sight before he found the disaster area where we'd taken out the Tostidos' display. Tarn and Tesarus could get a trolley rolling fairly fast when they pulled together, but they weren't so good at braking. Oops.

There were various pleased noises from ankle height when we got outside. So much sniggering. None of my 'bots liked cold, but they did like sharing their misery. Tesarus and Tarn led the way across the parking lot, holding some kind of puddle-jumping contest for who could splash my shoes with the most water every time. I retaliated by stomping the biggest puddles and trying to swamp them both with a tidal wave. I only had to backtrack once when Vos fell into a puddle he couldn't swim out of. Kaon rode in one of the bags, safely dry and probably using the toilet bowl cleaner on my new toothbrush, knowing him. There were suspicious rustling sounds coming from the bags, anyway, and I couldn't put them down without losing my grip on everything.

And lo, our adventurers ventured back out into the dank, grey spring day, full of rain and...rain. And rain. A large amount of rain.

I frowned upward. "Which one of you jerks poked holes in my umbrella?!"