Kaon Forum :: Cybertron-Gor AU :: Growl :: Motormaster :: "Mechs of Gor"

Authored by :: Boom-Boom

Warnings :: Force-Downloading, Rank Play, Wire Play, Rewiring, Forced Engine Revving, Rodophilia (rusting), Firewall Breaching, Cerebral Hi-Jacking, Viral Infection, Rimming (spark chamber), Amputation and Reattachment, Helm Isolation (disembodying), Forced Alt-Mode Change, Forced Frame Alteration, Body Detailing, Gestalt, Paint-Play, Insignia Desecration, Lube Play, Rimming (seals), Filter Play, Wheel Biting/Mutilation, Branding, Alt-Mode Bondage, Hydropump, Forced Refueling, Speed Kink, Zero-G Interfacing, Electrowhips, Comm Hacking, Prime Roleplay

He commanded we interface. I resisted, saying "I do not want to interface." He said "you will interface." Still I resisted. But I was not on Cybertron, where mechs are proud without reason, not knowing they are weak. Here on Gor, subordinate mechs know their weakness and know their beauty, and weak mechs learn their place. I would learn my place. He took me by force, and said "you will interface." We interfaced. And I knew that I was subordinate, and that I was beautiful when I interfaced. And my interfacing was done well. When he finished with me, I cried and gathered up my circuits, and said "I have been well interfaced." Truly on Gor my true nature as mech is revealed, perfect as I kneel on my motoring master's energon chain.

Endfile :: Page 125/?

To be resumed

In the Decepticon mess hall, no one looked askance at mechs reading the hardest of hard interfacing stories, but Scrapper began to wish he was in the Autobot mess if only because he didn't have to sit directly across from the author who eagerly waited for feedback. Comments were easier to leave when the author didn't have firearms installed on their frame.

Scrapper sighed, put down his datapad...and heaved a long vent that left his whole frame sagging. He leaned back in his seat, meeting Thundercracker's look.

"I know," Thundercracker grumbled. "But it's not my fault. Soundwave was my beta. Without him—"

"It's not that," Scrapper said, sighing again. "Although, yeah, it's choppier than usual. It's just that it's so...by the numbers."

"'By the numbers'?" Thundercracker said. "I have all the kinks you wanted."

"You do," Scrapper said. "It's just...it's not you. It's the whole thing. Tweak the gyros, bend the armor, insert cords, begin dissembling, force recalibration...it feels like we're following a pattern, y'know?"

"What?" Thundercracker started. "You want me to change styles?"

"No, I—"

"'Cause I'm never gonna copy anyone else," Thundercracker said. "Everyone else is just doing this 'cause they like comments. I'm doing this for the art."

"You do have the most fans," Scrapper said, waving his hands with a weak smile.

"I've been writing for the longest," Thundercracker said. "Ever since we came to this crummy planet."

"Yeah, you do have the most stories," Scrapper said, looking around the room for an escape.

All of the other mechs in the mess hall lowered their optics or found the ceilings and wall suddenly fascinating. Two tables over, Counterpunch let out a long vent, threw back the last of his energon, then dragged his chair over and joined them. Scrapper looked at him like a drowning mech seeing a lifeline.

"You think I'm good," Thundercracker said to Counterpunch. "Right?"

"Best on the Kaon forums," Counterpunch said. "I think I read 'Soft Seals for Devastator' three times."

Thundercracker beamed.

"Have you put that one on the new forum?" Counterpunch asked.

"What, on Deceptively Yours?" Thundercracker reset his optics. "Why would I put it up there? Everyone knows it's just pacifists and cross-factionalists."

"Well, yeah," Counterpunch said. "The dubcon and forced subforums there are kind of empty. But mainly I ask 'cause the formatting on that forum makes it easier to download to my datapad. And I don't miss anything 'cause it turns so slow."

"Deceptively Yours is...slow?" Thundercracker picked up his datapad and flipped to the right tab. "Huh. It is pretty...whoa. What the...?"

Counterpunch squashed his satisfaction and kept recording. Once he got clear of the base, he'd send the whole conversation in a neat little package to Jazz.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Look at the comment count," Thundercracker vented. "Hippie-Mech just got fifty five comments on a one-shot. And Oasis...twenty-eight comments on a poem."

"Is that bad?" Counterpunch asked.

"It's..." Thundercracker looked at him for a moment, then started to scoot out of his seat. "I gotta go. Um. I'll upload that story, though. It might, um, take awhile. A chapter a week, maybe? Give mechs time to...uh, savor it."

"Sure, sure," Scrapper said, waving him along.

As soon as Thundercracker left the mess, Scrapper vented and slumped in his chair again.

"I owe you," he said to Counterpunch. "I know better than criticizing him, I really do. I just..."

"Got tired of the same ol', same ol'?" Counterpunch said. "I know how you feel. S'why I've been reading all the stuff on the new forum."

"I..." Scrapper scratched the back of his neck. "I heard that was all civvie cross faction shmoop."

Counterpunch turned his datapad around to face him. "MaskedMech is posting there."

"What?" Scrapper stared at the display. "He's still doing the Spec Ops series?"

"It's changed a little," Counterpunch said. "But yeah."

A moment later, Scrapper had excused himself and run back to his berth. Counterpunch smiled to himself and ceased recording. It was war and war was hell, but for all the decepticons he'd stabbed in the back, he knew most of the mechs on the enemy base better than those of his own faction on the Ark. And sometimes—though he'd never admit it to any autobots—it was a relief to fight the war with stories instead of bullets.

Which would only make it that much harder when he had to shoot Scrapper on the battlefield someday.

He shoved the thoughts away and started composing his message to Jazz. As good as it was to have Counterpunch nudge one or two mechs into the forum, he couldn't nudge everyone into reading.

Tone, he started, using Jazz's secret designation. We've got a problem.

"'Deceptively Yours is still too civilian'," Jazz said, reading the message to the select group of moderators. "They say it's too...'shmoopy'."

Around the table, Mirage, Beachcomber and First Aid all groaned, putting their helms in their hands or even draping themselves wearily across the table. Beside them, Rewind and Hound shared a look.

"I told you so," Rewind said. "You can't just pick the ones you like."

"We are not having this conversation again," First Aid said, venting hard. "You want to add—"

"—stories that will appeal to decepticons," Hound said. "And a lot of those are rougher than what you've been choosing."

"I refuse to sanction anything that doesn't include safe passwords," First Aid said. "And full discussions beforehand—"

"Oh yeah," Rewind said, "'cause endless negotiating of welding scenes is so enthralling."

"Any decent bot would prefer a story with explicit consent," First Aid said. "I don't see how anyone can read something that...well..."

"I knew we might have to pull in the forced download stories," Beachcomber sighed. "But not so soon. I just didn't think we'd lose so much of an audience not having those awful things in."

"Hey," Rewind said, grimacing. "They're not awful. Some of them are really good."

First Aid gave him a look. "Those are usually decepticon stories, you know."

Rewind narrowed his optics. "There's a ton of them on the sur-net, you know."

"Just as, like, therapy fics," First Aid said, busying himself with his datapad and not noticing how Mirage wasn't talking anymore, tapping together his fingertips and coughing to clear his filters. But Hound noticed, and he focused on First Aid with the same precision as when taking a shot.

"Funny," Hound said. "I'd'a thought a medic would have a more open mind about mechs liking their kinks."

First Aid's intake skipped a beat, and he looked up with wide optics. "Hound? You...?"

"Oh Primus," Jazz groaned, hanging his helm in his hands and refusing to look up. "Can y'all just please get over your damn hangups and get this wargame on the road?"

"It's a matter of trying to reach out properly," Beachcomber said, repeating almost verbatim the argument he'd used every time the subject came up. "How can we extend the olive branch if we're peddling force downloads and...well. You haven't seen the list of things that some bots are into. If you thought we were bad..."

"Just look at this one," First Aid said with growing volume. "A mech named Boom-Boom just uploaded a chapter. 'Cerebral hijacking, viral infection, spark chamber play, force welding, amputation and reattachment, helm isolation... These aren't kinks, these are—are—they're war crimes and atrocities!"

"They ain't real," Hound and Rewind echoed.

"But they happen in real life," First Aid said. "Mirage, back us up here."

Mirage winced, turning his helm and refusing to meet his look.

"...Mirage?" First Aid pressed.

"I like pinning and forced spiking," Mirage mumbled. "And—permanent berth welding."

First Aid's look immediately went to the points on Mirage's frame where welding would have occurred. Mirage scowled and put his hands under the table.

"I've never seen dents on you like that," First Aid said as if accusing him of lying.

"Hound doesn't actually force me!" Mirage snapped, then dipped his helm again as he felt his faceplate overheat. "I shouldn't have to defend it like this."

"I..." First Aid put his datapad down and covered his faceplace, heaving a vent. "Dammit, Mirage...I didn't mean..."

"Okay, that's it."

Jazz stood, tossing his datapad onto the table with a clatter. All of them froze except Mirage, who looked like he was one step away from crawling under the table and deactivating himself.

"The real problem here isn't that you can't agree on which kinks are somehow okay to air in public," Jazz grumbled. "It's that you ain't the target audience."

"Ain't much we can do about that," Hound sighed, putting his hand on Mirage's.

"Now see," Jazz said, a grin sliding across his face despite himself. "That's something I can indeed fix. I didn't wanna do this, and Prowler ain't gonna be happy, but hell. What's this stupid high rank for except twisting that mech's gears sometimes?"

Which was how Sideswipe and Sunstreak came to be an unwilling audience as they guarded the entrance, their rifles held at the ready, as Soundwave at one side of the table, holding his datapad like a makeshift shield, staring in shock at sitting surrounded by equally open-mouthed bots.

"MaskedMech," Jazz said, "please meet some of your other partners in crime."

Soundwave's mouth pressed flat.

"Autobots...writers?" he asked.

"I mostly just read," Mirage said quickly. "Poems. Comments. I...oh primus."

"We need your help," Hound said, covering for him. "We ain't sure what'll draw in decepticon readers."

Beachcomber vented. "We are having a hard time creating something the other faction can all jam to. We have the dreamers and the hopefuls, but the...common mech...we're missing something."

"Force downloads and torture, apparently." First Aid tapped his fingers with increasing force on his datapad, staring through the table.

"Ah." Soundwave lifted his helm in understanding. "Civilian culture clashing with warbuild culture. Reader percentage on Deceptively Yours likely at 36%."

All of them stood straight, including Jazz.

"Now where'd you hear about that? Jazz said. "You've been confined to the ark's sur-net."

"Affirmative," Soundwave said. "However, comments on sur-net refer to new forum in passing—DY, YourLies, UplyYours. Name extrapolation, logical."

First Aid winced.

"That's, uh, that's what they're calling it?" He vented. "I guess I haven't been able to keep up with the surnet with all this extra work."

Soundwave nodded once. "Insults to be expected. Autobots hostile to decepticons."

"It's not really all that bad," Rewind said. "I've been keeping up with the Polyhex subforum. It's more that they're angry some Autobots are posting on what they think is a Decepticon forum."

"So just more of the usual anti-crossfaction stuff," Beachcomber said. "Well, I suppose that can't be helped."

"Not anti-crossfaction," Soundwave said. "Comment envy."

All of them looked up.

"'Comment envy'?" Rewind echoed.

"Complaints mention high comment counts on decepticon works. Autobot envy, palpable."

"What?" Beachcomber said. "But...that's just us. We've been writing comments for everything posted to Deceptively Yours to feed the artists and writers a little reward to keep them going. Sometimes stories only get one or two clicks and nary even a word of praise."

Soundwave shrugged. "Soundwave, only extrapolates. No access to raw data."

Rewind was already bringing up Deceptively Yours and looking at the comment counts.

"Okay, so that's...three for the Gor thing, five for the one before that—we just did that one—six for the one after that, then nine, twelve, thirteen..." He clicked to the next page. His optics widened. "Thirty-five. Forty-nine. Fifty-five—HippieMech, your fic got fifty-five—"

He stopped and looked at Mirage. "Twenty-eight comments for Darkened Headlights—Gears in the Dark."

Mirage's jaw dropped.

"I...I didn't..." He picked up the datapad and scrolled through dozens of tabs. "I haven't had a chance to look..."

"None of us have," Hound said. "We been so busy with trying to get submissions that we never looked at how many was reading."

"They each wrote so much," Mirage said, flipping through the comments. "'Great flow, love how easy it is to chant this while my mate's on top of me. Were you a noble...?'"

Mirage coughed again and stopped reading aloud. "LubeLover, BittenFin, Wrong-Way...I don't recognize any of these names."

"Mechs, all Decepticons," Soundwave said. "Greaser, Acid Storm, Detour."

Jazz stared at him for a moment, then groaned and sat down at the far end of the table, opposite Soundwave. "Guess I'ma be here getting names from you...so we can get Decepticon designations...Prowler, you owe me for this."

"But why are there so many comments?" Mirage asked.

Soundwave frowned, looking at his datapad.

"It's not like you had that many comments on the sur-net," Beachcomber said. "It can't just be that they're Decepticons."

Soundwave's shoulders hunched slightly, and his gaze dropped even further to the floor.

"You got something on your mind?" Jazz asked.

"...Jazz," Soundwave started. "Might be angry."

"Jazz brought Soundwave here to help answer questions," Jazz said, then laughed despite the mounting task ahead of himself. "'Sides, when've I held it against ya?"

Soundwave considered that. His calculations must have checked out because he took a deep vent and squared his shoulders.

"Civilian culture does not lend itself to comments," he said. "Warbuild culture stresses acknowledgment of improvement or inferiority compared to peers."

"Whoa," Rewind said before anyone else could. "Hey. That ain't fair. Autobots leave tons of comments. Heck, there's whole writing circles in the different subforums."

"I will not have you maligning the lack of comments from some of our comrades," Beachcomber said. "Some mechs ain't got the kind of confidence that comes from within, ya dig? The war's busted it out of them 'till all they can do is read and escape for a little while."

"Comments, irregardless of mental health," Soundwave said. "Example: Sunstorm, comments on every story, only comment ever long strings of 'Radiate Primus'."

"...that's all he ever says?" Beachcomber reset his optics. "'Radiate Primus' over and over again?"

"Sunstorm, 96% not sane," Soundwave said slowly. "Still comments. Dutifully."

He paused.

"Admittedly, Sunstorm's thoughts, unnerving to view. Even among Decepticons."

First Aid whistled lowly. "Damn."

"But wait," Hound said. "If warbuilds are super into commenting, how come ain't no Decepticons started their own forums? They hid out on the sur-net on the ark and just didn't comment as much as they thought they should?"

"Decepticons, hiding among enemies," Soundwave said. "Blending in. Only creative outlet, too risky to be overtly warbuild."

A moment passed as they waited for more of an explanation. When none was forthcoming, Jazz leaned back in his seat with a raised eyeridge.

"All of it, Soundwave," he said slowly. "Why's Deceptively Yours the first 'con perv free for all?"

Soundwave lowered his helm again, refusing to look at Jazz.

"Warbuild culture, demands responses. Also demands adulation of acceptable narratives, condemnation of any narrative diverging from official Meg-Meg-Megatron policy. Risk...unacceptable."

The glitch of Megatron's name sent up red flags to Jazz, not that Soundwave was lying but that the official policy was still ingrained in his cortex. He made a note to have Ratchet comb through Soundwave's coding to ferret out some of the deeper code strings and isolate them for Soundwave to defrag later before he crashed yet again.

"So..." Mirage started, sounding out his thoughts. "The autobots have the creative freedom and the decepticons have the...what would you call it? Mandatory dedication?"

"Discipline," Soundwave said. "Practice and discipline. Warbuild culture."

The autobots erupted into argument over what warbuild and civilian actually meant and ways to subvert what Soundwave was saying. Jazz let them speak over each other, staring at Soundwave who quietly stared back.

"Okay..." Jazz said.

In a louder voice, he called an end to the meeting. Long seconds passed as his team filtered out of the meeting room, Rewind riding on Hound's shoulder as they both argued with First Aid, Beachcomber quietly offering his apologies for harshing Mirage's groove.

"'Sides," Jazz said, "Sunny. Take a walk for awhile."

Sideswipe and Sunstreak blinked, sharing a look.

"Um, sir?" Sideswipe asked. "You sure...?"

"I think I can handle one disarmed communications bureaucrat," Jazz said, never looking away from Soundwave. "And lock the door."

"Um...yessir."

The twins stowed their weapons and left the room. An audible click of a magnetized lock followed.

In silence, Soundwave and Jazz faced each other over the long table. Jazz frowned, tapping the edge of his datapad. Then he looked at the ground for a moment, gathering his thoughts.

"All right," Jazz muttered. "I've been dodging this damn thing since day one, but you gone and forced my hand."

Soundwave didn't move.

Jazz glared back at him, his visor somehow giving off the same heat that his optics would.

"Why the slag do you think I'm some kind of warbuild?"

Soundwave started. "Jazz—"

"And if you start with 'Jazz superior', I will cut your cables so clean even Ratchet won't be able to tell where they're severed 'till the energon starts flowing."

Soundwave's mouth clicked shut. His optics widened slightly, not in disbelief but at the mental image. It was no idle boast. He had seen Jazz's victims completely unaware that they were already dead but didn't realize it, only discovering that their cords had been sliced until they turned left or right and their fuel lines slid apart.

"Answer...will require time to put into more concrete terms," he said.

Jazz snorted, leaning back in his seat again. Waiting.

Soundwave wondered if he would be leaving the room alive.