Title: Homeward Bound: The (Not So) Incredible Journey
Warning: Decepticons being Decepticons, and the Scavengers in particular being themselves. If you can't take it, don't read it.
Rating: PG
Continuity: IDW
Characters: Fulcrum, Misfire, Rewind.
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.
Motivation (Prompt): Schrodingers-tailgate wanted to see more of this fic. Halloween prompts were timely.
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Vanishing hitchhiker
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"You guys aren't anything like I expected," the small Autobot said.
Fulcrum ignored him and took another sip out of Misfire's altmode intake. The energon was bodyheat-warm and too-smooth, the tingle of energy muted from already running through a processing plant. It tasted like used energon, which it was, but it also tasted like Misfire: the strong tang of an engine running at its highest setting for too long, bubbles of unprocessed energon bursting across Fulcrum's tongue, and the slight grit of poor internal hygiene. Misfire ran at full power all the time and didn't clean himself adequately.
Nothing Fulcrum didn't already know. He drew back from the straw, making a face as he swallowed. Misfire gave him a quizzical look.
"You need to flush out your reservoirs more often. You taste like stale oil," Fulcrum told him.
"See, I told you you'd get the hang of it! It's just like what I siphon out of corpses," Misfire said, completely undisturbed by what he said. Fulcrum pulled another face. The Autobot's visor widened, but Misfire kept talking. "Recycled fuel tastes like what you take it from, sometimes only a tiny bit, but still. It's there. Do this long enough, and you're guaranteed to get a taste for me!"
Fulcrum's left cheek twitched. His optics slid toward the Autobot, whose camera blinked red. Oh yeah, they were definitely being recorded by now. Misfire on a good day was some kind of circus sideshow, and here Fulcrum was drinking out of him like the bonus double feature. How could any archivist resist that?
Sparkly petrobunny goggles snapped down as a crude disguise, and Fulcrum frowned at the camera. "This had better not turn up on an entertainment channel somewhere," he said, aiming for intimidating. Too bad he sounded more apprehensive than threatening.
"Good idea," the Autobot said, and Fulcrum sputtered indignantly. The camera kept rolling. If anything, the goggles made this that much more interesting. Instead of strange medical necessity, now the two Decepticons on guard duty seemed to be performers in a masquerade kink event. Fascinating! "Nothing like I expected," the Autobot repeated in a murmur.
Fulcrum turned a cold shoulder and went back to single-mindedly drinking his ration out of Misfire. It wasn't the best quality energon, but Misfire was actually a quieter donor than Crankcase. Fulcrum hadn't thought that was physically possible, but it turned out Crankcase could out-complain anyone. That left Krok or Spinister, neither of whom Fulcrum was comfortable sticking a straw in, although if he had to choose he'd pick drinking from an officer over dinner with random gunfire.
It was simpler to just go to Misfire. Misfire thought of siphoning as an everyday practical solution.
The babbling didn't let up while Fulcrum drank. "Yeah, I didn't start out able to tell all the tastes apart. You do this enough and your archives build up a separate index body by body until one day!" He beamed down at Fulcrum. "One day you take a swig and stop before you swallow because there's something reeeeeally familiar about the burn in the back of your mouth, and Spinister sees you swishing it across your tongue so he asks what you're doing, and it turns out this is the second corpse Krok's had you siphon that died from a circuit speeder overdose." He didn't mention that the burn of circuit speeders tasted delicious, pleasant enough to overcome the taste of death, addictive enough that he'd started seeking those particular bodies out. Fulcrum probably already knew about that. Krok kept a close optic on him now while they were corpse-hunting, more than usual for such a nannybot commander. Misfire had to be sneaky getting a few sips in before Krok hauled him away from the drug-downed.
Fulcrum snorted. "All I taste is clogged filters."
"Aw, c'mon, you can't tell me I'm the only one. We all taste like that by now!" The Autobot blinked at him, wondering very loudly how exactly he knew that, but Misfire just laughed. It wasn't as though he went around licking the others or siphoning mouthfuls of their fuel while they recharged, but he knew.
He'd have shrugged the minibot's questioning look off, but Krok had impressed the need to stay still into him. With words.
Krok genuinely wanted refueling to be no more difficult for Fulcrum than it had to be, but Misfire was the only one comfortable with Fulcrum drinking out of him. Fulcrum jittered like a loose bolt during takeoff when the jet made sudden moves. Necessity, not trust, brought the tech-turned-bomb to Misfire's side. Their commander knew how easily that tentative connection could snap, and he'd informed Misfire of the consequences via detailed descriptions of the many and varied violent acts he'd perform if the jet scared Fulcrum off.
Hence Misfire was the most motionless guard in the history of the war.
Fortunately, the odd Autobot hitchhiker they'd picked up was about as dangerous as a dead body. Sans any warheads left unexploded, of course, but what were the odds of that happening twice? "You know," he said slowly, camera light still on, "most people would ask me what I was doing way out here." Krok had plucked him out of the drifting hunk of charred metal that had once been some kind of vessel, looked him up and down, and decided he made a better hostage than Grimlock. Grimlock was pitiful in his own way, but he didn't look pitiful. This Autobot looked pitiful. Pitiful hostages won pity points. Since the Autobots had apparently won the war, being heroic saviors was a better plan than hostage-takers.
That didn't mean Krok had to care one whit about the Autobot they were saving. Holding hostage. Whichever. He'd assigned Misfire guard duty and left without a word spoken.
Misfire had spoken quite a lot of words, but Misfire didn't do the listening side of conversations well. The Autobot hadn't gotten a word in edgewise until Fulcrum warily poked his head into the room, too hungry to put off fueling anymore. After that, the thick, unspoken tension between the two Decepticons had smothered the Autobot's attempts at starting a conversation.
He tried once more. "You're not curious why I need to get to the Lost Light?"
"Is that a port or a ship?" Misfire asked.
Fulcrum let go of the straw and licked his lips. "Strange name for a ship."
And that derailed the story before it even got started. The little Autobot scoffed. "You're aboard a ship called the Weak Anthropic Principle, and you think the Lost Light is a strange name?"
"Well, yeah."
"That's what I was thinking…"
K-Con and siphoning specialist both stared at the Autobot, equally unable to see why their ship might be weird. At some point, a mech either accepted his life as the new normal or went about apologizing for his weirdness to everyone he met. Decepticons didn't do apologies to Autobots. Obviously, they were the normal ones, here.
Still giving him that puzzled look, Fulcrum took another sip from the straw.
The Autobot gave up. Mysteries were lost on people who lived with the inexplicable every day.
He pointed urgently behind them. "Look out, it's Overlord!"
Fulcrum whipped around, optics huge, but Misfire pumped his fist as he turned. "I won the bet with Crankcase!"
"What - Overlord's not - " The door remained closed, no rogue psycho killer Phase Sixer in sight. Fulcrum looked sidelong at Misfire. "What bet?"
"We bet we'd either run into Luna-1 or Overlord before we reached Cybertron." Misfire grinned. "You want in?" Since Overlord wasn't behind them after all.
As previously observed: at some point, Fulcrum had accepted his life as the new normal. "Y'know what, why not. Put me down for another run-in with the D.J.D."
Misfire gave him a strange look. "That's, er. You sure you want to win that?" That was more morbid than Fulcrum's usual jokes.
"It's more likely than either of your bets, and at least I'll get some money out of - hey, where'd he go?" Fulcrum glanced around the room. The Autobot failed to reappear. "Misfire!"
"Krok's gonna murder us," the jet yelped, and both Scavengers sprinted out the door to start searching.
They never found the Autobot.
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