Question: Are gods allowed to be assholes? Answer: Yes. Yes, they are.

When Vanity Met Insanity
Chapter 4

Sunstreaker had never been so glad to see the end of a day before. Above the outline of the soaring rock walls around him, he watched as the sky bled into yellows, reds, and oranges. He felt the last rays of warmth from the setting sun hit him, fusing his armour with fading warmth. It was peaceful in his immediate space. Squinting ahead of him, he saw nothing amiss. Checking behind him, he found the same innocuous vision. Just to be sure he was alone, he scanned the near vicinity for spark signatures and found none.

"Thank you," Sunstreaker sighed, though he wasn't sure who he was thanking at the moment. It was one of the few times in his life when he was grateful to be alone. He was content not to be the center of attention. After all the unexplained craziness he had experienced earlier with his Autobot brethren, he was not willing to go a round three or four with any of them. Primus forbid if he ever failed to get away from them.

A large outcropping of rock caught his attention, looking pristine enough to act as a seat for him. He perched upon it carefully, mindful not to scratch his paint off in the act. From subspace, he withdrew one of his many polishing clothes. There were no words to describe the relief he felt to have a polishing cloth in his hand, knowing that he would be able to give in to his need to clean himself. And it was a need. His sanity practically hinged on maintaining his good looks. The longer the dirt stayed on him, the stronger the urge screamed at him to wash it off. Now that he had the opportunity, he cleaned himself with a vengeance.

He wanted the dirt off him...

He wanted Ratchet off him...

Jazz, too.

And definitely Sideswipe.

No matter the wayward fantasies of some of the Autobots, the twins were not normally into incest and Sunstreaker was not about to change that.

In his quest to rid himself of all that was disturbing, Sunstreaker caught sight of his reflection in the shiny armour of his forearm. He inspected his frowning faceplate, not liking the expression. Frowning was bad for the complexion. He tried to correct the expression, but couldn't summon the energy to do so. He worried for Sideswipe, hopping he wasn't hurt. Sure, Sideswipe had been fixing to commit some very serious acts of incest if he had won the match with Jazz, but he was still Sunstreaker's brother. They were still family. Plus, Sideswipe wasn't in his right mind right now.

No one was in their right mind.

Everyone was suffering from a mysterious malfunction driven by an insidious virus.

Yep, virus.

Tearing himself away from his reflection, a very painful thing to do, Sunstreaker cast his gaze to the darkened sky. Velvet indigo hung like a blanket above him, encrusted with the twinkling diamonds of stars. He gained a modicum of peace from the night sky. It was one of the few stunning views Earth offered that was batter than Cybertron; Cybertron's entire surface had been too bright with light pollution to offer much of a view of the stars. Earth had places that were remote enough that the stars were still untouched by urbanity.

Sideswipe is fine, Sunstreaker told himself. His twin was an excellent fighter and had a talent for getting himself out of tricky situations. Jazz was probably fine as well. He was too smart and too devious to let Sideswipe take him down.

...which meant they were probably out there, pissed off and horny, hunting him down...

Suddenly, Sunstreaker didn't feel so good about sitting in one place. He moved to stand up, only to look down at his legs and grimace. His feet and shins were in horrible condition. Being closest to the ground, they had managed to accumulate the most grime. Making the hard decision, Sunstreaker resolved to keep moving- as soon as he finished cleaning himself up.

Not long after he resumed the dictates of his obsessive-compulsive disorder, Sunstreaker began to notice that things around him were starting to turn odd.

Well, odder than everything else that had happened to him so far.

At first, the happenings were so subtle that Sunstreaker could easily dismiss them. Within the last few hours, he had become a master at dismissing the most glaringly obvious faults in logic and reality. When the night settled in fully but the temperature in the gorge did not go down, Sunstreaker rationalized the stable temperature as lingering heat collected by the rocks during the day now being radiated at night. It was a pleasant temperature- not too hot, not too cold.

Soon after, Sunstreaker began to notice a new colour in his surroundings. The colour green. The reason he noticed it was because he was not partial to the colour green. Even though green was a marvellous colour to stand next to in order to enhance the golden hue of his own paint, green on Earth usually meant plant life, and Sunstreaker was not a fan of that slag. He wasn't a big fan of organic slag in general. And, to be honest, he wasn't even a big fan of Hound and his green armour; the mech was weird enough without adding the colour green into the mix. And don't even get him started on Brawn, who deserved to be punted across a football field for being such an annoying, grumpy glitch.

Green crept into his peripheral vision slowly. First a sprig of it, and then two. Sunstreaker looked up, narrowing his gaze suspiciously on the small grouping of innocent looking vines growing out of a crack in the rock wall. When the vines did not move, acting as innocently as inanimate vines usually did, he looked away. The moment he looked back, he was surprised to find that the vines looked several feet longer, crawling closer. Quickly, Sunstreaker chalked it up to a trick of the moonlight and shadows.

As a soft wind blew through the gorge, whistling off the high rock walls, the sound of music carried on the breeze. It was merry music, if Sunstreaker heard it right, but it was distant sound. Flutes and perhaps an accompanying lyre. Even though there were no human settlements around for miles, Sunstreaker was content to say that the music was coming from a town or village upwind. With fins like his on the side of his head, it was easy to think that they could catch sound waves and amply them so that he could hear even the faintest of sounds.

See? He was getting pretty good at dismissing things.

A tapping came on the side of his foot, catching his attention. He looked down without thinking about it, but froze when he found nothing there except a knot of rich green vines that had not been there several seconds before. Sunstreaker stared for several minutes, daring the inanimate organic plant to move. Nothing moved, not even a little twitch. Sunstreaker sighed, chastising himself for his silliness. After so much weirdness during the day, he was becoming paranoid. He looked away again, only to feel his foot being tugged this time. His gaze shot down as fast as lightning, trying to catch the culprit in the act. He was too slow to catch anything, but gaped at what he saw nonetheless.

The vines were now wrapped around his foot.

In the span of time it took for him to blink, his entire surroundings shifted.

As he looked about himself now, the whole gorge was covered in green life. Vines, trees, flowering plants, hanging moss, accompanied by the merry gurgling of an active stream. It no longer looked like a mountain gorge at all. Instead, it was a subtropical paradise of perfect wilderness; tame and untouched at the same time. The trees grew in such a way that they formed a naturally manicured canopy, allowing in enough moonlight to dapple the ground in dancing patterns. Fireflies blinked from the leaves of trees, shining so brightly that they cast their light on the surroundings, giving the enclosed clearing a dreamlike atmosphere.

The music was distinctly louder.

"Hallucinating," Sunstreaker murmured to himself. "I am so hallucinating." He closed his optics tight, slapping his palms over his face, scrubbing the metal relentlessly. He would not go through the same strangeness he had suffered during his first hallucination. When he was sure he rid himself of the mirage, he peeled his hands away and cracked open an optic.

In amongst the greenery that had the audacity to stay exactly where it had been several seconds before, there was now an assortment of carved stone decorations. Elaborate benches with elegant scroll work along the sides lined the babbling shore of the stream and sat in the seductive shade of trees bowing under the weight of their lush leaves. Pillars similar to the ones Sunstreaker had seen in the olive grove that had been a figment of his imagine now dotted this new illusion; some short, some tall, some skinny, some thick enough to place golden decanters atop of. Richly embroidered blankets of satin and silk laid in the long grass, looking plush and inviting.

He could hear the music of the flutes and lyre as if it were playing just beyond his sight.

Still desperately clinging to his sweet, sweet denial, Sunstreaker squeezed his optics shut once more and prayed that the insanity would end. Whoever he prayed to must not have been listening, because when he opened his optics again, the situation was much, much worse.

The music that had been haunting on the wind without a source was now giving body in the form of a small quartet performing on a pebbled patch of ground along the shore of stream. The three figures playing pan flutes were an odd mixture of human and animal. Their upper halves were that of naked men, while their lower halves were covered in thick brown fur and ended in a pair of cloven black hooves. From their heads were stubby horns, while their eyes were golden with horizontal pupils- like a goat's. They jigged in time to their music, their cloven hooves clattering on the pebbles. Next to them was a male youth standing completely naked as he played a golden lyre.

In the light of the too-bright fireflies, dozens of bodies now populated the impossible clearing. Small groups reclined gracefully on the assortment of blankets as they sipped blood red wine from golden goblets. Shaded bodied dappled by moonlight moved like shadows through the trees. Eyes glittered. Lips curved. Secrets whispered. Power hung in the air as a tangible object. These humans were dressed as Narcissus had been, in the draped fashions of flowing togas and dripping with the glint of golds and silvers.

"Finally decided to join our party, did you?" asked a dreadfully familiar voice.

Sunstreaker went rigid, his insides turning to ice. He could barely force his head to turn, doing so in a jerky fashion until he came faceplate-to-face with a human he was all too familiar with, and had been hoping never to hallucinate again. Much to his surprise, Narcissus was able to look him in the optic with ease. A quick glance around found Sunstreaker stunned as he realized the entire bower was to his size, as were the denizens populating it. Had he suddenly shrunk or were these people inexplicably his size?

Narcissus arched a perfect dark brow. "Well, have you no answer?"

Sunstreaker opened his mouthplates, only to have a slightly hysterical squeaking noise come out.

Several lounging humans looked over and laughed quietly. Their regard was almost cruel, with eyes full of mirthless amusement. It grated against Sunstreaker's deepest principles to be regarded in such a low manner. He was the Cybertronian here; he was supposed to be the superior organism. As flawless as the flesh of the creatures around him was, they did not compare to his golden, metallic perfection. They were the inferior carbon-based lifeforms. If anything, they needed reminding of who was the more beautiful of the species.

Sunstreaker tilted his chin up, staring down his olfactory sensor haughtily. "It's never a party until I arrive."

"Well said!" crowed a handsome male, applauding.

"Hush, Dionysus," a female shushed. She did not look human in the least; instead, she was comprised entirely of cherry blossom petals arranged in the shape of a woman.

Narcissus's dark eyes glittered as they watched Sunstreaker carefully, as if he could see right past the armour into the thought processes that were happening in the bot's head. He reached out with a tanned hand, moving for Sunstreaker's faceplate. Sunstreaker automatically moved away, disliking the idea of anyone touching him, especially a human- even an imaginary human- for fear of grease or oil coming off on him. A mocking smile turned Narcissus's lips up as his palm cupped the side of Sunstreaker's faceplate.

"It occurs to me that you have no idea who you are dealing with, Autobot Sunstreaker of Cybertron," said the human.

"I'm hallucinating," Sunstreaker intoned firmly.

There came laughter again, crueler than before. It was the sound of tinkling bells mixed with the shattering of glass; beautiful and entrancing at the same time it was horrible and repulsing.

"He knows not what we are," laughed a sprite who danced along the shore of the stream.

"He knows not of even the curse that lays upon him," an armoured male who looked ready for war chuckled deeply.

Narcissus turned his gaze to his fellow gods, demigods, and enchanted company. "He is an exceptionally dense creature of considerable beauty and even greater conceit. He knows not that everything he sees is real."

Sunstreaker bristled. "This can't be real."

"Why not?" Narcissus asked, both brows now arched expectantly.

"People with goat feet and females made of flower petals don't exist; curses aren't real; everything here is impossible," Sunstreaker said, even as his hopes grew dimmer with every passing moment. The longer he remained in the company of such creatures, the less that he was able to dismiss the preternatural nature of what was happening around him. Narcissus's hand on his faceplate had been too real. The sights, smells, and sounds of the bower were a little too realistic to be figments of his imagination.

"There is a flaw in your logic," Narcissus said with a definite relish. "You see, people with goat feet and females made of petals are standing right in front of you. They must exist if they are there. If curses weren't real, you wouldn't have had the day you just had; your comrades certainly wouldn't have been acting as they did. If everything around you were impossible, it would not exist. As you can see, it does exist, so therefore it is not impossible- at least not for gods." A goblet of wine suddenly appeared in the human's- er, god's hand, and he took a savouring sip of it.

Sunstreaker's mind whirled in a panic. He was not a religious bot, by far. He did not believe in Primus, though he liked to liberally use his name in vain. It was a hobby of his. He was even less informed about Earth religions and Earth gods. The only thing he thought he knew about them was that they didn't exist, and that belief just got the slag blown out of it.

Stunned blue optics turned warily on Narcissus. "You're a... a god?"

"Yes," Narcissus replied.

"You cursed me?"

The goblet of wine disappeared from the god's hand so that he could inspect his perfectly manicured fingernails. "Technically, I gave you what you wanted. It only turned into a curse when you realized what you wanted was more than what you can handle." He shook out his hand, casting Sunstreaker a dangerous smile. "You really should be more careful who you insult."

Sunstreaker reared back. "How was I supposed to know you were a god?"

Narcissus shrugged indifferently. "That's not my problem. I knew I was a god when I was talking to you. If you didn't, that's your fault."

"If you haven't noticed, I'm not from this planet," Sunstreaker exclaimed, no longer caring that he had a crowd watching him. "Take the curse off me!"

"I'm sorry but was that a heart-felt apology for your thoughtless insult with regards to my beauty?" Narcissus drawled.

"Do you have any idea what your curse has been doing to the bots around me? They've been coming after me like crazed lunatics. My brother, my own slagging brother, was lusting after me!" Sunstreaker cried, gesturing violently.

This announcement beckoned the greatest bout of laughter yet, inspiring Narcissus to laugh along with his peers. It was a while before the godly crowd was able to compose themselves. They wiped their eyes and tried to muffle the dregs of chuckling behind their hands. Narcissus did not bother to hide his mirth from his glinting dark eyes.

"I only made it so your comrades regarded you with the same reverence that you placed in yourself," said the god of narcissism. "If your brother and others were overcome with lust for you, it was because you yourself find attraction to your reflection. They become obsessed because you are obsessed. If they are delusional, they are only infected with your own delusions." A predatory smile took hold of Narcissus's face. "I take delight in knowing I have brought such distress to your life after you have so gravely slighted me."

Sunstreaker bristled, but had no other choice than to spit, "I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry for slighting you." He failed to mention what he was sorry for, because deep inside, he was not sorry at all. He would not apologize for the truth. He was, indeed, a greater beauty than Narcissus; indeed, his ego was actually inflated a little by knowing that he outranks a god in appearances.

Narcissus laughed. "You are not at all sorry for anything."

"Just take this curse off me, will you?" Sunstreaker grieved, reaching the breaking point of his patience.

"Even if I was inclined to remove the curse, I don't know if I could," Narcissus replied with a light shrug, clearly enjoying himself.

"W-what?" The bottom of Sunstreaker's tanks felt like they dropped out.

"If you had paid any attention to Greek myth, you would know us gods are well versed in handing out the curses," Narcissus pointed out. "We're simply not so kind in taking them back."

"You mean I might be stuck this way for the rest of my life?" Sunstreaker croaked.

"Looks like it," Narcissus replied merrily.

"Oh Primus."

"I don't think your god is going to help you," the god intoned unhelpfully.

Sunstreaker sucked in a sharp drag of air, and then did the only thing he could do; it was the same thing he had been doing all day. He turned tail and ran out of the revelry. He ran until the trees and vines turned back to stone. He ran from the sound of laughter and music, running until the scent of greenery and wine drained from the air. His legs carried him far from the enchanted place, guided by instinct and fear until he found a darkened cave to dive into.

Huddled to a wall with his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms wrapped around his shins, Sunstreaker was now sure there was something wrong with him. The worst part about it was there was no way to fix it.

To make matters worse, someone suddenly coughed in the cave. Sunstreaker went taught, his head snapping around. There, in the back of the cave, three pairs of hungry Seeker optics watched him.