Blaster is a Pokemon Master; young Autobots these days have no money sense; Swerve and Tailgate Do Construction; Cyclonus avoids the aftermath; Octane and Sandstorm go adventuring; Cyclonus and the Armada keep hitting the 'snooze' button (until they don't); Cyclonus hates Soundwave; the combiners can't figure out why they're always under supervision; the Primus Adoption Society starts up; 2 out of 2 prisoners agree that Overlord is horrible.
Title: Candy From Strangers, Pt. 7
Warnings: Uh…everything? I'm sure there's something to offend everyone found somewhere in this part.
Rating: R
Continuity: IDW & G1
Characters: Bob the Insecticon, Blaster, Sunstreaker, Smokescreen, Optimus Prime, Red Alert, Prowl, Jazz, Ironhide, Ratchet, Rewind, Swerve, Tailgate, Cyclonus, Armada, Sweeps, Scourge, Galvatron, Octane, Sandstorm, Scrapper, Hook, Hun-Grr, Onslaught, Vortex, Soundwave, Trypticon, Overlord, Fortress Maximus.
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.
Motivation (Prompt): some G1 Season 3 prompts, a few theoretical musings, a commissioned fic, and some silliness.
[* * * * *]
Bob the Insecticon - "Pokemon"
[* * * * *]
Sunstreaker was a jerk.
That wasn't a surprise. He was also a traitor and a torture victim and had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder bad enough to make him stand out in a ship full of war-traumatized soldiers. Sunstreaker somehow managed to be special in all the worst categories. It was like winning the award for flattest pancake after a cityformer stomped through. Everyone was flattened, but he'd somehow come out the worst. Yay?
So it wasn't a surprise that he'd exceeded in the jerk category of life as well. He was still beautiful, but he was a Rodimus Star away from being the top jerk in the faction.
Taking all that into consideration, it wasn't surprising Autobots throughout the Lost Light stared at him when he entered a room. Red Alert twitched strongly enough to almost qualify as flailing. Ultra Magnus made no secret that the mech was under observation.
Blaster never even looked at him. Because as much as mechs stared at Sunstreaker for everything the golden Autobot had done or was, Blaster wasn't interested. If he was seen looking in Sunstreaker's direction, it was because he was staring at his companion. Not that everyone didn't gape in equal measure at one of the fragging Swarm trotting tamely at someone's heels, but the Communication Officer had a disturbing glint to his optics.
A disturbing glint of acquisition. Chromedome would have recognized it if he'd noticed Blaster watching Bob. For a while, until Chromedome had all but wrapped himself around his conjunx endura like some sort of protective shield, the boombox had watched Rewind with much the same look. Blaster was a carrier of Cassetticons, but most Cassetticons didn't start out with that frametype. That made carriers constantly on the lookout for potential reformat candidates.
It wasn't that Blaster wished ill on Rewind, but he'd discreetly been looking for a chance to ask the friendly, active, always-recording little archivist to consider signing a reforge consent form. It'd never be important if the memory stick's current frame didn't become heavily damaged, but Blaster didn't want the chance to collect Rewind pass through his fingers. Chromedome's interference and jealous watchdrone routine had made approaching the mech difficult, but he wasn't going to give up that easily.
Blaster could wait. He was a patient mech. Carriers had to be, when they set out to collect. Soundwave favored unwilling subjects, collecting the ones he wanted ruthlessly, but Blaster patiently stalked those he wanted to potentially reformat.
Well, he preferred to call it 'courting' rather than stalking. He knew that it was kind of creepy being tagged for reformat by a carrier, but it was the sincerest compliment possible for those that understood the mentality behind the frametype. There just weren't many who understood carriers, so it kept being creepy. To be fair, he didn't force anything. He would never make Rewind sign the emergency medical reforge form, much less hope for the kind of injury that'd result in acquiring a Cassette. He just wouldn't stop asking, either.
Chromedome couldn't get in the way forever. Blaster could wait.
In the meantime, he set his sights on another candidate: Bob.
The Insecticon was small. Its construction wasn't unique in terms of how the mutation had distorted the victims of the Swarm, but it was odd for Cybertronian frametypes. The quadrupedal structure made it unique because it lacked a bipedal transformation. It lacked a transformation entirely, although everyone knew it still had a T-cog buried in its body. It just didn't connect to anything. Everyone knew, because half the ship had been there talking and patting Bob to keep it calm after Swerve had gotten Sunstreaker utterly fendered that one night so that Ratchet, Perceptor, and Hoist could scan the living bolts off the Insecticon right there in the bar.
It wasn't that Sunstreaker was unwilling to let his pet be examined - Ultra Magnus would have never let the Insecticon on board otherwise - but it was impossible to separate the two, and nobody was comfortable holding a discussion under Sunstreaker's narrow optics. Bob had refused to leave its recharging master but chittered happily under the attention. That'd been adorable even before Tailgate got it to purr. The analysis group had called on Blaster's expertise with small builds, and he'd attentively listened in on the discussion while the scans kept running. He'd even snuck in some petting when Ratchet carefully rolled the little guy over onto its back to unfold the spiky legs and prod its belly.
So, yes, Bob still had a T-cog. That was weird for a technimal, but that's because it'd once been a mech. It just…wasn't one anymore. Instead, it was some fusion of the two. The mixture was one that Blaster found appealing. The Insecticon was bulky in the forequarters, with menacing, heavy claws, but for all its armor, the thing was little. The way it hunkered down, it was hard to get a good look at sometimes. A mech could get a decent perspective on it if he were willing to spy on Sunstreaker enough, however.
Blaster was willing. Frag, he was practically compelled. Blaster normally went along with his carrier protocols, but the strength of the need to collect had surprised him this time around. The Insecticon - Bob, and wasn't that a cute ethnic name? - was just a tad bit bigger than Steeljaw, but tougher and less intelligent. Blaster's recognized it as requiring protection and guidance, and he almost ached to provide that. Yet it was obviously useful and more than a mindless beast. Sunstreaker had proven it was both trainable and loyal.
The longer Blaster watched it, the more he could picture how the reformat would work. There'd be some cerebral tweaking, of course, to push it toward the mech side instead of the hive-like Swarm mentality, but it'd be a good Cassetticon. The transformation would be simple enough, making him a thick Cassette shaped more like a brick than a slim disk, but it would change the Insecticon's rootmode relatively little. The toughest part would be the spikes. Those would probably have to go unless they could be made retractable.
Bob wouldn't be like the rest of his Cassetticons, but oh, did Blaster want it. It was so small and - and cute. He could see how it'd fit into his life and a custom-made docket in his chest.
That only left the question of how one went about getting a Bob. Hmm. The creature was loyal, no doubt about that. Loyal to Sunstreaker, which was the difficult part. Sunstreaker didn't let things go, grudges or people. Blaster doubted that the golden frontliner would let Bob stray, even if Blaster could somehow lure it away.
Across the bar, the stubborn mech in question idly dropped a few energy slips onto the floor. His pet Insecticon immediately pounced upon and devoured them, then daintily cleaned its tiny set of forearms. The delicate arms were groomed carefully, pulled through the grid in front of Bob's mouth and tugged loose, stripping stray bits of energon from the finger joints. All four optics turned upward hopefully, but Sunstreaker had gone back to watching Whirl badgering Trailbreaker at the bar. When no more treats seemed forthcoming, the Insecticon settled back down under its master's chair.
Its forearms made small grasping motions as Bob purred into a nap. Purr purr. Grab. Purrrrrr.
The cute was magnetic. Blaster found, somewhat to his surprise, that he'd gotten up and was heading across the bar. Primus, he wanted that little thing. He wanted it so bad. He was a patient mech, but taunting him with a reformat candidate who didn't need a consent form, just an owner? That was a tease that'd test the patience of better mechs than Blaster.
With some effort, he slowed his hunting stride to a casual saunter before he reached Sunstreaker's corner table and its concealing shadows. "In the mood for some company, sunshine?" he asked the frontliner, giving a winning smile.
Arrogance couldn't cover shock, or the uncertainty of a mech who had no idea why he was being approached. It was, in a sad way, sort of endearing. Sunstreaker was a jerk and the failure champion in the worst off-Olympic events. He'd been rather shunned since coming aboard the Lost Light. For longer than that, probably. That was kind of pitiable.
"Can't stop you from sitting down," Sunstreaker grunted, recovering as quickly as he'd faltered. He tacked an admonishment on when the other Autobot drew out a chair across from him. "Don't call me that."
"Whatever you say, Sunstreaker." Blaster leaned down and chirruped at Bob. "Heeeey, Bob-O. C'mere, you." Bob's antenna perked up, and the purring increased as it scurried over for petting. It pushed its head into the boombox's hand, trying to get an antenna rub. Blaster chuckled and obliged it, pinching the little yellow antenna between his fingers until the critter melted into an ecstatic puddle of chirring. The Insecticon liked attention. Great. He could work with that.
When he looked up, Sunstreaker was watching him with the same starvling look Bob had directed up at the source of treats. Except that Sunstreaker was a gorgeous example of a mech, not a potential Cassetticon, which raised a whole slew of other options suddenly. The protocols jumping online had nothing to do with being a Cassette carrier. He gave Sunstreaker a sly up-and-down look, and the attention-starved look in the golden frontliner's optics increased when Blaster tipped him an appreciative nod. The mech was truly as beautiful as he was vain, and as big of a glitchy afthead as he was needy for positive attention.
Blaster's smile got wider. Maybe this was less of a situation where he lured Bob away from its current owner, and more of the adoption of a lover's pet.
Bob looked up at its master, and the purring boosted to a constant rumble. Teensy forearms reached out to grasp the fingers Blaster waggled at it, and oops, his hand just happened to be knocked to the side to brush over gold armor. The purr turned to a warble as Sunstreaker noticeably straightened up in pride as the attention soaked in. Ah. So, make the master happy, and the bug was happy.
It was a good thing Sunstreaker couldn't see Blaster's face when he cooed at Bob. The disturbing glint had become a full-on greedy gleam, and plans were coming together.
Yes, he could work with that.
[* * * * *]
Smokescreen - "Financial responsibility"
[* * * * *]
"If that's all today..?" Optimus Prime looked around the table.
Only to wince, because Prowl had his doors in tight. That wasn't all today, it seemed. His executive officer had his helm bent and lips pressed tight.
The rest of the officers followed Prime's gaze. "What's the deal-EO?" Blaster asked cautiously from the end of the table. He could always be counted on to break the silence.
Prowl looked up, and the table flinched as one. Narrow, white-blue optics were not a good sign. "Smokescreen has asked Carly and Spike to set up a charity auction at their university for him."
It took a long minute for that to process. Spike had only recently transferred to Carly's school, meaning that not everybody was up to speed on what university he was currently at. That whole war thing took a bit more precedence than knowing exactly where their friend went during the week. Not that they weren't interested in his life, but the Autobots lived on a longer time-scale than humans. Six weeks of absence from the Ark was barely noticeable unless they reminded themselves it was unusual. It seemed much longer for the shorter-lived species.
Then there was the strange matter of a charity auction. The officers' optics went blank as the whole table had to tap into Teletraan-1 to research the idea. People donating items to be auctioned off, and the proceeds given to a charity? It was an odd concept. Not a bad one - Jazz immediately added 'Bake Sale' and 'Car Wash' to their to-do list for Earth public relations - but an odd one. Perhaps because it'd been so long since there had been organized charities on Cybertron.
Especially ones that focused on an individual. That was a strange idea in and of itself, and puzzled looks broke out across the table as they digested the thought of Smokescreen starting one for his own benefit. Was that…normal? To have a sole beneficiary for a charity auction? Or was he starting it on the Autobots' behalf? Was he running a charity to donate the money to a cause he championed?
"Smokescreen is not a charity," Red Alert said as he squinted one optic. "I would know if he were categorized as an entire organization instead of one mech."
"I think that means he wants the money raised for himself, not that he's representing an organization," Ratchet said, optics still vacant. "Here, I've found the flyer Carly made." Teletraan-1 obediently pulled up the files for the others when the medic pinged it to. She had used one of Teletraan-1's pre-made formats on her computer, so the Ark's computer now had copies of her work.
"This wasn't cleared by me." Red Alert's high-performance and high-strung engine snarled as he read. "This is not an Autobot function."
"No, but he got us pretty good, there," Jazz put in, reading along and following his train of thought. "That's Smokies' phrasing, alright. Nice." His tone clearly conveyed the opposite. This was not nice. This was manipulative, underhanded, and Smokescreen all over. "He's pulling all our P.R. strings on this one. It's a grassroot campaign, so we can't say scrap to stop it because it's not official." Red Alert made a disgruntled noise, obviously still caught on the formatting that implied it was official, and Jazz reached out to clap a hand on his arm. "Because it's being promoted by his friends. He went through Carly and Spike instead of through the university itself. We can't say anything against it for the same reason; we'd have his friends on the defensive, if only because if we pull the wool away from their eyes, they're gonna lash out to cover their own embarrassment. And the way he's phrased it..."
Blaster barked a laugh that was only amused at their expense. "Mech, he be good. I'm tapping him for political weasel-wording in the future."
The smaller black-and-white Autobot revved his engine and sat back, frowning at his HUD. Smokescreen was good, no doubt about it, but Jazz didn't have to like it. "There's just enough twist on the explanation that we're going to be seen as attacking him if we say anything. He's got a sudden need for cash, sure, but he's piled on the pathetic making it seem like this has been sprung on him and he's not to blame for the cause. Yeah, no. He's had gambling debt deadlines piling up for six months now. He knew they were coming, but the way this is laid out, it's goin' for the human heart. 'Boo hoo, I need money 'cause this is so sudden and I've got so many expenses and I can't work for money because of this waaaaaar.'" Jazz let his voice trail off in a pathetic whine. He shook his head. "Regardless of the fact that he does regular work for the U.S. government and only gives up a portion of what he makes to us."
"We only get a portion?" Prowl asked quietly. He kept his optics down and voice level as he spoke. He'd brought up Smokescreen as a problem in these meetings so often that he occasionally felt the irrational fear that he was picking on the mech. It wasn't logical, but there was a discrepancy between what he knew as fact and what others acted like regardless of those facts. When a mech was so enthusiastically liked by the ranks but got on his nerves all the time, it left Prowl doubting the validity of his conclusions sometimes.
Jazz gave him a reassuring flash of blue visor. "50% if we're lucky, but I've never called him out on it. He's been in counseling about his gambling addiction, and that's been my only requirement."
"I see."
Optimus Prime leaned forward, folding his hands together and resting his chin on them. "So the purpose of this charity auction?"
Prowl sighed air slowly out his vents and pinched one tip of his chevron in exasperation. "Smokescreen is raising money to pay off his debt."
"And the reason he can't pay this debt off himself?"
The air came out in a rush, this time. "Smokescreen has money management problems."
"Gambling?"
"Not always," Ratchet put in, leaning forward himself to put in his two shanix worth. "He's addicted, don't be mistaken, but he's surprisingly cooperative in seeking aid in controlling that. However, I think the consequence of not gambling as much in the last year - maybe closer to six months or so - is that he's had disposable income." He spread his hands and glanced up as if asking for help on high. "So he disposed of it."
"He commissioned Sunstreaker just last week," Red Alert said, frowning at the files he was pulling up. He had access to all of the Autobots' records, even their financial ones. "Small light-sculpture to give Mirage, I believe. It wasn't cheap. How can he justify asking for donations of money when he is spending it on frivolities?"
"Can't say if he genuinely believes it or not, but he doesn't see commissioning art as a luxury. Or buying that wax at the import shop in downtown Portland this week. He only kept some of it and gave the rest to Bumblebee and Windcharger. He files that under a gift for morale's sake," Jazz said, tapping his fingers on the table. "We can't say slag-all about it, or it'll seem like we're going after Sunstreaker for taking the commission or the Minibots for taking the gifts, and they don't deserve that."
Red Alert's frown deepened the further back in the records he looked. "There's a game purchase listed here. He and Sideswipe put in a joint order for some specialty shooting video games."
"I can already hear the excuses," Ironhide drawled. "Gotta have entertainment, right? Those punks are addicted to their blasted games."
"How dast we officers try to deprive them of their hobbies? Gasp," Jazz said, deadpan. "There shall be fainting."
The Security Director gave him a quirked corner of his lip, amused but not. "I get it. Life is miserable, so seize a windfall when you have it without care for the future, for the future shall be miserable as well. Make your own joy."
"That was…surprisingly poetic," Ratchet said, turning to give him an odd look.
"There's a Hallmark store next door to Sparkplug's Garage in New York," Red Alert said flatly. "I spent three days running detection wires through the card stands and securing the premises. I read a lot of trite things while working. Humans have some unrealistic but nicely worded cards for any occasion." He smiled suddenly. "Happy belated birthday, by the way. There's a card on your desk from Inferno and I. I figured out all of our frame-dates as part of converting our files to local times."
Everyone stared at him for a moment. Ratchet reset his optics.
Red Alert looked back to his records. "Then there's the gambling, of course."
Like every meeting on Earth, topical whiplash was always a hazard. Jazz dragged his attention back to the issue at hand. "Ah. Yeah. Less than it was, but still there. I know, I know." He threw up his hands helplessly. "He'll stick to the addiction argument if I bring it up with him, too. 'I've got to have an allowance for that! I need it!'"
"It sounds like he'll argue that if anything is said about any of his spending," the Prime concluded. "Everything he's spent can be twisted about to be presented to the sympathetic human public as a 'woe is me' expense. Why has it gotten this far?" His optics narrowed in a frown. "Surely someone has spoken to him about this before?"
"Oh, we have," Ratchet said before Prowl could. "Look, he's relatively young. Most of this crew is." Meaning that they hadn't had much of an opportunity for an actual life before the war began, not that they were considered young in vorns anymore. "Smokescreen wasn't on his own for long before joining the Autobots. As such, he's always had external support to bail him out of the holes he digs himself."
Optimus looked at him sidelong, not quite following.
The medic rattled his plating irritably. "Before the war, what happened if you didn't have enough money to make rent?"
"You got evicted," Prowl supplied dryly, still not looking up.
"So what did you do?"
The executive officer shifted to sit straight, shrugging one shoulder. "You stopped spending money on frivolities."
"Stopped going out to the clubs every night," Jazz put in.
"Took more hours at work," Red Alert said, then smirked at himself. "Well, that wasn't always an option, considering how much I already worked."
"My job didn't have available extra hours," Ironhide grumbled at him. "If slag went down, I had to lay off the high grade and stick to the cheapest swill I could find. Bargain shopping for energon." He smiled a little. "Brings back memories."
"Don't it just." Blaster grinned back at the old weapons specialist. "Mech, I had eight Cassettes to support. When I took in the last two, we had medical appointments coming out our audios, and we went bargain-bin scrounging for everything to meet the cost. There were times I thought we'd have to sell my broadcast equipment." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Had to, a couple times. Sucked like a black hole, but frag. It's whatcha did. You saved up the shanix 'cause otherwise you didn't have it when you needed it."
"Right," Ratchet said, bringing them back to the present by pointing a finger on the table, "but not once we brought all these younglings into the ranks. They never had to face those consequences. Couldn't make your credit limit? Autobots bailed you out. Spent all your petty cash on high grade and circuit speeders? No backlash. Sure, there's been short-term punishment, but not enough to grind in that money is real and has to be managed. There's always been someone to save their afts. These mechs never learned that they have to look after themselves."
"I think Smokescreen feels he's entitled to others contributing because of that," Prowl agreed softly, raising his optics at last. "He's never learned to control his spending, so when he has no money left, he feels that he's owed more."
Ratchet nodded. "We talk to him about what's going on, but he takes it as an attack on him personally instead of a warning that real life is eventually going to kick his skidplate up between his audios."
"Someday, some of the humans are going to point out how they're feeding his irresponsible habits," Prowl's doors eased down slowly, "and eventually, there will be more people listening than defending him. He'll either start huffing about how humans are horrible, or he'll finally learn. But after so long with the Autobots pandering to him, why would he learn from this species wising up?"
"Because what can we do, mechs?" Blaster put his palms up. "If the charity auction don't work, he'll just come to us. And I dunno 'bout ya'll, but I can't help but think it'd look bad if we let one of our own go into bankruptcy and face a human court 'bout his debts."
"Hey, it'd be one way to make him face up to the slag he's trying to get away with." Jazz cocked his head but smiled wanly when everyone gave him resigned looks. "Yeah, yeah. I know. Wishful thinking."
"We can take on his debt," the Prime decided, "if it comes to that. With the condition that all of his future income goes to the Autobot accounts, and he may not spend on credit. All purchases must first be approved by - "
"Can't do that," Prowl and Red Alert said at the same time.
"I put that stipulation into effect on Sideswipe upon awakening on Earth." Prowl scowled at the tabletop, but it was frustration at the red frontliner instead of irritation with the table itself. "Sideswipe immediately began making comments to Spike and Sparkplug about how the Autobots stand for personal freedom. Interpretation through the local standpoint equates 'personal freedom' with their own concept of individual rights. By the time I caught on to what he was doing, they'd already conceived a somewhat warped mindset about what the Autobot Cause is."
That could have been a public relations nightmare. "We're military, but that would hold little substance with the way Sideswipe angled to present us," Red Alert muttered tiredly. This was an old, sore topic with him. "The idea of imposing on a mech's life to control his spending of personal accounts, despite the fact that allowing a personal account is an exception to our standard practices, is apparently looked down upon in the United States. Their military is separate from civilian life due to, ah, circumstances," as in, because Earth wasn't embroiled in a world-wide war that eliminated the classification of 'civilian', "but their soldiers still have many of the rights of civilians. The USA regards them as inherent. Humans in this country will not accept our social structure as it is. Removing the money from Sideswipe's - or Smokescreen's - accounts and returning it to our main account will be seen as stealing it from them, and we will be accused of depriving them of an innate right to financial independence."
Silence temporarily took over the room as the officers did their own research to check on how that worked. Prowl looked vaguely depressed. Red Alert just seemed fed-up with trying to fight it. Sideswipe had outmaneuvered both of them on this issue.
"So what can be done?" the Prime asked after he'd looked up the United State's Constitution and several different state constitutions to fact-check.
Prowl's wings cinched in tight again. "Nothing."
"I'll talk to him again," Ratchet said grimly, "but I doubt it'll help. He'll react like I'm attacking him personally, and if he's already got Carly on his side, I'll be hearing about it from her as well."
"And lo, your reputation for being a bitter grouch will continue to grow," Jazz said, waggling his fingers as if performing magic. "Ratchet picks on poor widdle Autobots who are just soooo unfortunate because, oh my golly gee, they need help and Ratchet's not helping!"
"If it were my job to help every irresponsible idiot who couldn't manage money, I'd have been broke before the war."
"You're not a nice mech." Jazz pouted. "You don't give everything to mechs in need."
Ratchet harrumphed. "Not when they don't help themselves." He sighed and shoved himself away from the table. "If that's it, I'll just be going."
Optimus Prime looked around the table. Prowl's doors were brought in as tight as his lips were clamped together. Jazz wore an exasperated expression. Blaster looked as frustrated as Ironhide, and Red Alert looked like he just wanted to storm out.
"If that's all today..?"
[* * * * *]
Commission fic for GoddamnitRiot - "Swerve/Tailgate - something short, sweet, and happy"
[* * * * *]
Tailgate was being cute again.
To be fair, he probably couldn't turn that off, just like Swerve couldn't turn off his swag. Swerve had swag coming out his doors! So much swag he couldn't contain it! Swag to make Whirl envious of his swagdom!
He seemed to have mislaid some of it, today. Most of it. The majority of it.
Swerve held onto Tailgate's thighs and grasped after the retreating tendrils of anything resembling swag. Courage, bravery, steel backstruts and iron innards, anything besides this odd shy bluster filling him at the moment. Because he was holding Tailgate's thighs like anything about lush white curves with that pert blue aft perched on top could be chaste. Why, oh why was he so very close but unable to bridge the distance? A slip of the hand! A suggestive squeeze, or maybe a nice long sweep of his fingers up glossy white curves! That'd be all it'd take. So simple even Brainstorm couldn't fudge it!
That might be pushing it. Brainstorm could overcomplicate pretty much anything. Although Swerve sort of wished the mech were here just so he'd have a reason to seize the simplest solution possible. As it was, he was about ready to bang his head on the bartop in frustration. Why couldn't he just slide his hand on up and plink a wheel in suave invitation? Argh.
Instead of flirting, he kept talking. That was his default mode for dealing with awkward silence, and Tailgate, for all his cuteness, had walked in soaked to the visor with quiet sadness. No big surprise there; half the ship must have heard Cyclonus bellowing angrily about the spontaneous hug the little Minibot had sprung on him. Filling the silence seemed like a better idea that letting Tailgate brood and maybe eventually notice how the hands on his thighs were assessing them for potential spots to get a good grip on later. Subtly! But definitely. And Swerve was suffering from an overabundance of choices, too. So many grabbable spots, so little courage to seize them.
'Missing: swag. If found, please return to Swerve at the bar.' Then get the frag out of there before he used it to immediately jump Tailgate.
" - wanna paint the ceiling to look like Earth's sky. Ever seen it? I haven't, but Sunstreaker says he can do it if I can find the paint, and Drift says it's really neat and Rodimus liked it, and you know, staying on the good side of the captain is always a good thing. Besides, Ultra Magnus was on Earth for a while, wasn't he? I don't know if he liked it, but I've never heard him say anything bad about the place!" Then again, Swerve had never asked. But not asking things like permission and preferences made it easier to plead ignorance after he was caught, which is how he'd escaped Ultra Magnus brigging him previously, and being ignorant meant he could ask forgiveness after things had already happened. Or rather, it meant he could beg and whine and pester until he got his way and the mech forgave him just to make him shut up. It was an effective strategy, really.
That, and offering free drinks. Those two methods had done well by Swerve so far. He shouldn't have strayed from them. It was when he only posted a notice and turned off the engex taps that it got rubbed in his face that nobody would come into the bar to help him or just hang out with him. He'd thought that maybe Skids or even Whirl, but nope. It'd just been him, smiling futilely at the door every time somebody walked by outside in the hallway.
The bar renovation party had been a party of one until Tailgate slouched through the door. Swerve was always happy to see his friend, but he'd practically vaulted the bartop to greet the guy today. Party of two made a real party instead of a depressed pity-party! Tailgate's mood wasn't helping, but honestly, what kind of friend would Swerve be if he didn't try to make his pal feel better?
"Seems like blue and white should lighten up the bar a lot, too. I mean, I like the dark look for intimacy, but I don't want a doom and gloom bar. We get enough of that when Cyclonus walks in the door." Tailgate stiffened in his hands, and Swerve's wide smile ticked a tad wider as he registered his verbal blunder - as usual - too late. Right, this was Tailgate, one-way best buddy of Cyclonus, the Lost Light's uncrowned king of personal space issues. "Uh, well, it'll be like adding you when he's here! Low lighting and bright cheer at once! Cyclonus on the bottom, and you spread out over the bar!"
...oh, Primus, had he actually said that out loud?
A sound honked from above him, like a snort and a giggle had collided. Swerve grinned against Tailgate's thigh. Okay, so maybe that hadn't been as bad a trip-up as he'd thought. Although now he couldn't shake the mental image. He did like blue, especially the shade right in front of his visor, and he wondered if he could get Sunstreaker to use Tailgate blue in the sky. Tailgate spread out over his bar was a nice thing to imagine happening every day. Ooo, especially happening during working hours.
Mmm, yeah. That. It wouldn't take much. Just turn and walk a few steps toward the nearest table, bend forward enough for his friend to get the hint, and then catch him with hands on his midriff and the small of his back. Yeah. Right…right on the small of his back. Right where Swerve's right hand had just strayed to, sliding up from one thigh in the name of balance. Tailgate didn't object. The white-and-blue mech leaned slightly against the steadying hand, trusting Swerve to keep him in place, and the smile faltered as Swerve licked his lips. There were tasty things parading across his mind's optics, mostly involving keeping his hand right where it was while he found out just how far Tailgate could arch back over it.
Cyclonus didn't know what the frag he was doing, pushing the Minibot away. Swerve would shut up for a hug from Tailgate, much less anything more. The curves were tempting enough, but the aura of being untouched by the war made Swerve want to put his hands all over him. All. Over. Him.
"Okay, I'm done with this one." The old-timer in question dropped the last of the screws he'd been teasing out of their holes up near the ceiling. He tapped the top of Swerve's helm cowl, and the bartender obediently heaved him up. Both hands clamped securely over white curves? Yes sir, he could do that, sir. "I can walk, you know."
Yeah, like Swerve was going to let any opportunity to handle Tailgate's thighs walk away? "It's quicker for me to carry you," he cheerfully protested as that nicely shaped aft sat on his shoulder-tire. He used his feet and reluctantly freed one hand to push the stool-on-chair tower toward the next set of panels he wanted to take out. He normally wasn't one for manual labor, but this sort of felt more like foreplay the longer it went on. "You wanna waste time climbing up and down this thing? Ultra Rule-ness is already gonna pitch a fit if he catches us doing this, and you're going to fall if you have to keep scrambling up on it."
Swerve had cleared taking down the wall partition between the bar and backroom with Rodimus, but the problem with only two Minibots doing renovations was that they were really short. Swerve had come up with using a stool on top of a chair in lieu of a ladder to reach the screws. Which required holding onto Tailgate's thighs to make sure he didn't fall while balanced on top of the rickety structure. Sure, Swerve could have gone looking for a ladder, but yeah. No. He wasn't inclined to even suggest it.
His shoulder tire rocked back and forth as Tailgate kicked his heels idly. The axle gave tiny squeaks as it was worked against the parking brake, bouncing off the brake pads in a, uh, supremely distracting manner. Those weren't sensitive while in his altmode, but the sensor network redirected when he was in rootmode. Tires weren't modes of transportation in rootmode; they were meant to function as just another part of his body. A particularly bouncy part, as Tailgate was finding out. The smaller Minibot's aft bobbed up and down in time with the kicking, and Swerve could feel every last bit of pressure being put on that tire!
Swerve swallowed and took his time nudging the chair into place. On the one hand: perfectly innocent. Tailgate was just fidgeting. On the other: bounce bounce dear Primus bounce. Riding his tire like that was less adorable than the heel-kicking. Cute transmuted into something more risque. Broad hands clamped over the white thighs as if to keep the smaller mech from falling, but Swerve was some swag away from less than pure intentions. Did Tailgate have any idea what he was doing?
"You busy tonight?" Swerve blurted, because control over his own mouth was even more difficult than controlling his libido. Swag was not required for rampant exercise of that bodily function.
"I thought I'd help you for a while, if that's alright?" The rocking continued, settling into a rhythm. Swerve sternly told his ventilation system to stay steady. Tailgate was kicking in time to counting the screws above him, and he didn't want to mess up the count.
Whoever had built this ship had gone the discount builder route. The two Minibots had been searching for screwholes everywhere, because placement of those was unpredictable at best, exasperating at worst. There had been one way up in the corner that had been glued into place but hadn't been drilled into anything, which they'd only discovered once they'd wasted time and effort prying it loose. They had a rough idea of how many screws were supposed to be used, however, so Tailgate was trying to do the guess-timating to work out how many more they needed to find.
Swerve leaned his forehelm against the back of Tailgate's thigh as he set the slightly smaller Minibot on Mount St. Potential Injury again. That aft left his tire, and he missed it already. "Yeah. That's great." His voice was as loud and confident as ever, because it was great. More than great. Fantastic. He was in no hurry for Tailgate to leave. Nobody else was coming, it seemed. It was just him, Tailgate's cuteness, and a lack of swag tonight.
At this rate, he'd have to scrape swag off his interface drive. Frag-flavored Swerve swag to finally make a move on fraggable Tailgate cuteness.
...at this rate, Swerve kind of hoped everyone else stayed away.
[* * * * *]
Tailgate- "I work out"
[* * * * *]
Cyclonus paused outside his door. He was not usually one for hesitation, especially out of consideration for others, but tonight he hesitated. One optic twitched slightly. Perhaps it was less consideration for others and more a desire to preserve his own mental health.
There were two noises coming from outside, and both heralded things he did not want to walk into the middle of. While he wouldn't hesitate to walk in and let his undesired roommate cope with whatever consequences resulted in assuming privacy where there was none in a shared habitation suite, there were some courtesies even he understood as polite. The squeaka-squeaka of tires spinning indicated an exercise every grounder inevitably engaged in. That was not surprising, and although he didn't want to witness such a thing, embarrassment was not his first reaction. Annoyance was, actually. He should have anticipated that eventually Tailgate would wish some time alone to spin his tires.
Since he didn't have another place to be or anything left to do, Cyclonus might have still walked in. He didn't want to see Tailgate engaged in such a base activity, but ignoring the matter would have been enough for him.
However, then there was the second noise.
Swerve's nonstop chatter was audible from the hallway. Tailgate was most definitely not alone, yet tires were spinning. And that, Cyclonus did not wish to observe.
He did not think about why. He simply turned and continued walking down the hall.
[* * * * *]
Octane and Sandstorm - "meet up again"
[* * * * *]
"Why are we doing this again?" Sandstorm peered around the corner, blaster at the ready. He looked like he was in enemy territory prepared for an attack.
Which was technically true for both of them, but Octane looked far more relaxed. "Because they asked." He shrugged when his Autobot pal gave him a peeved look. "No, seriously. That's all there is to it." He sauntered around the corner holding a rifle propped against one shoulder. He'd borrowed it from the Autobot City armory. He may or may not have asked before borrowing it, something that'd only be politely queried after by Metroplex if the sorta-maybe Decepticon triple-changer tried to make the borrowing permanent. Octane did, after all, have a penchant for 'finding' shiny things that didn't belong to him and hadn't technically been stolen until someone pointed out that he wasn't returning it.
Hence Sandstorm scrambling to catch up with him, in fact, but the Autobot helicopter hadn't yet figured that fact yet out yet. Octane certainly wasn't going to tell him he had no intention of giving the 'copter back. "But - "
"Nope," Octane interrupted with ruthless cheer. "Cyclonus asked. I'm not interested in being an Autobot - no offense - "
"None taken."
" - so that means I still gotta at least pay attention when High Command says jump."
Sandstorm squinted at him. "Decepticon High Command's been saying, 'Come here so we can shoot you for treason!' for about six months now."
Ah, yes, good times with Starscream. Even dead, adventures with the former Air Commander had resulted in treason, treachery, and an entire faction out for his head. Octane smiled fondly. Starscream had a way of stirring the smelter, didn't he just.
"Hey, I said 'pay attention,' not 'obey.' There's a difference. Notice how Cyclonus couldn't call me up fast enough when the slag got hot? High Command says a lot, but frag if anybody obeys it to the letter." Prudent planning in Decepticon terms meant leaving useful but backstabbing glitches alive because they might become useful. Hence why Starscream had lasted so long despite how many times Megatron had bellowed for his head on a pike. Most of the Decepticons had looked the other way when Galvatron began screaming, because everyone knew just how useful Octane was.
The joys of being indispensable! Indispensable, that was, under certain conditions and backed up by fine-print spelling out a list of allies as long and tough as Trypticon's tail. Including the Autobots, because Octane was easy.
As Sandstorm well knew. "Eventually, that's going to come back to bite you," he warned the other mech.
"Not as long as I don't ever officially ditch the Decepticons."
That got a fond but resigned sigh. Why would Octane join the Autobots when he could get everything he wanted while playing refugee? "And why would you? You can play both sides like the manipulative fragger you are and still come out smelling like you didn't steal the distillery." Sandstorm shook his head. "No offense."
"None taken." Octane smirked, hoisted the rifle into position, and snapped off a shot. Something up ahead squealed and fell with a thunk, and both mechs jogged up the corridor to investigate. "Woo, that's a big one! No wonder they called in the professional!" Using the rifle barrel, the triple-changer managed to lever the carcass over onto its belly so they could get a good look at it. "Hmm. Not a clone, I don't think."
"It doesn't match any of my files for the three known Earth Insecticons," Sandstorm said as he prodded the smoking wound. He went briefly still as he ran a scan through the open hole into what was left of the bug's head. "Basic processors only. It is a clone." He knelt and angled so he could see it from the front. Those mandibles looked familiar. "It looks a lot like the other ones we've gotten so far, too."
Octane groaned deeply as he checked the charge on 'his' rifle. "Frag. I was hoping it was just a temporary colony, not an infestation."
"What the difference?" The slightly smaller mech rose to chase after the Decepticon now briskly striding off like there was a fuel pick-up somewhere he had to intercept.
"Earth was claimed as, who was it…Kickback? Kickback's territory years ago, but the smaller Insecticons could be moving in on the place now that the three head honchos got Unicroned."
"Unicron's not a verb."
"He is now." Octane flashed a dazzling smile over his shoulder, and Sandstorm had to laugh. "Right, so Trypty-baby here," he patted a wall affectionately, an absent-minded habit that had been boggling Sandstorm since they'd arrived, "would make decent transport if you wanted to immigrate to a nice new world. Buuuuut," he drew out, casually checking around a corner with all lethal habit Sandstorm sometimes forgot he possessed, "all we've seen is clones of the same Insecticon. And they're eating the walls instead of using the place as a homebase, so - yeah. Infestation."
Sandstorm caught up with his friend at the next dropshaft and slid into a crouch to check downward as Octane checked upward. "What's that mean in terms of us running around shooting things?" Those were good terms to be informed of. Especially since those were the terms that Decepticon High Command had urgently unofficially/officially (Sandstorm suspected Cyclonus had somehow bypassed telling Galvatron) requested Octane visit one itchy, irate fortress-former under.
"Means," they gave identical grunts as they swung out in tandem to start climbing up the dropshaft ladder, "Trypty-baby's got a parasite. We've got to take out whatever Insecticon's made himself fat and happy living off my buddy. After that, we're golden. His self-defense systems should be able to snipe the rest of the swarm."
Looking up gave Sandstorm an optic-full of Decepticon aft. He was guiltily aware that he was looking up far too often for operational security. There could be twenty Insecticon clones coming up the dropshaft underneath them, for all he knew. "Uh, okay. You seem awful blasé about all this."
Octane shrugged, but he also looked down and winked. He knew exactly what was being stared at. "We all pick up the odd unwelcome passenger. No point in getting upset about it."
That sounded kind of like an oblique stab at him, actually. "Oh?" Sandstorm's voice sharpened a tad. "And what've you picked up?"
"You really wanna know?" Darkened optics looked down at him.
By now, he felt sort of hurt by the round-about jab. "Yes!"
Octane looked upward and heaved a resigned sigh. "Sand mites. I haven't even been in the desert for a year, and I still can't get them out of my upholstery."
"…oh."
[* * * * *]
Soundwave & Cyclonus - "jealousy"
[* * * * *]
Jealousy is like the wind.
Hot wind, desert-dry air blowing flecks and sand into miniscule cracks. They fester the longer he fails to dig them back out. Even if they are painstakingly cleansed, the weaknesses continue to be exploited. There is no pause for healing, only the relentless air in motion eroding him away. The wind gets into everything, every nook and cranny, and they are never free from the small, stinging pressures that remind him they are there. The wind always continues. There is never an end to it.
It saws over his audios, back and forth in whooshing gusts carrying its irritating grit. This is not the air of Earth with its biological contaminates and variations in composition. The damp sweeps of that planet's air feels comparatively soft, and it changes depending on the day, the time, the season. The weather on Charr never changes. Nothing ever grows. Nothing ever can. It is a sterile, hostile world, and its wind represents it. Jealousy is its ambassador, and envy its soldier. Violence and hatred govern it.
This world is shaped by that. The heat torches the atmosphere until everything reeks of torment, and the wind stirs that until it pours across him in molten, interminable waves. Rust and flecks of silicon scour his plating as if they would wear him down like they have the landscape. The hollow, inorganic skeleton of Charr yawns greedily toward the sky, empty and consumptive at the same time. He can sympathize.
He can, but he doesn't. He listens to Charr, he watches it destroy itself, but he refuses to be it. He refuses to be defined by it. He doesn't, however, deny that Charr's haunted ruins are his own home. The hungry sky tears him down in inevitable return to its clutches. He leaves, hears other things, but this is where he returns to.
Not to the planet, but to the one on it. What is a follower without someone to follow? He leaves to go where he is led, as the wind comes and goes, chained to the source but freed by it. Galvatron leads ever onward, and he follows. Galvatron is the reason the wind blows.
Cybertron defines his rival. His rival stands by him even now, and the wind carries echoes of metal and acid rain, long roads and tall towers. He listens, and it's not the sound of his world. He can hear it soughing through the air, but it evades him. Like the wind, it cannot be caught. Trap it, carrying it to another place, release it - and the wind has died in its cage. It becomes nothing but air without something to drive it. Cybertron drives his rival, and Soundwave is defined by it.
It is not right that Cybertron stands at his Lord's hand where Cyclonus should be. Yet that is what Galvatron commands, and so shall it be. Yet the feelings infect him, defying explanation, refusing to be pinned down. They stand together at Galvatron's beck and call, Cylonus and his rival, and there is always a noiseless background motion between them: an invisible waver in the air, a thing that isn't, a nonexistent drift of emotion and illogic.
Envy is like the wind, and Cyclonus wonders what Soundwave hears blown between them.
[* * * * *]
Cyclonus & the Armada - "genderswap"
[* * * * *]
It took five days for them to notice a difference between their Unicronian brethren and themselves.
They might have noticed earlier if not for Unicron's defeat and Lord Galvatron' disappearance. That sent the protocols into automatic dormancy, which was when they noticed that they even had them. They were both fairly certain that they hadn't had them before. The function option was firmly set to 'off' since their lives were in total upset at the moment, but it was still there. Not that it mattered much, but the option gave them something to puzzle over while resting between searches. Why had Unicron felt the need to change that which they had been?
The Unmaker had, however, changed more and deeper than mere gender. Neither of them remembered enough about their previous lives to feel any sort of dissonance, and there was really only one main function that redefined Cybertronian gender. It wasn't a function that could be used until there was an element of stability that was currently missing in their lives, just like the rest of Cybertron's scattered children. The function was dormant, and as puzzling it was to suddenly possess the option of future activation, it was hardly a pressing issue. As long as they could fight the Autobots and search for their Lord, gender wasn't of any importance.
The difference quickly passed from their minds in favor of the search.
They did, eventually, find Lord Galvatron. Cyclonus and the Armada both heaved twin sighs of relief, then bent to their Lord's will almost happily. Charr was hardly a glorious homeworld, but mighty empires arose from humble beginnings. It had a sort of bleak appeal, for a sterile planet. It wasn't metal, but it also didn't host any disgusting organic lifeforms, either. Cyclonus and the Armada found that appealing. They set about sculpting it and the remaining Decepticons to their Lord's desires.
Meanwhile, the gender function patiently pinged them every time they felt safe. Security was difficult to find in war, explaining why their gender had been mostly eradicated on Cybertron as the protocols slowly purged in favor of war-related functions, but Lord Galvatron's very presence was enough to wrap Cyclonus and his Armada in blissful comfort. They debated activating the protocols, but it always seemed not quite the right time for one reason or another.
The aborted function did have outward signs if anyone had bothered to look closely. The Constructicons certainly would have spotted the signs, but they were busy building for the glory of Lord Galvatron. Or at least for the glory of a roof over their heads.
It took five weeks for the Sweeps to figure out what they were seeing, and that only because the Sweeps got everywhere and into everything. Their claws always itched to dig into others in any way possible. Gossip was as good as bodily damage when off the battlefield. They clustered outside a particular door inside newly constructed Charr base, and they waited eagerly for that door to open so they could confirm their whispered theory.
Cyclonus opened the door, looked at the ravening horde, and his Armada sighed behind him. "Yes? Did you need something?"
"Is it true?" somebody asked from the back.
The Armada sighed again, and Cyclonus stood aside to let the flock in. This would likely be a discussion too long to hold in the hallway, after all.
The Sweeps tittered and invaded their quarters in a flurry of wings. Neither of them felt like attempting to calm the gossips down. They let the busybodies explore and flutter about them, not bothered at all by multiple voices prying for details. The clones meant nothing harmful with their information-greed. They were simply curious about the difference, just as Cyclonus and his Armada had once been. The Sweeps wanted to examine the function protocols and compare, searching their own code in vain hope that maybe one of them was more than a clone, more than an echo of Scourge, but no. Unicron had twisted only three mechs into being. The Armada and the Sweeps were merely shadows of Cyclonus and Scourge, respectively. Since Scourge had no option to activate this function, then the Sweeps didn't, either.
That didn't stop them from kicking up a fuss about the fact that Cyclonus and his Armada could. There were no other Decepticons on Charr of the near-vanished gender, and the Sweeps were bored. Avidly pouring over the miniscule difference was free entertainment, in their optics. For a few days, neither Cyclonus nor his Armada could venture anywhere without at least two Sweeps dancing attendance.
There were some things the Decepticons got used to, and a chattering crowd of Sweeps flooding down the halls in someone's wake was just one of them. Deadly spawn of the Unmaker they might be, but the Decepticons on Charr knew harmless when it giggled and whispered at them. It happened so often during downtime that not even Swindle paid any attention to what exactly the whispers were saying this time.
Therefore, it took five more days for Scourge to notice what his Sweeps had picked up on. "You couldn't tell me?" he asked his superiors, and the two merely looked at him. "...right. Probably not something I should have needed to be told."
"Does it matter?" one of them asked, and Scourge blinked for a moment as he turned that over.
"Not really. Should it?"
They smiled and held their tongues, and the Sweeps continued fluttering. The pings kept coming. Cyclonus and his Armada continued to decline the protocol activation.
Until one day, they didn't. "Today?"
"Yes."
It just felt right. Perhaps because Lord Galvatron had decided to strike out in another direction, leaving the Autobots on Cybertron and Earth to their own devices for a while. Conquest of species other than their own was so much easier, the duo had decided. It was practically a vacation.
That reduced the stress of combat even further. Intensive planning sessions kept them close and comforted by their Lord's presence and power.
Whatever the reason, it felt right. They let the function online and activated their alternate option. Gender, for their kind and despite Unicron's strange meddling, was as easy as that.
It still took five months for the other Decepticons to notice. Maybe it was because nothing else changed. Maybe it was because no one recognized the signs any more. Maybe it was because the fluttering was so normal by then that the Decepticons didn't think twice about why there was an explosion of wings and laughter outside Cyclonus and his Armada's quarters. The flock swirled and shouted, Scourge wearily waded through his subordinates to try and control them, and Lord Galvatron strutted proudly. All of that was rather normal for the Decepticon base on Charr.
Lord Galvatron throwing a fit because the Constructicons hadn't already produced frames for the rest of Cyclonus' Armada? A little less normal. The Decepticon leader seriously didn't get why his followers' collective jaws dropped at the news that there were half a dozen new sparks ready for bodies. Turned out that he'd known all along. The other Decepticons felt like blind idiots for not noticing to begin with, but they scrambled to catch up to the obvious quick enough. The Constructicons slapped together frames based on the Armada's schematics, and life on Charr went on as per usual. Just…with options.
Some information was time-sensitive, life-changing, and need-to-know for a faction trying to take over the universe. Gender? Not so much.
[* * * * *]
Cyclonus - "herding combiners"
[* * * * *]
He hovered over them constantly, which annoyed them to no end.
"We are not incompetent," Hook groused, but in an undertone. That untouchable status skill and rank had bought him under Megatron's regime wasn't so untouchable anymore. His confidence had been severely shaken by the number of times Galvatron had backhanded him. His distaste for brute force methods was only outdone by his fear of them being applied to him.
"Let him watch. It won't hurt us." As much as Scrapper shared his irritation at the flyer watching them from above, he also shared the lack of confidence. At this point, the Decepticons walked very, very carefully no matter their status. The only thing that deterred Galvatron from impulsively shooting someone - anyone - who enraged him was Cyclonus.
Cyclonus could stay up there and watch for hours, as far as Scrapper was concerned. Better that than the Decepticon Second deciding to staying out of it the next time Galvatron took it in his head to beat the scrap out of one of the Constructicons. Specifically Hook, who couldn't control his innate arrogance on a good day, much less on a day when he got his crane line in a twist because their mad leader decided to change something.
Onslaught seemed to be on the same page as Scrapper. "You take one potshot at him," Scrapper heard the Combaticon leader hiss at Vortex, "and you're on your own. Like the Pit am I pulling your rotor blades out of whatever hole you dig yourself this time."
The helicopter snorted. "Like he'd be able to pin it on me?"
Bonecrusher and Long Haul took a healthy step away from Ground Zero. Onslaught turned a burning visor on his insolent subordinate, and behind Vortex, Blast Off's annoyed sigh was clearly audible. Brawl and Swindle were already taking bets with the Predacons. Swindle appeared to have sold Hun-Grr something small and crunchy to snack on while the show happened.
"Is there a problem down there?" Cyclonus called sharply, and everyone snapped to attention. In Hun-Grr's case, that involved swallowing a hunk of something improperly chewed and horking loudly as it caught in his throat.
"No sir!" all three combiner team leaders called back up to him. Well, Hun-Grr sort of garbled an approximation of that upward in the midst of his coughing fit.
Cyclonus eyed him critically. "Do you require assistance?"
"No sir," Hun-Grr wheezed. With one last wretching cough, he hacked up the snack chunk and let it drop to the ground. He heaved, trying to get his ventilation system to assist in unlocking the choked intake, but managed a halfway respectful salute. "Little ben-neath your skillset, sir."
"Suck up," someone sneered behind him, and the Predacon leader's optics went incandescent. He turned with slow menace. Sinnertwin was, unfortunately enough, the only one not paying attention at the time. Hun-Grr vomiting up (and then re-eating) inappropriately-sized items was common enough that the Predacons were used to the sound effects. Sinnertwin had gotten bored and was looking in another direction. Two directions, in fact, which made it look like calculated innocence.
That was as good as a signed confession in Decepticon terms.
Onslaught booted Vortex straight into the fray when Hun-Grr went for Sinnertwin's throats. Both Predacons promptly turned on the 'copter, which was justice in the Combaticon leader's mind. Pitching the guilty party in like that was practically an apology to the other combiner team, really. He'd only step in to interfere if Vortex started enjoying it.
Scrapper looked up at the thunderous frown hovering above them and winced. Cyclonus evidently didn't approve of inter-team discipline a la Onslaught and Hun-Grr.
He winced even worse when Hook sniffed and said loud and clear, "Now, they are incompetent."
It took Cyclonus and five Sweeps to break up the resulting brawl.
[* * * * *]
Human to Cybertronian - "psychological effects"
The Primus Adoption Society or 'Why Earth Keeps Happening'
[* * * * *]
Having the Prime go into a coma periodically was always jarring, but as he himself said wryly enough about it, "When the Matrix calls, the Primes listen."
"He's been listening an awful long time," Jazz said quietly after the third week. Three weeks of cleverly covering for the Prime's absence was starting to wear on even him.
"Wish he'd listen to me that closely," Ratchet snapped right back as he delicately adjusted the cerebral monitor he'd installed after the first week. Normally, the Primes meditated for a couple hours or even days, just lightly getting in touch with the artifact they carried. Not Optimus. He conked out, bypassing a shallow meditation for an outright coma every time. It's like the war made the Matrix decide it had to have the Prime's complete attention. That left the Prime's chief medic fretting, however. "Readings are still good. Whatever the Matrix has to say this time, Optimus is paying attention like nobody's business."
Prowl met each of the officer's optics solemnly. "Last time, Prime came out of his vision demanding to meet with Megatron in person. I think we can all remember how well that went."
It'd gone about as well as could be expected, given the circumstances of the meeting had been in the middle of pitched battle. Megatron had not taken well to Optimus Prime all but tackling him on the battlefield. Not that he ever did, but that particular instance had involved the Prime wildly shouting something about Primus giving him an ultimatum. Megatron had actually listened - stunned and unable to believe his audios, admittedly - before yelling back. It'd devolved into a shouting match, then a wrestling match with lasers and swords, and then somebody had brought out a cityformer, what the frag, that wasn't even fair.
So, yeah. They all remembered. Things had gone downhill from there. The war had gone downhill from there. Optimus Prime had been depressed for weeks afterward.
He'd refused to tell them why, too. That had been the truly frustrating part. "It won't help," he'd said quietly, refusing to look at any of them. "There's nothing any of you can do that you're not already doing. I did my best. I can only hope it was enough for Primus."
Apparently not.
"Get your aft back in medbay!" roared loud enough to be heard on the Ark's bridge was everyone's first clue that something was wrong. Ratchet thundered when he wanted to be heard. The Aerialbots all glanced upward when he spoke as if expecting stormclouds. When the medic yelled his head off after someone, that someone knew.
The obscene noise level was met by the usual belated response from Beachcomber. He looked up after a full minute and asked, "Was that Ratchet?"
Everyone else side-eyed him. He peacefully smiled back. It'd take a lot more than Prime bursting through the doors to rattle his composure. The rest of the bridge shift dove for cover or fell into combat stances, but Beachcomber merely greeted him with, "Oh, hey, you're awake. That's cool."
Prime slid to a stop beside the laid-back Autobot's duty station. "Yes, I am," he said with a calm totally belied by how he yanked Beachcomber out of the chair. "Excuse me, I have to find someone."
"No problem." Beachcomber, unlike Prowl, Ratchet, and half the off-duty Autobots who'd just stampeded onto the bridge in Optimus' wake, handled the sudden displacement well. The rest of the mechs - who'd evidently chased the Prime through the Ark to get here - stood in the doorway looking frazzled. Beachcomber just leaned on the Prime's shoulder and pointed at the icon for Sky Spy. "It's already launched, if you're lookin' for somebody in particular."
"I am, thank you," Prime said absently as the officers descended upon him in a bleating herd, "but not one of us. Or rather, not yet. Or - that is, she is, but she's not yet, or - this is confusing. I know I've asked you this before," Ratchet paused in checking the Prime's still-open cranial casing as the question was addressed to him, "but why do concepts conveyed by the Matrix seem so obvious then and so difficult to understand now?"
Ratchet eyed him warily. "Because your processors are substituted by the Matrix itself, which so far as we understand, is still connected to the Sigma chambers back on Cybertron. That's a huge amount of power difference, not to mention processor capability. Vector Sigma may be offline, but there are at least three others buried but still functional."
"I know that," Optimus murmured, still worriedly scanning through what looked like tax census of South Carolina. "In fact, at exactly 3:34 PM today, Eastern Standard Time, one of those Sigma chambers will be facing Earth as Cybertron rotates. If we do not reach one Mrs., ah," he read off the screen, "Jean Dalia Krogers by then, there will be an incident caused by that convergence. Um." He hesitated, went back, and reworded his statement. "No, there's going to be an incident. Nothing we do is going to stop that. I couldn't - Primus decided despite what I tried to - I - "
The Autobots stepped back as their leader stood up. He drew his shoulders back as if to give an inspirational speech, then deflated. He gave them a helpless look instead.
"I have no idea how to explain this properly," he admitted, looking rather pathetic for a mech who could normally inspire a rock with one of his speeches. He blinked at the assembly, which blinked back, and drew in a calming vent. He pushed it back out in a long sigh. "Ah...Primus has decided that since we, His children, will not cease fighting and killing each other, then He will not create any more of us."
There was a short silence as the Autobots glanced at each other. "That's not really new," Jazz ventured after a moment. "I mean, aside from our miracle jets here," he jerked his head at Silverbolt, who smiled awkwardly, "the Sigma chambers have been useless for millions of years. Primus drag you in for an extended lecture on the war?"
"That's not fair," Ironhide groused from the back of the crowd. "Ain't anybody's fault but the Decepticreeps! Tell Him to go lay ol' buckethead out in a coma for three weeks!"
"What does this have to do with a human?" Ratchet carefully reached up to finish closing Optimus' helm, but he paused with his hand still on the Prime's head. "What? What'd I say?"
Optimus slumped further and mumbled something at the floor.
"What?"
A puzzled murmur swept the Autobots. "You don't want a - did you say 'baby sister'?"
"Why the frag would he say that?"
"You didn't hear him right. Optimus?"
The Prime winced and repeated himself a tad bit louder.
"...yeah, he said 'baby sister.'"
The big Autobot heaved another sigh, this one large enough that it came out his exhaust stacks. "Primus has decided that since His current children all want to kill each other, He's going to adopt. He spent the whole time we were in statis under this mountain negotiating with the, er," he looked tremendously uncomfortable at this, because most of the Autobots had scoffed in private at the 'crazy mythologies' the humans of Earth believed in, "local gods for...for...well, younger siblings."
He tucked into himself at the frankly incredulous looks the Autobots were turning on him. Ratchet's optics glazed in horror beside him. Jazz's mouth fell open. Disbelief ran smack up against the fact that this was the Prime, the Prime carried the Matrix, and historically speaking, Primus had spoken through the Matrix to his Primes. Not frequently, but reliably. Meaning that if Optimus Prime said that's what Primus had decided to do, then Primus really had decided to do it.
Those crazy human gods were real? Wait, Primus had negotiated with them? For children. Not demanded: negotiated. Negotiated? As in, between gods of equal status? For, what, adoptive siblings to stand beside - not behind - stand beside the current crop of Cybertronians?
The humans were their equals?!
A funny squeeble-wark came from somebody's vocalizer as that fact hit home. It wasn't that the Autobots actively looked down upon Earth's dominant species, but it was kind of hard to regard humans as fully equal sentients when even the youngest Autobot was older than their entire race. There had been…doubts…raised.
But for every doubter, there'd been a believer. Bumblebee's horn honked triumphantly, although he hid his grinning behind his hand when his neighbors turned to stare at him in astonishment. Ironhide's glare wasn't enough to stop Tracks' unabashed smile. The vain Corvette silently licked a finger and chalked a sizzling mark on an invisible scoreboard between them, and Ironhide scowled.
Optimus watched the universe tip on its end for half the room and nodded heavily. "Younger siblings who will guided as we once were: directly by our creator. Until such a point that He feels they, too, can be allowed to make their own way in the universe." He left out the rebuke Primus had sternly laid on him about how the current children of Cybertron had decided that killing each other was the way they wanted to go. It wasn't like the Autobots didn't already know that war had torn Cybertron apart, and that Primus thoroughly disapproved of it.
The Prime did nurse a secret glee for just how the Decepticons were going to take the news. It'd been a long, long time since Primus had taken a direct hand in His children's lives. Megatron was likely going to run head-first into that hand. Optimus couldn't wait to see that happen.
Before that happened, however, there was the slight matter of the new children. Optimus shifted uneasily, which attracted the stunned crowd's gaze again. New children tended to bring out jealousy in the old ones, and sibling rivalry could invoke parental wrath, in this case. He really hoped none of the Autobots went that far, because this was officially out of his hands.
That probably wasn't going to go over well, but they didn't have time for him to break the news gently.
"At 3:34 PM today, Mrs. Jean Dalia Krogers is going to be formally adopted by Primus. It, uh, is going to be more than a bit unsettling for her especially since…ah…" He coughed. Close listeners might have heard a very hurried series of words in the undertone.
Ratchet, who was the only one close enough to have heard, froze. Then he promptly dropped to the floor as his processors crashed.
Optimus looked down at him, pained; that did not bode well for how everyone else was going to take this.
He visibly shook himself free of his worried thoughts and squared his shoulders. "Well. I can't change Primus' mind on this matter, and Mrs. Krogers is only going to be the first in what appears to be a long list of adoptees. I was told to, um. Pretty much make way, because we're getting siblings whether we like it or not." Primus was a single parent Who'd tolerated enough of this civil war slag from His kids. They'd grown up into a terrible civilization, in His opinion. He'd given that opinion at length to Optimus, who now had to prepare for the arrival of the next batch of (hopefully better behaved) kids.
Speaking of which, they were running rather short on time for the first arrival. "We need to leave, now. Skyfire!"
Optimus Prime strode through the stunned group of Autobots, and anyone who listened closely might have heard him whimper. Ratchet would have sympathized. Brave façade or not, i wasn't every day that Cybertronians were upstaged by a younger race. Especially when that race became another race, the Cybertronian race, and then won the race, and, oh, hey, congrats on the new Prime who was going to take up the Matrix at approximately 3:35 PM, Eastern Standard Time.
[*****]
"Hmmph."
"Ah. Daliamus, ma'am?" Prowl peered around the office door. "You're on the network again." He ducked, half-expecting to get hit in the face by a pair of hoop earrings. Nobody knew why Primus had chosen to allow His new Prime her earrings, but getting smacked by Cybertronian-sized hoop earrings was an experience no one wanted to repeat.
When the earrings came off, even Megatron ran. Although Starscream had taken up the new Prime's distinctive Z-snap with his own flair, and she'd laughed hard enough at his imitation that it seemed she liked the Air Commander, now. It helped that they'd held some sort of sass-off wherein Starscream had held his own. He'd lost in the end, of course, but Daliamus Prime could out-sass anybody when it came to Earth standards. Which were the new standards for judging Cybertronians, so Starscream wasn't quite up to speed, yet.
He'd taken his loss well. He'd still worn that slightly shock-glazed look of disbelief most everyone was wearing, but he was able to function around the universe as he knew it being turned on its head. That put him ahead of a lot of mechs right now.
The Autobots had adjusted quicker than the Decepticons, but that was through constant exposure. And the efforts of the ex-Prime, who'd been the one to push Prowl into approaching the office door today. Otherwise the executive officer would have dithered about outside the officer for another hour trying to reconcile 'Prime' and 'human.' Also 'earrings' and 'weaponry.' That was another difficult one to fit together in his processors.
The hands that had been, once again, trying to pry off the new Prime's face mask lowered, and Daliamus turned wide optics on Prowl. "I am? How can you tell?" Between the voice in her chest from Primus and the voices that randomly spoke to her from communication link-ups in her helm, she often couldn't tell when someone was specifically speaking to her, or if they could hear her in return.
It seemed the earrings would stay on. For now, anyway. Prowl ventured out from behind the doorway to enter the office. "I don't think you meant to inform everyone of your wish to have lost ten more pounds before, er," he paused and censored what she'd actually said into something slightly less acidic, "becoming one of us."
"Ten pounds? When did I say - oh." It had been quite a while ago that she'd bemoaned that. Prowl had been dithering a while. She gave him a look he couldn't interpret. Human facial expressions, as much as the Autobots could imitate them, had nothing on Primus' frame designs for His new children. The face mask didn't stop Daliamus' optics from conveying an almost impossible amount of emotion. "Were you guys listening to me the whole time?" she asked suspiciously.
Prowl suspected that if he'd been human right now, his face would be flaming in embarrassment. His feet shuffled a bit, and he locked himself at attention to keep from looking at anything but his new Prime. "Not intentionally, ma'am," he said, apologetic. "You started broadcasting about the time you were, ah, evaluating your bodywork. Ratchet wishes me to inform you that your colors can be changed if you decide on a different palette, ma'am. If that will make you feel more comfortable."
Anything to make her feel more comfortable in her body would be provided, to the best of their abilities. Ratchet couldn't give her a face back - or hair, skin, or human-normal bodily functions - but the Autobots could consciously choose not to blame her for things she couldn't control. It wasn't her fault she couldn't consciously find or access the CPU commands to get on and off the network. All the Autobots could do was keep informing her when she dropped on in hopes that she'd eventually figure out what she'd done right or wrong that time.
And try not to be embarrassed by what they overheard. Prowl was still working on that one. He found himself looking at the ceiling as he made himself pass on the next message. "For the record, Jazz wishes me to inform you that your, er, aft is not a box." That was paraphrasing again. Her opinion on what Cybertronian 'booty' looked like hadn't been flattering. "He says that it's shaped quite nicely for...for our species."
He winced when he glanced downward. Her optics had gone dark as the reminder caused her mood to plummet. Again. It would be hard to blame her for her anger and depression. Two weeks as a Cybertronian, and Mrs. Krogers still couldn't tell when she was on or off the communications network. She also couldn't figure out how to shut her optics off, dial up her audios, or give a crap about Cybertron, its occupants, or its history, much less its war. She was still trying to deal with being a mechanical lifeform instead of, well, what she'd always been.
It was not an adjustment that was happening quickly. Or well.
That initial moment of transformation? The Autobots were lucky Primus was helping out, because they were pretty much useless. Sideswipe had screamed as loud as the new Prime had, and the only reason Prowl hadn't followed suit was that awe and terror had locked up his vocalizer before the shriek could escape. Ratchet had frozen, hands twitching helplessly as a medical impossibility had occurred right in front of him. She'd proceeded to have a panic attack at his feet, complete with uncoordinated thrashing that'd nearly floored him before Optimus Prime had demanded he do something to help or get out of the way.
The panic attack had been a well-deserved one. From human to metal in 3 seconds flat. Frankly, looking back at it, Prowl was surprised that Daliamus had calmed down at all, much less within three hours.
It'd taken Ratchet turning off every tactile sensor he could with sensor blocks - he told her he'd 'doped' her with 'painkillers' because there was no way she could have understood she had a sensory network now, much less how a medic could tamper with it - before she even got outside her own head enough to realize she hadn't just gone insane. That her body had changed, and that's why her mind had gone completely wonky. That this was real.
Yeah, three hours had been fairly short, looking back at it knowing what Prowl knew now. It was one thing to know that humans and Cybertronians were different, and another thing transmuting a human into one of them. The sheer scale of differences between the two races had made Daliamus Prime's life a total nightmare that she couldn't wake up from. The Autobots had helplessly tried to talk her through the initial panic, but everything they thought of as normal was sixty kinds of screwed up wrong to a human. They'd only put pressure on her that'd made the panic worse.
Optimus no-longer-Prime had all but promised her the moon in order just to get her to go back to the Ark with them. The Autobots were alien threats, to her fear-riddled, nigh-insensible mind. He'd coaxed her onboard Skyfire with gentle words.
That he'd failed to deliver on. She wanted to be turned back to what she was. Frag, the Autobots wanted her to go back to what she was! But Primus refused. Three days later, she'd stubbornly walked all the way back to South Carolina. The Autobots had practically screamed in frustration and terror as their Primus-chosen, Primus-made Prime tried her best to reject them. She'd wobbled out the door.
They couldn't really stop her from leaving them. They had no right to her life or choices. Some of them didn't even want to acknowledge her as one of them, but Primus had nipped that one in the bud by stripping Optimus of the Matrix and installing it in His new Prime. That didn't make her any less of a human, however. She was still a citizen of the United States of America. The government kept throwing demands at the Autobots, insisting that she be turned over to her country. Her congregation called hourly to check up on her. Her friends were having fits on her behalf. Her Congressman met her at the South Carolina state border to welcome her home.
In the end, Primus had persuaded her to give the Autobots a chance. Or maybe they'd convinced her of their sincere concern for her well-being during the long cross-country walk. Most likely, her inability to deal with her new body had played a large factor in the decision to return to the Ark. Primus had just been the deciding factor. Having a foreign god talking in her head hadn't done anything for her stability, that was for certain. She kept calling her pastor for counseling.
Two weeks on, and she still didn't know how to transform. She was so upset by the changes that she occasionally broke down crying. Well, trying to cry and then panicking when she couldn't. Robots couldn't cry. Robots also didn't sleep in soft beds, eat hot food, drink lemonade, or wear clothing. There wasn't a single aspect of her life that hadn't suddenly been warped. Nothing felt okay, and she'd had ventilation glitches for six days in a row until Ratchet spent the seventh day interfaced with her systems teaching her how to unlearn breathing. She still slipped up when she got upset, which was most of the time.
Megatron had backpeddled away from her heaving bosom with horrified looks at both said bosom and the fact it kept heaving. Optimus Prime - now Orion Pax again - had gingerly taken on explaining to the Decepticons what exactly had happened, was happening right now, and was going to continue happening no matter how many times Megatron said, "But!"
He said that a lot. Prowl had stopped counting after the first hundred sputtered half-words from the Decepticon tyrant. Orion Pax simply kept patiently reiterating the same thing, for the rest of the Decepticons if not Megatron himself. As Starscream had proven, the facts had sunk in for some of them. Protests aside, the Autobots and Decepticons could do nothing to stop Primus. Humanity was getting adopted.
Not to say Megatron hadn't tried to put an end to the new Prime. He'd taken a potshot at her, and the Matrix had carefully, lovingly steered the woman through slapping the ever-living bolts off of the tin tyrant.
It'd been alarming the first time. It'd been hilarious the second time, a day later. Sure, Daliamus Prime collapsed in hysterics afterward because somebody else was controlling her body, but her body was so weird now that she'd adjusted to being possessed by Primus relatively quickly. It helped that the Autobots tried to debrief her on Cybertron's Great War. And by 'helped,' that meant she'd been so furious at the whole in-fighting stupid bunch of them that she'd thrown her earrings at Prowl's head, then threatened to put Megatron over her knee and whale some manners into him when she caught him a third time not twelve hours after she kicked his can the second time. Apparently, she neither understood the civil war nor cared to try any longer. They were on Earth, now, and the rules had changed.
Everyone present had looked up what the colloquialism had meant. Both factions had stared at each other, speechless, when they figured it out.
Starscream had prudently stepped back from the conflict, an act that the quicker-thinking among them copied immediately. They'd stood on the sidelines watching Primus possess the new Prime and follow through on the threat when Megatron didn't back down. She'd not only spanked the Decepticon's leader until he stopped struggling and grated out a rage-filled, humiliated apology, but she'd told off Astrotrain, Skywarp, Sideswipe, and Cliffjumper for being 'bad children' and laughing at the spectacle. Seeing all four mechs shuffling their feet in front of her, shamefaced, had been almost as shocking as watching Megatron limp from a sore aft.
There was something about having Primus glaring at them through Daliamus Prime's optics that really let the Autobots and Decepticons known that He'd had it with their war. Primus had new babies to take care of now, and the elder children had better get with the program. Or else.
She hadn't even had to chase the 'bad children' down by the fifth Decepticon attack. Megatron himself had fled, but half of the Decepticons lurked around the battlefield until the new Prime demanded mumbled apologies for their behavior. She'd read them the riot act, too. While spitting blue fire and channeling energy from Primus' Sigma chambers.
Both sides of the battle were scared lube-less of her by the time she'd wound down. Momma Prime had a temper, and Poppa Primus was backing her to the hilt.
That'd made it even more frightening when she'd said, "I should turn you human! See if anyone here wants you, because heck if I do!"
That? That had not been something anyone wanted to hear from their god or the new Prime, who might have been speaking on behalf of their god. Or not. She refused to tell. Either way, the Decepticons hadn't been seen in battle since. In quick snatches when Autobot scouts were pounced on for updates on what was going on, yes, but not outright warfare. After daily harassment from Megatron, the sudden absence of aggression practically echoed.
Hence, the fear of the earrings coming off. Daliamus Prime still couldn't walk in a straight line or understand why picking at her lugnuts in public glued everyone's optics to the ceiling, but the woman could intimidate the lot of them by existing. She was the new Prime, the first of Primus' adopted children, and she was here to usher in a new era.
New, because even now she was sighing and standing up. "2:56 AM, Indonesia. There's a - oh, the poor dear." Even over the network, because she still didn't have the faintest clue how to get herself off it, she sounded distressed. Prowl tensed unconsciously. "A nine-year-old street child. We have to get there right away!"
It was too much to hope that the Sigma chamber would transform the child with any semblance of a language database. "Jazz, meet us at the hangar bay. Download as many local languages as you can on the way." Hopefully, there would be somebody available who could translate if downloads didn't work.
Prowl was beginning to think that dealing with what the Sigma chambers left on Earth was the Autobots' penance for nine million years of war. It made him afraid of what price the Decepticons might pay for their half of the war.
He resisted offering his new Prime an arm as she got up and immediately stumbled, taken off-balance by the wheels on her back yet again. He just stood aside respectfully and spoke onto the network. "Skyfire?"
"I'm here." The massive shuttle turned the corner and met Daliamus at the door to the office. She'd stubbornly gotten herself that far. "If I may, ma'am?" He offered her a hand gallantly.
She only frowned as she let herself be picked up. Anyone else offering to help her would have gotten a scathing torrent of words in response, but Skyfire had about as much understanding of the war as she did. He had the history she lacked, but he was a pacifist at spark. That made him much more sympathetic to her inability to comprehend nine million years of civil war than the rest of the Autobots. He also had a distinct reverence for Primus that the others were guiltily aware that they were missing. After nine million years of ignoring His will, the Autobots sort of felt like rebellious teenagers finding out their parent had been right all along. They really had messed up big time and irreversibly, until starting over was the only way to salvage their world.
Primus' will was awesome and vast, but Skyfire believed it to also be right. Instead of wasting time protesting or trying to reverse the effects, he'd embraced the new siblings he'd been given. He'd done his best to help them, and he utterly cherished the four humans adopted by his god in the past two weeks. Skyfire was almost the only one of the Ark's crew whom the ex-human didn't shriek in fear upon seeing.
Twin five-year-old orphans from Russia, a middle-aged farmer from Chile, and an 87-year-old woman from Saudi Arabia. Primus' new children had only two things in common: war was the last thing they wanted to be involved in, and they didn't have a clue how to live as mechanical lifeforms.
Ratchet had failed so dismally at explaining how their bodies worked that they'd almost lost the farmer, but at least the twins were curious enough about themselves that they'd gotten past the panic and shock stage after their own accidents. They'd been so ignorant that they'd drunk straight gasoline out of innocent belief that it was what their bodies ran on, now. The Chief Medical Officer had pulled them out of simultaneous fuel pump failures with his hands shaking and a continuous prayer for divine intervention spilling from his lips. Orion Pax spent his time mediating between the Autobots and their suddenly very present god these days, and Ratchet could be found with him any time he wasn't hovering worriedly over his patients. The medic was all but begging Primus for a miracle, at this point. The elderly Saudi woman still moved like her joints hurt, and Ratchet was desperately afraid they were going to lose her because her sons believed her to no longer have a soul. She'd been refusing energon ever since they severed ties with her.
Adoption was never easy, but there was no way adoptions done between worlds could be anything but traumatic. The adjustment period, it seemed, could kill. It was also frustrating, frightening, and had stomped the Great War to a halt in two weeks flat.
Daliamus Prime had made it clear that the only reason she'd come back to the Ark was because Primus had talked her into it. The Autobots were weird, the Decepticons were worse, and no way was she letting them poison her fellow ex-humans with a toxic environment of war and factions. They'd better shut up and listen - all of them - before the earrings came off. Primus wasn't taking any more of their slag. It was either keep up with the new siblings or get left eating Daliamus' dust.
Prowl jogged after Skyfire, dryly reflecting that this was how the war ended, this was how the war ended, this was how the war ended.
Not with a bang, but a, "Nu-uh, girlfriend!"
[* * * * *]
Overlord - "Tentacles"
[* * * * *]
There was a conversation about how Overlord couldn't get worse. I found a way. IDW AU where 'Siege' Fortress Maximus and 'Handle With Care (This End Up)' Vortex meet. It is not nice.
"What the frag are you doing here?"
Vortex kept his head down and concentrated on the keys. "Shut up, Autobot."
Usually, an order from a Decepticon on this particular shuttle would have Fort Max sullen but obedient. However, he knew a fellow prisoner when he saw one, and the rotary mech was definitely that. Besides, Overlord was on the other end of the ship. "No," he said, although he didn't stop waxing the floor. "Tell me."
"Don't talk," Vortex muttered irritably. He flicked an annoyed look at the Autobot slave and an apprehensive look at the door. Prisoners: both of them. "He's going to find a way to punish both of us. You know that."
Fort Max knew. That was how Overlord played these power games. "What do you care?" There wasn't much in his life that didn't cause pain anymore. He'd take the opportunity to indulge his curiosity, slaggit. "He can't do anything worse to me than he's already done." Hence why he kept polishing despite the careless dismissal.
That got a reaction. Vortex slowly turned his head to give him a flat look. "Overlord can always make it worse."
An incredulous snort cut off in a strange honking noise as something slithered up Fort Max's leg. He squawked and kicked in reflex, but the thing on his leg only tightened. He turned wide optics toward his leg to find that thin, strong cables had snaked through the bridge door and were questing up both legs. "What the frag?!"
"Didn't know he had these, huh?" Desert dry, Vortex's voice had long ago been sucked of everything but resignation. The 'copter let himself be guided out of his seat by his own set of tentacles. He didn't resist. When they urged him to his knees, he only sighed and said aloud to their absent puppet-master, "I apologize for my misconduct, Overlord sir. Please allow me to make restitution for my error."
The tentacles dragged the struggling, horrified Autobot toward him, and Vortex shook his head. "Like I said: it can always be made worse."
[*****]
The big Autobot's ventilation cycles were erratic, coming in odd bursts more flustered than anything else. Having an audience always humiliated him more than the sordid acts done to him, although this particular audience's participation had certainly made those worse than usual. Overlord couldn't make his tap respond on a good day, much less with toys, but Vortex was small and clever and had managed to make Fort Max curl and kick when that fight was lost. It'd left his tap oversensitive, but Overlord wasn't taking advantage of that for pleasure. He was simply taking advantage of it.
"Why...the fraggeek!" The Autobot clamped his mouth shut on a strained squeak as another tentacle writhed between his thighs, prodding at the mass already bulging out of his tap. "Why the frag aren't you...nhhgh...aren't you gloating?" Maddened optics glared in the direction of the 'copter sitting in a bridge chair once more. "Fragging 'Con!"
Vortex kept his visor on his work. His mask was back in place. At least he had that much to keep the jealousy from showing, although thick envy penetrated the mask just fine. "Not worth gloating about."
"You gooah! Got your circuits off. What more do you want?!" Fortress Maximus gritted his teeth and panted into the floor as that tentacle slid, inch by slow inch, up into his tap to join the twisting, sliding mass. It felt like it was poking directly into his sensor grid. "Don't tell me you're the one slagging rapist in the 'Cons who doesn't enjoy it. I know better!"
It'd been as enjoyable as any forced interface ever was. That hadn't made Vortex ache any less afterward. "You think you have it bad?" he asked, the bitterness tearing the words out of him. The Autobot clawed at the floor, arching as the tentacles spiraled in and out in lewd parody of a mecha not even present on the bridge. "At least he touches you."
He pressed his own thighs together and stabbed viciously at the keys in front of him. The Autobot didn't know how good he had it. Overlord's punishments of Vortex were frustratingly, torturously nonphysical. It sucked the enjoyment right out of the little rape session, knowing it'd been only to humiliate Fort Max. Beyond some directions, Vortex hadn't been touched by those tentacles at all.
Fraggit.
[*****]
"How did you get him to stop touching you all the time?" That's right, Fort Max was just fed up enough to seek advice from a Decepticon. It was a matter of equality between prisoners, really. When a mech had tentacles shoved up his tap as he scrubbed out a storage locker, there wasn't much shame left in him. The tentacles kind of displaced it, along with his composure.
Vortex certainly seemed to know what that was like. He didn't even look up as the tentacles playfully dragged the slave out of the storage locker for more 'Quality Time A La Overlord.'
The 'copter knew better, but there was something to be said for fellow feeling. Just...for once in his existence, someone else knew exactly what it was like to be him. Not the exact circumstances, but suffering under Overlord's heel was suffering under Overlord's heel. The triple-changer just chose how to grind his foot down a bit differently on the other mech.
By now, the Autobot was pressed into the wall, shoved there face-first and held up by the tentacles holding his thighs spread so far he was having difficulty supporting his own weight. Two more tentacles waved leisurely in the large gap. The movement of air on bared equipment was enough to have Fort Max tensed in dread, but every once and a while, it apparently pleased Overlord to send those tentacles spanking at the rim of the mech's tap. Fort Max made a variety of stifled noises when that happened. The tentacles struck and slipped inside to stroke the inner threads, then spanked around the rim again and again until the big mech hissed what would have been whimpers in a weaker mech.
It'd usually have been a show Vortex would enjoy, and part of him still did. However, having that kind of pleasure-pain inflicted by Overlord inspired envy and sick sympathy as well. Holy rotor blades but did he know what it felt like to squirm and cry out under Overlord's torment. No matter what he wanted, in the end the torture always won. Overlord defeated him every time, and this Autobot knew what that felt like intimately.
It wasn't something Vortex had imagined as a relief to have someone share, but it was. Primus, it was. So he sat under his own tentacle - it had wrapped around his throat early on and hadn't moved, just resting there as a reminder that he was under Overlord's constant control - and spoke quietly at the console he was using. Orders were to stay silent, but Overlord's energy signature was all the way across the ship. Not that he wasn't eventually going to screw up and be punished, but the likelihood of being caught whispering was fairly low.
"You know what a gestalt is?"
"Lock - nght!" Fort Max grunted and swallowed, optics off. "Locked technology. Not supposed to be in-uhn! In use."
"Yeah. Well, Swindle got his mitts on it, and I'm stuck with the results." He hadn't known becoming a combiner team was permanent. The links, he'd understood. He just hadn't known how deep they went before it was too late to back out. "It's bad. Then I got sent to Overlord for my…behavior." No, Autobot, he wasn't going to elaborate. If Fort Max had any of his secure databanks intact, the mech could pull at least a pre-Earth file on him. "He might be rogue now, but he used to be Me - Lord Megatron's breaker." And how Vortex had broken. Oh, how he'd broken.
He had to swallow an uncomfortable noise himself, this time, just at the memory. "It got worse."
Fort Max's mouth was pressed against the wall, an open 'O' of half twisted pain and half jolting pleasure as one tentacle lightly traced just inside his tap and the other brutally smacked against the outer rim. "Don'thhhhngn don't see-euhn mm! How! You thnnnk think this isssah ah ah b-better!"
Vortex smiled grimly behind his mask and didn't take his visor off his work. He'd been told to enter data, and he'd enter data until told otherwise. "Unless he's messed with your hardcode to make you obedient to his every whim, shut the frag up, Autobot. I'd kill to be where you are right now, if it'd get his fingers out of my head." The tentacle around his throat shifted, and he gave the door a wary look. The ship still registered Overlord as being across the ship, but a dose of paranoia was healthy when it came to that mech. Limitations were mere trailmarkers for Overlord.
The Autobot fought against the tentacles, but his arms and legs were pinned. He slumped, making small, involuntary sounds as a third tentacle joined the two already between his thighs. Vortex grumbled his engine with envy. Just hearing it made his interface hardware ache.
*"Vortex."*
So much for that ache. Another ache swelled up to overtake it. "Overlord sir!" He straightened in his seat, looking attentively at the console speaker.
*"Have you finished your task?"*
"No sir! Soon, sir."
*"I see. And have you spoken with my slave while you've worked?"*
The 'copter didn't so much as twitch. "No sir!"
*"…I see. Tell me, Vortex. Do you know how sensitive my appendages are?"*
His spark sank down to his knees. The Autobot was gasping softly as the tentacles relaxed, allowing him to stand on his own. They still spiraled in and out of his tap, but Vortex could see how the mech had braced his elbows on the wall, hands fisted against his face to muffle any noises that tried to escape as he was violated. The tentacles had to be sensitive to mechhandle the Autobot's tap gently enough not to damage anything, but Vortex hadn't thought about them beyond that.
"No sir," the 'copter said quietly.
*"Your vocalizer has been running away from you."* The tentacle around his throat squeezed pointedly. It wrapped directly over his vocalizer's housing. The vibrations must have been pretty slagging obvious. *"Are the consoles so interesting you must speak to them?"*
His spark descended into the Pit. "…no. Sir. I." What the frag could he say to that? He'd lied. He'd lied to Overlord. Frag his life.
*"Mhmm. You know, Vortex, I seem to remember giving you several sets of orders you've now disobeyed."* Not lying to his officer. Not speaking to his officer's pet Autobot slave. There were probably more that Vortex didn't remember and would manufacture on his own just so he could apologize in sufficiently abject detail later. *"Even my slave obeys me better than that. Perhaps some time as his servant will allow you to rethink your poor decisions."* The Combaticon sat at attention in his chair, every cable taut with horror. *"Consider yourself demoted for the foreseeable future. Fortress Maximus is your new superior officer. Understood?"*
He understood that his life was made of humiliation so intense it made his tanks churn. "Yes sir, Overlord sir," he said hoarsely, because somewhere on this ship a massive fist held a scrap of plastic that made his knees weak. The idea of not being able to earn it sent his rotor blades clattering against the chair back.
The connection cut, and Vortex sat for a moment more just staring blindly at the console screens. Then he mechanically rose to turn and walk across the room.
The Autobot was breathing deeply, trying to expel heated air as he recovered from the tentacles slowly slithering down his thighs. Vortex's approach got a cautious glare. That turned to incredulous staring as the 'copter snapped to military correct attention before him.
"Fortress Maximus sir," he forced out, snarling the words, "I am yours to command."
[ A/N: Yeah, it ended up getting far too long, so I cut out the last two I was going to add. Until the curtain rises next time, m'dears.]