Title: Lease or Buy
Warning: Pet play
Rating: PG
Continuity: G1
Characters: Swindle, Combaticons, Thundercracker, Astrotrain, Reflector, Soundwave, Constructicons
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation (Prompt): A kinkmeme request ( . ?thread=8406153#t8406153) + writing warm-ups and a need for something no-pressure to write.
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Part Twenty-One
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He hadn't expected it, but he was bored.
Maybe it wasn't boredom so much as it was the awareness that he wasn't making money when he could be. Idleness didn't usually bother him, although Swindle tried not to indulge too often. Working meant money. He didn't take time off, because that meant the money wouldn't keep coming in.
Put in that context, the merchant worked as much or harder than most of the Decepticons. His off-duty time was spent culturing his personal business instead of official finances, but he requested overtime in the event of a particularly involved deal for the Decepticons. Ratbat, in return, gave him the freedom to occasionally disappear from the base pursuing his own credits. It was a polite tit-for-tat working relationship that had sustained Swindle the Decepticon and Swindle the arms merchant side-by-side but off the books since the war had started.
In a faction where superior officers could beat the slag out of a subordinate and take all his stuff, Swindle had entire warehouses full of stock. What could he say? He was good at charming those who kept his merchant aft safe from petty violence and robbery by greedy officers.
But there came a time when all the pretty purple optics blinking up at Soundwave and the expensive gifts to Ratbat didn't help in the slightest, and that's why Swindle was standing at attention in a warehouse on the docks of Toledo. Because when Megatron skewered a Combaticon with a command, that Combaticon had even less ability to object to orders than a Decepticons normally did. Even if it had required Swindle listing his assets in front of Onslaught for his Lord's edification.
The look in Onslaught's visor had almost had that worth it. His gestalt commander had done everything physically possible to trap and subdue the Jeep, but Swindle had spent the time since Onslaught's first threat building a barrier up between himself and the rest of the Combaticons. He'd made a buffer zone of money and business, and Onslaught hadn't known. Onslaught hadn't had the slightest hint of just how far the merchant's network of contacts and business dealings had reached since coming to Earth.
Of course, Swindle's subtle gloating at Onslaught's shock had been paved flat by Megatron's anger over some of those contacts being Autobot. But, well, it was business. It wasn't like Swindle went out of his way to make deals with the Autobots! As he explained hurriedly to Megatron, prices got a minimum 35% markup whenever the client had Autobot sympathies, and he never brokered a deal that would directly impact Decepticon dealings on Earth.
The truth had saved his tires from his Lord's fury, but Megatron still decided to do an inspection of Swindle's wares. Which was fine for the most part - nobody cared about the Decepticons showing up in Toledo, honestly, as long as they didn't knock down the Cheesecake Factory or Spaghetti Warehouse - but Megatron's interest drew spectators. When the head honcho took notice, that meant that suddenly Ratbat peered that much closer at Swindle's affairs. All his discreet non-Decepticon dealings came to a screeching halt to prevent detection from higher-ups. Swindle didn't do supervised business.
So for a month and a half, Swindle had been sitting around doing nothing on his off-time. When he wasn't giving Megatron the guided tour of his various warehouses throughout the world, the Jeep got to sit around exploring the exciting underwater off-duty life of a mech who was used to being busy all the time.
Primus, he'd never been so bored in all his life. He wasn't losing money, per se, but the merchant was going half-mad with the fact that he wasn't making a single cent. Except for his investments, but a mech could only check the stock market forty times an hour before realizing he might have a compulsion.
Being unable to make any money during his off-time made him that much more vindictive against the mech who thought interfering in his business was his right. Onslaught hadn't put an embargo on Swindle's pet sessions outside of the oil mission, but neither had he done anything approaching an apology or acknowledgment about what he had done. The slagger had no right sticking his fingers in the merchant's off-duty time. Swindle intended to rub his face in that until Onslaught fragging well accepted that Swindle wasn't his lackey, would never be his lackey, and refused to be treated as one!
His bad mood after returning from the land of sand had folded over into the effort. Swindle had continued turning down session requests and off-handedly implying that Onslaught was still interfering. The more antsy he got, stuck underwater without business to run, the more vicious those implications became.
By now, his regular clients' friends were starting to get in on the act. Skywarp had begun stealing the Combaticon base's emergency medical equipment and hiding it in the lower underwater levels to rust. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw had caught Vortex insulting the Constructicons, who were now making the helicopter's life a living smelter pit in revenge. Blast Off had gotten an extended series of atmospheric flight lessons with the Air Commander himself when both Blitzwing and Astrotrain filed complaints against his lack of planet-side flight technique.
Brawl was being watched like some kind of barometer of Swindle's mood, on the other hand. Was the merchant feeling cuddly today? Only Brawl might know.
Swindle wasn't surprised when his gestalt commander stayed behind when Megatron finished the tour and left. The merchant checked inventory and locked up, and there was Onslaught waiting outside, as inconspicuous as a gigantic military missile-truck could be in Toledo.
The Cheesecake Factory wasn't in danger, so pretty inconspicuous. None of the humans down by the river even looked at them funny when a Jeep and the huge truck tailing him went calmly down the freeway toward Cleveland. They'd transform and take off once they were in the hills. One Decepticon launching from the dock area could get away unnoticed, but three would cause a call to the Autobots. If Swindle lost his Toledo warehouses because of carelessness, he really would set out to make Onslaught regret being gestalt-bound to him.
They drove for about an hour before Onslaught started riding his bumper. When he refused to stop ignoring the larger Combaticon, Onslaught conceded and pinged him with, "We need to talk."
"No we don't."
"This can't continue."
"I have no idea what you're talking about." He flashed his tail lights innocently.
"What do you want from me?" Onslaught asked bluntly, flashing his brights in return. The other drivers on the road were giving the military truck a wide berth, and the flashing lights only widened that space. "An apology? Fine. I apologize for putting the unit's comfort above your personal gain."
That was an exceptionally bitter non-apology. "I'll accept that apology precisely as it's meant," he said, changing lanes as traffic slowed. It looked like there was an accident up ahead. The slower speeds nestled Onslaught right up against his spare tire when the whole lane came gradually to a halt. Onslaught's fan blew hot air on him. That was obnoxious of him. "Yes? Did you want something more, or were you going to threaten me some more for being a business mech instead of your personal reconnaissance drone?"
More hot air blew through the grill pressed against his tire. "Soundwave," Onslaught said, forcing the words out through a grudging vocalizer, "has approached me to inquire as to terms for…purchasing your time. As it has been my…discomfort with your activities that seems to have caused the problems between us, I informed him that you are for sale at any time such activities would remain out of public viewing."
Swindle's axles locked, and Onslaught gave a small grunt as his bumper suddenly shoved the smaller mech along.
A second later the Jeep recovered and resumed rolling along, but anyone who could read groundframe body language could see the anger in every turn of his tires. Onslaught slowed, cautious, but it hadn't been his proximity that tipped the scales. Swindle had rarely been so angry, and it had nothing to do with crowding. Road rage had nothing on this. There were so many things wrong with what had just been said to him that his engine was shaking with utter rage.
"I am not a commodity to be bought and sold," he hissed. "You have no say in my time or my activities. Unless Megatron authorizes it, I belong to me." And Soundwave had just been blacklisted. Completely blacklisted. Belonging to a gestalt was not the same as belonging to a carrier mech, and assuming that Onslaught had any sort of off-duty authority over him to the point where Soundwave assumed a customer could go over his head - no. No and no. "I will conduct my business wherever and whenever I want, and if you have a problem with what I do in or out of private, you still have no say in it." No more than Onslaught could interfere in any other Decepticon's life, which was the part that the hard-helmed commander couldn't seem to get through his head.
Swindle was no one's property.
He braked and intentionally slammed his back end into Onslaught's front grill when the larger Decepticon started to say something. "This conversation is over. If you've learned anything from the past few months, you won't try and start it again," he said coldly.
"Don't give me orders," Onslaught snarled right back, heavier motor roaring in a way that had the cars ahead and behind suddenly paying far too close attention to the robots in disguise. "Your dramatics are causing a rift in the unit that will get us all boxed again if this keeps on. Bear in mind that you are one of us, and that will not change no matter how you try to pretend otherwise!"
If Onslaught's anger ran hot, Swindle's burned like hellfire. He hadn't intended on giving away this ace in the hole, but Onslaught's arrogance had him ragequitting the whole game. "Think again, fragger," he spat through the commlink. "I haven't been pretending at all. If anything goes wrong, you're on your own! Shockwave re-opened my case for a separate trial years ago, taking new evidence into consideration and changing my sentence. According to the new judgment, I've served my time, and Megatron signed off on that!"
This time, it was Onslaught's axles that froze up. Swindle slammed the open line closed and swerved out onto the shoulder suddenly, taking off down the side of the road in a burst of acceleration that the larger groundframe couldn't match. Fuming, the Jeep sped all the way around the accident and tore off down the freeway, and from there back to base. Although he did take the time to land and roll around on a beach before heading out over the ocean.
Covered in sand and salt crusts, he sailed right on by Soundwave when the launch towers' doors opened, head held high and optics harder than stone.
He wasn't bored anymore.
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