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Pt. 56: "(Bestiality) Pedophilia"

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The Decepticons liked humans.

Like, liked humans. Yeah. Like that. That way kind of liked. Like getting off on kind of liked. It was more a lust than a like, but good luck prying that admission from any of them.

Nobody was ashamed of it, precisely, because everyone had it to one degree or another, but, well, yeah. It wasn't talked about openly, okay? It was a thing on Earth about Earth that didn't travel off Earth because it belonged where it had started: on Earth. None of the Decepticons on Earth ever discussed it with a Decepticon off Earth. They didn't talk about it with Decepticons on Earth, yet somehow word got around.

It was the altmodes, see? With the exception of those with beast modes, the Decepticons had scanned altmodes originally created for and by humans. Every detail of their exteriors mimicked the vehicles humans drove, operated, used in war and daily life. Superficial details inside them had shifted around, too, allowing them to pass as Earth-made even if a human popped their hoods. The transcan altered the Decepticons' appearance, which was fairly normal camouflage, but by rooting changes past the surface level, certain things had wedged into their programming. There wasn't any way to pry that out of their deep code once the minute details settled in.

There was no denying that humans fit them. The Decepticons were their altmodes, mechanical beings as much machine as living creature, and their altmodes yawned empty. The jets had lighted controls in empty cockpits. The Constructicons had seat harnesses designed for another species' safety. The Stunticons had luxuriously upholstered interiors for no one's benefit. The shuttles kept their cabins and cargo areas pressurized despite admitting they had no idea why it felt more comfortable.

Something was missing from inside almost all of them, and that something was humankind. The emptiness was a void, the void craved to be filled, and since they were on Earth anyway…

So by the time the Combaticons ended up on Earth, the human fetish among the Decepticons was alive and well. Hidden, perhaps, but flourishing in a discreet, thriving underground that Vortex nosed out with little problem. It wasn't as though it was a secret. It was a total social embarrassment to talk about in public, as the Combaticons quickly discovered, but they figured out the round-about methods of acquiring what they wanted soon enough. They had to. The newbie combiner team had begun to feel the empty pull.

They were made for humans. Their internal parts were perfectly designed for tiny human hands to hold, their interiors deliberately shaped to accommodate small human forms, their altmode reflexes triggered by buttons meant to be pushed by the frail fingertips of humankind. The Combaticons had been brought back online in forms that belonged to another race, and oh no, oh yes, oh frag them but they were starting to feel it.

The good news was that none of the Decepticons were prudes. At this point in the war, transforming to altmode was halfway a proposition outside of battle. Pairing up had to be done with one mech in each mode to get the circuit connection right, but being on Earth stuck them in their altmodes pretty much everywhere outside the base. It'd been a while since they'd last been on a planet where their altmodes were actual disguises, and they were out of practice thinking about transforming in that light. It left a lot of them halfway revved up in altmode as they did normal, mundane reconnaissance among the humans - who were an excruciatingly tactile species. Primus spare the Decepticons' sparks, did the humans touch a lot. They touched everything. Each other! Themselves! Objects!

And them. The humans loved to touch them. The humans liked to feel. Show them a handgun, or a sleek F-15, or even a frontend loader, and out came the instinct to pick up, to stroke, to run delicate fingertips over broad planes of metal plating and fine seams where the metal joined.

Touching someone else's altmode was pretty much getting it on even before someone popped a cable hatch. Xenophobia slammed headlong into altered deep code the first time a human opened a reluctantly unlocked door to climb inside Scrapper, and the other Decepticons strained their sensors watching him for a reaction.

*"What's it like, mech?"*

*"Is it all squishy and gross?"*

*"Ha! You're getting organic all inside you!"*

*"Shut up,"* Scrapper had barked into the open commline, bizarrely serious, and everyone had shut up out of sheer shock that he sounded so dead calm with an alien in his seat. *"I'm busy."*

He'd refused to speak for the rest of the time the human drove him around the construction site.

*"…he's probably this far from tossing his tanks."*

*"Heh, right, I would be, too."*

*"Awwwww, poor widdle 'Structie's got sticky hands everywhere in his innards."*

The other Decepticons had laughed right up until Scrapper transformed later that day, masked face somehow broadcasting the glowing satisfaction of a mech fragged long and hard. Even the other Constructicons had stared speechlessly as he swaggered past, fulfillment trailing in his wake.

Well, then.

No, they didn't immediately begin fragging humans. It wasn't physically possible, for one thing, although Vortex had to make some inquiries into the repairbay's publically available health files before he found a warning tucked at the bottom of a posted notice about 'Don't try it, glitches'. Which probably meant someone else had. That couldn't have been fun for anyone involved.

Poking around some more turned up a couple of extremely dry dissertations by Hook on the subject. Vortex glared at the rest of his team - "You had better appreciate this." - and read through them. It took a while. Hook had the astounding ability to dress up some truly scandalous information in the universe's most boring narrative tone, making interface-related research on humans so dull Brawl took to thwacking Vortex on the rotorblades to keep him awake. If Vortex hadn't caught on that Hook was doing it on purpose, he'd have given up the first hour.

However, the Combaticons had questions, questions that the Decepticons on Earth scowled at them for daring to ask out loud. Reading up on what they wanted to know was the next best thing.

And it came down to what they'd already suspected: substituting a human for the other half of an interfacing provided no charge but worked nonetheless. A human excited base programming in a way no other Decepticon could, making overload a deep, code-level satisfaction instead of an electric release. All those little parts and pieces of their altmodes made to be used by humankind cycled rich, pleasure-laced feedback through them when actually used by the soft, clever hands of a human.

Even if most of the Decepticons hadn't been jonesing for humankind, the rich pulse of tactile overload addicted them anyway.

Vortex sat back once he'd figured it out, visor disturbed. Intrigued, too. "You guys aren't going to believe this…"

Onslaught and Blast Off exchanged a look mirrored by Brawl and Swindle. Swindle didn't seem surprised once Vortex laid it out, but, well, Swindle. Swindle had a special kind of relationship with all of his customers no matter the species. He could get off on money changing hands even if the hands were tiny and fleshy.

For the other Combaticons, it was a gamechanger. They didn't suddenly gain acceptance among the Decepticons, of course, but knowing what the frag was going on gave them the key to the coded language used in the common room, the inexplicable absences of mechs on certain days suddenly explained, the strange behaviors among the ranks no longer strange at all.

Er, no, the Insecticons were still fairly strange. They had beast modes. What was their excuse?

But Octane's ever-growing business network in the Middle East based on the size of his harem made so much more sense, now. "I always liked the top-heavy frametypes," he said absently the next time Vortex slipped in a question about it.

"Everybody's noticed your posters," Vortex said dryly. He was looking at one right now. Octane had a collection of vintage Golden Age pin-ups he kept pasted on his interior walls. The fixation on femme frametypes had always struck Vortex as weird, but in the context of Earth, why not? "So you're, uh, married?"

"Nine times over, now. The local oil magnates use their daughters to seal business deals, and I figured it's as good a way to get a detailing done as any." Octane flexed his wings, and smugness rolled off him. Anyone who dealt with him noticed the shiny perfection of his polish. Many hands made light work, apparently, and many human hands made the mech get off quite frequently if that's what that wing-waggle meant.

Good on him, Vortex supposed. Marrying aliens seemed like pushing the fetish a bit far, but he didn't seriously think Octane meant any of the vows he mouthed at the ceremonies. Plus it had earned him a harem full of humans eager to please him, so that was a decent trade-off.

The other Decepticons had to be more covert in their human-seeking. Vortex nudged here, gossiped there, and eventually pieced together some of the Earth base's, ah, extracurricular activities.

The Constructicons had it bad for burly men in tough jeans and hardhats. They liked to be used in build sites, calloused hands pawing their wheels and heavy bodies slouched in their seats. Mixmaster and Hook both sought smokers, Mixmaster for the smell and Hook for the guilty pleasure of watching humans getting their nicotine fix. Vortex had no idea how that worked. All he knew was that steel-toed boots left distinctive tracks on running boards, and Scrapper beamed afterglow when he got some.

Megatron occasionally visited a shooting range in Las Vegas. Vortex wouldn't touch that information if he was paid to, thoroughly unnerved, but Onslaught seemed far more interested than Vortex wanted to know anything about. Just - loyalty programming was the Pit. No. He didn't want to know, and he wasn't getting involved.

The Stunticons collectively lusted after rich middle-aged men and busty young women wearing very little clothing. It took Vortex a while to connect that to how the whole combiner team vanished from the base whenever a car show was anywhere in a major American or European city. Midage crisis and models showed up in scores at the shows, as far as he understood. He didn't know for certain, but the magazines he found showed scantily-clad women draped all over cars, and the target audience seemed to be men eager to buy those cars. Or acquire the women. Maybe both? But either way, it provided the Stunticons with a plethora of hands and soft skin pressed to their hoods.

Motormaster being the sole exception, as he disappeared into the highway system while his subordinates were off being fondled by humans. He showed up at rest stops, truckdrivers behind his wheel and odd accessories from roadside attractions gradually cluttering up his dashboard.

Vortex found his taste in humans kind of sick - why did the humans Motormaster pick up always smell so bad? - but he didn't have room to talk. His own tastes were questionable, at best. It came down to personal preference in the end. Earth had a variety of humans, all the colors and kinds the Decepticons could possibly want, and experimentation ran rampant. Vortex was no different when it came to narrowing down the selection. It'd taken some trial and error, but one of the benefits of being stuck in a gestalt with Swindle was the ability to purchase almost anything.

He'd tried women. He'd tried men. He'd tried everything in between.

He liked Air Force personnel. He liked hookers no matter their gender. Hookers told they were performing for a hidden camera would hump his seats, sprawl out on his floor, and even lick his knobs suggestively. They were unrestrained, almost wild, and while he didn't care for the visuals, the feel of all that skin against his control panel, in his seats, and against his windshield was beyond priceless. He had the one who could deep-throat his stick on speed-dial, because…yeah.

But Vortex liked little boys the best. Ages 5-12 were his favorite. Any older than that, and they subconsciously remembered manners; any younger, and they couldn't climb into his seats by themselves. Girls were okay, too, but human parents seemed to train their females at a young age that they weren't supposed to like aircraft. Big machines weren't supposed to excite them. Boys, on the other hand, learned that giant helicopters were the coolest thing on planet Earth. Set loose inside Vortex's altmode, they were active bundles of running feet and grabbing hands, and it was great. It was so much better than the calculated show put on by paid whores. Little boys jerked on his throttle, pushed all of his buttons, tied themselves up in his safety harnesses with total concentration as they tried to get the buckles right. They pretended to blow enemies up. They bounced up and down in his seats as they made sound effects and narrated battles, using every part of him that moved to fit their play.

Primus, he loved the little boys. It was constant touch, touch, touch.

"Come on it," Vortex said in his warmest voice as the blank-faced nanny Swindle hired to ferry children from orphanages lifted the latest child up into his hold. The small boy looked around uncertainly, his chubby cheeks shiny with the remnants of candy given to him during the trip to keep him complacent. Vortex chuckled. The sugar rush would hit soon, and he was looking forward to it. "Don't be scared. Would you like to play with me?"

Wide eyes looked at the slack cargo netting on the helicopter's walls. "Play what?"

Vortex lit his control panel up, flickering the lights like a lure. "I need a pilot. Want to fly me?"

The lights and buttons - so many buttons to push, and each push of a miniscule fleshy fingertip went straight to ready interface equipment - enticed the boy into his cockpit. The peculiar excited look of happy disbelief washed over the human's little face. "Can I..?"

Almost too old, Vortex noted with an internal frown, and he made a mental note to ask Swindle for younger boys from now on. He liked them to start playing without asking permission. "Of course you can."

Soft hands began exploring his controls. Wondering eyes looked at all the knobs. Vortex wanted more enthusiasm - definitely too old for his taste, but the kid would do for today - and he waggled his throttle in invitation. The boy grinned, wrapping both hands around it, and Vortex just about died.

Little hands, soft hands, hands that moulded perfectly to the grip on his throttle, fingers sliding into the grooves and thumb bumping at the button at the end.

"That's it," he said in a choked voice. "Do you like rotorblades? You can climb up to look at them later."

The grin had turned into a gape-toothed smile, brilliantly excited, and the boy did that jump in place thing kids did that Vortex had come to utterly adore. Feet on his floor felt wonderful, but the pattering dance of moving sneakers felt as though it went directly into his spark. "Can I look now? Can I?"

Why not? "Alright," he said, indulging himself. "There's a staircase set up outside you can use to get on top." The boy immediately darted for the door, and Vortex chuckled again. Usually the feel of fingers wriggling into his rotor array was something he saved for last, but then the boy would come back inside him smelling of lubricant and grease, the fresh clean scent of a mechanic crossed with the candy-sweet smell of an excited child, little hands smearing slick skin over metal as the boy turned all his knobs and pushed all his buttons. He'd have to hold on firmer to get a good grip. Maybe he'd wipe his tiny fingers off on Vortex's seats. He'd touch and touch and Vortex would have to stop talking at some point as it became too much, his vocalizer fritzing to static as overload crept up on him under the enthusiastic, innocent molestation of his every nook and cranny.

Oh, yes. Yes, Vortex liked the little boys.


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