Feminine Troubles Chapter 9: Flirt
Hi readers, sorry about the delay, I've been super busy lately.
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me, Hasbro owns the rights, no money is being made. Anyone not old enough to read naughty things should not be reading this story.
"So, Prime, all you have to do is surrender yourself and your troops to me and none of you will be harmed in any way. I could even be persuaded to spare the puny Earth creatures in exchange for your scientist's cooperation in locating other sources of energon." Megatron let a leering smile touch his faceplates, and tried not to stare at his rival's chest. Or her waist, particularly where it curved enticingly into the swell of her hips.
Prime raised an optic ridge at the offer. "Surely you jest, Megatron. You need us far more than we need you, in order to rebuild Cybertron. We are the ones with the scientists, the numbers, and the ability to bear newsparks. Besides which, as the humans develop their technology, they are becoming more capable allies all the time."
She tilted her regal head proudly, her stance showing no weakness. "Only an arrogant fool would expect us to surrender."
"Arrogant, Prime? We had the advantage in strength before your change, and now even more so. Few of your people were built as warriors, and only your leadership these long orns has spared them from destruction."
Soundwave resisted the urge to shake his head. His leader had just complimented the Autobot, and he didn't think the grey mech even realized it. He caught Jazz's grin in his peripheral sensors.
To be sure, the statement was entirely true, but it wasn't like Megatron to give voice to such a thing. Particularly in public. He had always grudgingly respected Optimus, unlike her predecessor Sentinel. In fact, the Decepticon leader had been borderline obsessed with the red and blue Autobot since the first time he had fought the other mech.
Now that mech was a femme, and the Prime was filling the air around her with subtle, intense cyber pheromones, which were making Megatron loose focus. Naturally, this led to his usual response to feeling out of control, which was anger.
Soundwave was telepathically monitoring his commander's mental state, but it was irritating to have to waste his attention on that task, when he would much rather focus on Jazz. On the one servo, if Megatron provoked the Autobots into a fight by doing something rash like trying to throw the Prime to the ground and have his way with her, the Dinobots not-very-subtly hidden behind a nearby tumble of glacial boulders would come over and try to maul the Decepticons. On the other servo, if Megatron could manage to, for instance, kidnap and seduce the Prime, it would start a very useful precedent.
Speaking of which; he took another moment to fleetingly caress his opposite number's ankle strut with a sensitive tentacle tip. She glared and shifted uncomfortably. Not quite the reaction he was going for, but better than a laser to the face-plates.
"My Autobots are stronger than you think, Megatron." The Prime's voice was smooth and resonant, though lighter and softer than before. "They would fight on without me and not fall."
Soundwave resisted the urge to sigh. He could feel Megatron's confused aggression boiling up as his instincts fought each other. No matter how deeply he had sublimated the urge to follow the bearer of the Matrix, the fact that he very much wanted to mate with the femme in front of him was unburying it. Besides, Optimus was just that charismatic. The primes before her had been nothing like that. Vector and Sentinel had been weak, corrupt. The council had oppressed and abused the lower classes during their reigns.
Optimus Prime would never cede power to anyone she thought would do the same, and unfortunately that included Megatron.
Perhaps "kidnap and seduce" was the best way to go with the Autobot femmes. At least then he would get to have Jazz (and hopefully also Prowl) in his clutches instead of having to make due with Dirge and his trine…
The meeting had eventually devolved into the two leaders shouting at each other, at which point Megatron had stormed off swearing to find enough energon to restore Cybertron, which he would then rule. There had also been some unusually vague threats about what the Decepticons would do if the Autobots got in their way, but the two leaders actually didn't end up trying to kill each other. The Decepticons present all took the opportunity to display their flight mods with showy skyward launches.
Honestly, it had been the most civil meeting between Prime and Megatron since the beginning of the war.
This had the direct effect of making the Dinobots extremely bored. They fidgeted, grumbled, and Grimlock threatened to leave if there wasn't going to be a fun battle. Wheeljack had been doing her best to amuse them with a giant set of Chinese Checkers, but strategy games had never exactly been the pseudo-prehistoric bots' forte. They liked team sports, but mostly only the kind with tackling and other violence.
Wheeljack was incredibly relieved when Megatron ran out of patience before Grimlock's team did. She wondered if turning female had made the Dinobots more patient, or if they were just maturing. They did seem slightly more protective of the smallest bots and the humans than they used to, but that was the only change their creators had noticed in their personalities.
Otherwise, Grimlock was just as aggressive, confrontational, hot tempered and belligerent as before. Basically, the only change was that she had curves instead of angles. Even her mass was the same. As the Dinobots wandered off to investigate the woods and meadow where the meeting had taken place, Wheeljack stretched until her cabling cracked and went after them. Trusting her creations to NOT get into trouble was never a good idea.
The engineer's meanderings had brought her to a wetland area, probably one created by the large aquatic rodents known as "beavers". There, sprawled on a flat, moss-covered glacial rock, and highlighted by the golden late-afternoon sun, were Grapple and the Constructicon Long Haul, entwined in a passionate embrace.
The couple was so busy making out that neither of them noticed the undignified, staticky "eep!" noise that escaped Wheeljack's vocalizer. Mortified, and more than a little turned on, the grey and white engineer started quickly backing up in an attempt to make a hasty escape before they noticed her presence.
Wheeljack spun around, intending to get the pit out of the area and collect the Dinobots on her way. She had only gone a few meters further when she basically splatted against a broad purple and chartreuse chassis.
"Oh, slag." She mumbled, staring up (way up) into the fascinated eyes of the constructicon Mixmaster.
"Pre…pre…pretty" he rumbled. "I hear...hear you like to blow things…s up."
"Aaaagh!" Wheeljack said.
The Constructicon looked hurt. "I Didn't…t think it was that…that bad a line." He said. One big, clawed hand strayed to her waist.
"Ack!" she squeaked again. His chassis was warm and his engines were rumbling, and why the frag did he smell so good?
Wait…there was a Decepticon holding her to his chest and hitting on her, and that was a Bad Thing. She knew perfectly well that the Con high command had a capture or kill order out on all members of the Autobot Science and Engineering team, and…why wasn't she shooting the Constructicon?
"S…So, I've always wondered, why did…d you make your creations in the form-m of prehistoric…c Earth c…creatures?"
Wheeljack looked up into the big mech's weirdly earnest expression. "Are you…flirting with me? I mean, it's not like that's exactly unheard of between Autobots and Decepticons these days, given Prime and Megatron, not to mention the Twins and those flying menaces, but…small talk?"
Mixmaster shrugged his massive shoulders. "W…well, it's…s been…been a while since I flirted…flirted with anyone, but you're a s…special lady. Y…your last superweapon…n made a truly fabulous…ous pyrotechnic…c display. And it matched your optics…s"
What did a femme say to something like that? Why thank you, kind sir! I'm so flattered that you noticed! I always try to coordinate my inadvertent wanton destruction with my optic color! Uh, maybe not. Wheeljack had never actually had an enemy flirt with her before- she usually left that sort of thing to Skyfire.
"Um." She said intelligently. What the heck? As long as the Decepticon wasn't being violent, she would go along with the small talk. "I wanted to create Autobots that could go up against you gestalts and win, and there were these fossilized bones of ancient Earth creatures… It seemed like fate, I suppose.
"And…d they were cool?"
Mixmaster had a sense of humor. Who knew?
Wheeljack smiled at the Con, her head fins twinkling. "Haven't you ever built something just because it was cool?" She asked. Distantly, she was aware that she was fraternizing with an enemy, but it wasn't like she was alone in that.
"Not…t for a very long time, I'm afraid…d. It would be n…nice for a change." The mech rumbled.
She could relate. Whenever she thought too much about all the completely awesome things that hadn't beem invented, or just hadn't been built because of the war, it depressed the pit out of her.
The mech leaned in towards her, and she could feel the buzzy flutter of his EM fields, when the stand of trees behind her exploded.
Well, it didn't explode, exactly. It was more that it was abruptly crushed into tiny, projectile bits beneath her creation's clawed pedes.
"Ooooh, Slaaaaaag…g." Opined the Constructicon.
"Bad Grimlock." Wheeljack said mildly. She sighed inwardly. The flirting had been kind of nice, even if it was coming from a Decepticon, but all such things are interrupted by one's offspring now and then. Especially if said offspring were sparked into the bodies of underclocked war machines with a long, long way to go before reaching maturity.
"Constructicon let go of Mama Wheeljack!" Bellowed the leader of the Dinobots. "Or Me Grimlock SMASH!"
Wheeljack decided that she would forgo correcting Grimlock. She was her builder, not her mother, since her spark had come from the Allspark, just as hers had. She and Ratchet really needed to take the Dinobots aside and reiterate the differences between Cybertronians and Earth creatures again, it seemed.
Mixmaster let go of her so fast their paint jobs squeaked against one another and stumbled back, away from the massive bulk of jagged metal teeth and bad attitude that was Grimlock.
Wheeljack placed herself firmly between her creation and the nice mech who had complemented her explosions and optics. It wasn't every day that anyone, Decepticon or not showed that kind of interest. "Thank you for coming to help me, Grimlock." She said in her best Soothing Maternal Voice. "But Mixmaster and I were just talking about building projects. He wasn't trying to hurt me."
The Tyranosaur bot looked skeptical. "Me Grimlock think Wheeljack too nice for own good. Decepticons bad. Trick Dinobots before. Shoot at Dinobots and Autobots. Mixing bot part of giant badass Gestalt."
Wheeljack's processor scrambled to come up with an explanation. She and Ratchet had explained the various types of Cybertronian reproduction to the Dinobots, comparing their creation to that undergone by humans and other Earth creatures.
"Um." Said Mixmaster. "Wheeljack…k was telling me about…t how she engineered your Dinosaur forms because she thought…t Dinosaurs were cool…l. You are…are a most…t impressive piece of engineering, Grimlock…k."
Grimlock snorted, ex venting so loudly that Wheeljack just knew she was doing it for the intimidation factor. She nudged Wheeljack aside, cornering the Decepticon against one of the glacial boulders strewn around the picturesque Terran landscape. The poor mech flattened himself against it.
"Grimlock!" She bellowed. "He didn't try to harm me, he was just flirting! Leave him alone!"
The huge femme cocked her savage head at her builder. "Like Starscream flirt with Skyfire?" She asked.
Wheeljack needed to have a chat with the shuttle about keeping her antics a bit more discrete, it seemed. "Well, not exactly like Starscream and Skyfire, Grim. They were together back before the war, long before you were sparked."
The Tyranosaurus nodded sagely. "Me Grimlock understand now. Constructicon flirting with Wheeljack like Megatron flirting with Prime. Okay, Grimlock not smash Decepticon then."
The grey and white engineer facepalmed, and resigned herself to spending some quality time with the Dinobots this evening. Apparently she needed to coach her little cock-blocking forces of destruction in the fine art of discretion.
This could take a while.
At least Mixmaster had made his escape. Hopefully he wouldn't be so put off by her "offspring" that he never approached her again.