Scenes from "An Accidental Love Story" and "Call of Duty." Overlord and Trepan face off.
Title: Candy From Strangers, Pt. 28
Warning: Injuries, ponyplay, taking an excuse at face value, and Overlord. Overlord's a warning in and of himself.
Rating: R
Continuity: IDW, G1
Characters: Cliffjumper, Mirage, Ratchet, Jazz, Hound, Overlord, Trepan
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.
Acting Motivation (Prompt): Random fic continuations, and a joint fic-pic commission from Vintage-Mechanics. Shibara's accompanying picture is viewable on Tumblr. Thank you!
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"An Accidental Love Story" - Ride 'em cowboy
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Despite expectations generally built off of plot points in dramatic movies, spies weren't the ones who got hurt the most. A spy had an all-or-nothing mission risk: either he got in and out without detection, or he got caught. A good SpecOps agent had enough training to make an escape despite being detected. However, outside of specific missions utilizing their unique skillsets, most operatives weren't put in the ranks as normal soldiers. A spy dating outside the division was the one who spent his time worrying.
Earth meant that Mirage fought as a regular soldier more often, now, but not so often as Cliffjumper, and never as a frontliner. Every time the Decepticons attacked, Cliffjumper was one of the heavy hitters put in their way. Mirage was the one left behind, or ghosting around while the Autobots' distractions kept him safe. He was the one who didn't get caught, because if the Decepticons caught him, he'd be executed on the spot. If he'd gotten caught before this, he'd be dead.
Cliffjumper, on the other hand, was just a soldier. He wasn't marked as a particular threat or a valuable hostage. If the Decepticons caught him, they'd use him to bargain with the Autobots for resources because they didn't really care if the little red minibot lived or died. At least with Mirage, there was a kind of certainty to capture. Like pitched battle, there was no all-or-nothing risk to the danger Cliffjumper faced.
Cliffjumper worried about him when he left on a mission, but it was a vague, apprehensive prayer to Primus for his safety. It balanced against Cliffjumper's firm belief that Mirage could pull off any mission.
It wasn't that Mirage didn't trust Cliffjumper. It was just that Cliffjumper went into battle every time, took damage every time, because battles weren't like the espionage the noblemech specialized in. Tactics could only get the Autobots so far before it became a contest of who could take and inflict the most damage. Mirage couldn't remember a battle without casualties, even if the injuries were minor. Cliffjumper nearly always took damage. That was just what happened to soldiers on the front line.
Mirage worried. He had every reason to worry.
Across the medbay, Ratchet shot another amused look at the slender, elegant spy hovering like a fretting nannybot over Cliffjumper. The attempt at aloofness had been made. Ratchet had issued threats at empty corners until Mirage sheepishly deactivated his invisibility mod. Medics didn't like spies in their territory. It was horrible for patient privacy, and it made Ratchet's chevron itch something fierce. Nobody but SpecOps knew what it did to Hoist, but then, Hoist was a friendly, jovial medic even while asking squirm-worthy invasive questions no SpecOps mech wanted to answer during routine maintenance checks. No spy dared hang around medbay during his shift, or not more than once, anyway.
First Aid had Streetwise. The first time Jazz sicced his division on the medbay to use First Aid as a training run, the medic responded to the spying by letting his fellow Protectobot loose on SpecOps in return. Prowl had been impressed by how fast Jazz zipped into his office demanding the investigation into his mechs' pasts cease and desist right away, right now, immediately.
Technically, uninjured personnel weren't supposed to be allowed into the medbay. Ratchet bent the rule today. Mirage had his cables in such a twist that he was violating the unspoken rules about spying on the medbay. As long as he stayed respectful of the other patients, Ratchet would allow him to be at Cliffjumper's side.
Which Mirage knew. He was being quiet and staying out of the way. That didn't stop him from looking about an inch from jittering around in a worried frenzy. Oh, he played it cool, but those long fingers of his were studiously entwined on the berth, so absolutely still it was clear they wanted to restlessly dance over fresh welds and broken glass.
Cliffjumper, high on painblocks, wasn't helping calm his worries. "I'm fine," he slurred slightly, jaw still dislocated. "Juuust fine. S'cosmetic, yeah? It's the red. Shows up ev'ry scratch. Help me up. I wanna get up."
"Don't move too much," Ratchet heard the noblemech caution, but Mirage seemed somewhat relieved that Cliffjumper wanted to sit up. The medic kept a narrow optic on the two, but Mirage fussed until his small lover had sufficient support to stay sitting up. "There. That will do."
"But I wanna go."
"No, you don't. Access your HUD damage readout if you don't believe me."
"Ohhh, hey, yeah. Forgot I lost all that."
"Yes, you - yes, you did. I, ah." Mirage paused, and Ratchet bent back to his work on Tracks as the spy glanced his way. Whatever the blue mech saw, it made him lower his voice and lean down to continue speaking closer to Cliffjumper's audio. Mirage's expression was as neutral as ever, but Ratchet knew how to read the subtle tension in his hands and the time spent standing motionless at the minibot's side.
Ratchet nodded to himself. Plenty of lust in that pairing, but Mirage had it bad. The noblemech wouldn't have changed the rules of courtship as he had if he didn't want Cliffjumper so much. Ratchet didn't think the red minibot knew how deep it pained Mirage to disregard the culture of the Iacon Towers, but he wouldn't be the one to tell Cliffjumper. The choice was up to Mirage, always had been, and if Cliffjumper was ignorant of the rules bent to court him, then Mirage was equally ignorant of how far Cliffjumper had toned down his usual vigor in response. Mirage might think he wanted Cliffjumper, but Ratchet would bet his welding tanks that the noblemech would have vanished like a spooked turbofox if Cliffjumper acted the way he had even two years ago.
Earth had changed a lot of things. Cliffjumper and Mirage were two of the more obvious things. The block-headed rock had met the proud immobile hard object, and it was actually working out for them.
A sudden yelp and crash startled Ratchet out of his work, and he spun around just in time to see Mirage's shock-widened optics right below Cliffjumper's muddled, circuit-lagging grin. "Hi-yo, see-thru! Away!" the small red Autobot crowed, whirling an arm above his head and hauling back on the improvised bridle on Mirage's head. "Giddiyup!"
Mirage didn't seem to dare move. His mouth worked around the tube laid across it, half a gag but mostly a bit. Cliffjumper appeared to be using the rest of the tube as reins to steer him with. The spy's hands were held before him, fingers curling. Cliffjumper's knees were tucked up under his arms, not easily dislodged even if he were willing to throw the injured mech off and risk further damage.
A moment later it didn't matter, as Cliffjumper's optics went dim. Metal scraped as he slowly poured to the floor in a limp pile.
Ratchet darted across the medbay to catch him before he hurt himself. That meant he was right there to hear whirring fans desperately dumping heat.
The medic shot Mirage an amused look. "I can't tell. Do you have a Lone Ranger kink, or is it the ponyplay?"
Mirage blinked at him, face slack in bewilderment. "I have no idea what just happened." Or why it turned him on, evidently.
Ratchet grunted as he heaved Cliffjumper back onto the repair berth where he belonged. "That's no surprise. You say that a lot, lately."
An embarrassed smile worked its way across the noblemech's face. "I suppose I do," he said, looking down at Cliffjumper.
Strangely, he didn't seem worried about it.
[* * * * *]
"Call of Duty" - scene that wanted to be written but didn't fit the fic
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"Prowl?"
*Jazz.*
Jazz slumped against the wall of the building and covered his visor with his hands, although only his voice shook. Not counting his legs, of course. His legs were shaking pretty violently inside the armor where all the struts and cables felt hot and overused. "You know that phrase you refuse to say to me?"
There was a long pause on the other side of the line. *Yes.* A clicking sound that was likely Prowl putting down his work and folding his hands on the desk to devote all his attention to the conversation. *Why?*
"This would be an appropriate time to say it." His fingers tightened over his visor in miserable anticipation of words to satisfy an itch that Prowl's order-loving spark had been waiting an entire war to get scratched.
Startled silence stretched out for a minute before Prowl finally said, oddly hesitant, *You are a bad person and should feel bad.*
A surprised laugh huffed out his vents. "Not that one! It, huh." He had to stop and blink for a second. "Well, okay, that works, too. But, uh, I meant…" Why the frag was he dragging this out? He couldn't possibly get any more humiliated. He'd already lost every bit of dignity he'd ever had.
It was currently dribbling down the inside of his thigh in a nearly invisible leak that was more felt than seen, but that just made it worse. His spike hadn't even extended. From steeling himself against arousal to coming in less than five seconds; that had to be a record.
Not one he'd admit to. Going off and shuddering through some kind of not-an-overload overload wasn't anything to be proud of, especially since he'd done it right in front of his friend, who'd done nothing more sexual than pick up a hose and smile at him. Aw, fragging Pit, what did that say about him that he had so little self-control? He was scum. He was gutter-spawn.
He'd never objectified someone like that before, and it opened a yawning hole full of self-loathing in his tanks. He'd essentially walked in and jacked off to an mental construct of his own lusts instead of seeing his friend. For a split second, all he'd been able to think about and see was the fantasy mech he used to pant over back in the day. He'd totally lost it.
He couldn't even imagine what it felt like to have a trusted comrade suddenly ignore everything but one previously-unknown and unimportant aspect of his past, then go one step further and publically spurt one right then and there. It'd be like walking up to Optimus Prime and breathing heavily while staring fixedly at his chest, spike out and leaking in hand. There used to be laws against that kind of scrap.
It was an internal betrayal so shocking Jazz felt about an inch tall.
He cringed against the wall as his hips jerked despite himself. His unpressurized spike throbbed insistently, pulsing in waves of stymied pleasure like an overload blocked right before its peak. It was a struggle not to pop his panel right here and now to release it, and shame washed through him on the heels of every joint-melting wave of pleasure. He had no more control than a rabid turbofox in heat. He could master what his face showed, but the best pokerface in the galaxy strained around the edges when a mech's knees turned in, hips thrusting forward.
His engine had roared. If that hadn't been enough to give him away, Jazz had twitched and turned to retreat at a hurried hobble, the evidence of overload drizzling down his thigh as he went. Walk in, overload, and scoot straight back out the door. Gearsticks and muffler systems, he was an aft!
The only solution he could think of was calling Prowl for help. He'd screwed this one up so bad he needed back-up. "I went in without a plan, Prowl." His voice was small, shamed, and begged his friend to put him out of his misery. "It blew up in my face, and I don't have a way to salvage anything outta this."
After a moment, Prowl said, *I see. In that case, I told you so.*
Jazz's doors splayed wider, sinking him down further down the wall. Prowl's vague puzzlement and definite alarm just didn't carry the impact he'd been hoping for. To his frustration, the crushing sense of guilt failed to be blotted out by the burn on his pride. He'd wanted it to sting him into action, but it'd already been well on its way to crispy crunchiness. Prowl's words were confirmation instead of a dare.
He pressed his visor into his hands harder as shame, humiliation, and a vast amount of guilt drenched the inside of his armor in cloying, syrupy glurps that had his spark squirming. There wasn't an escape. There was just recent memory, total embarrassment, and a growing sense of desperation.
"Louder?" he whispered, ashamed that he was asking but Primus damn him to the Pit if he didn't deserve worse.
Prowl's unease came through the brisk business tone he used. *I told you so.*
"Again."
*I told you so.*
It still didn't help. Jazz's engine whined his distress, and he shuddered where he stood. Confession was painful. "Prowl, I fragged up."
Bless infinitely calm mechs who weren't involved at all. Prowl shifted into damage control without missing a beat. *Is this personal?*
If only. "Yes?" he ventured, because for some reason he had to try.
*Jazz.* Prowl wasn't buying it.
His hands were starting to shake, but he wasn't sure if it was because of panic or because of the pulsing, taut pleasure kneading his spike into a hot pressure waiting to pop. He slouched against the wall outside the shop because he couldn't walk any further than that, and he certainly couldn't transform. His knee joints were jelly and rubber, so much so he'd have crashed to the ground if the wall weren't holding him up. He was an idiot. He was a weak-willed, spike-led piece of rusted junk not fit for recycling.
What he couldn't say through the shame but knew he should was that Prowl needed to come fetch him, throw a lock on his spike hatch, and drag him down to Ratchet's clinic for counseling. He was one of those mechs.
Under the humiliation for his own behavior roiled a bigger fear. He couldn't protect his friend against himself, but worse, "I screwed somebody over. Soundwave's gonna ruin his life, and I didn't help. I made things worse. I - "
And the confession tumbled out, faster and faster. "I - oh, scrap, I don't know what to do. I don't know." His voice fell to a hoarse, strained agony. "I don't even know how to apologize, how to begin to make this up to him. He didn't do anything, I was just - it was me, it was me being a slagging cogsucker. He didn't ask for this, I just pushed it all on him like the worst kind of - I - I was curious, okay, and I didn't think about how maybe I shouldn't've helped find him because now Soundwave's gonna expose him, and he's got a life, mech's got a whole different life now. He's still a lot like he was, but it's not fair that anyone try to make him do anything, he would've said or done something if he wanted to be like that again, and I should've played stupid. Primus, I'm such a moron. I should've kept my tires outta the whole thing, but I wanted to know where he'd gone, I just didn't think, I didn't slagging think, and I'm just -"
He'd gone in cocky and ready to spring a loaded question on his buddy, swaggering in with a grin and a laugh, but had that ever backfired on him. Maybe he'd hoped to get first dibs on a legendary 'face, but instead he'd become a preview to what he'd opened his buddy up to. If Jazz couldn't control himself, how could he trust other Autobots - or worse, Decepticons - to not do worse?
This was exactly why Prowl had always disapproved of him going off without a plan.
How could he face anyone again? That reputation as a reliable, professional ex-officer? Utterly destroyed. Gone completely. Jazz cringed a little further into himself, picturing his music career going up in flames, and he couldn't say it was undeserved. He'd lost his fragging mind.
Jazz had always thought of himself as a decent switch, giving and taking without bias, but turned out he was nothing but a degenerate. Everything, every derogatory comment ever made about spike mechs, it was all true. Every snide remark about how valve mechs had to keep it under wraps because spike mechs would stiffen at the hint of a hole? He'd overloaded at a fantasy. The sneering sniffs at how little self-control they had? The Decepticons were going to write up the public indecency laws again just for Jazz. Every laugh because spikers had no discrimination or sense of modesty? He'd just proved the rumors 100% true. The lack of respect for others wishes and desires? Who knew if Hound's frozen smile had been protest, disgust, or violation too deep to articulate.
Sure, Jazz hadn't popped his hatch and pressurized for everyone to see, but he recognized exactly who was to blame for acting like an entitled gearhead. From friend to object to lust over in the flicker of an optic. Way to go, Jazz. He'd ignored who Hound was in favor of whom he'd once played the part of. His buddy was nine million years away from being Sarge, and anyway, that'd been a stage personae. Porn was a highly staged, scripted, unrealistic fantasy that had nothing to do with real life and absolutely no relation to how the actors should be treated. Jazz would be highly skeeved out by anyone who nagged him for free music, much less demanded he play something for them. That was his job, not his life, and he didn't owe anybody a freebie outside the bounds of work.
He'd known that, and yet here he was in a back alley after doing the same sleezy thing to a friend and former subordinate.
But he still wanted nothing more than to open his interface cover and finish himself off.
"I'm a bad person, and I feel bad," he almost whimpered.
Prowl's concern reached through the commline and tried to shake information out of him. *What happened? Will it help to call Optimus Prime? Jazz, talk to me. Jazz?*
"Jazz."
The former saboteur flinched, helm ducking between his shoulders. His hands fell from his face to dig the fingers into the wall behind him. It was as much to restrain himself as stay upright. He didn't trust himself in the slightest anymore. "I'm so, so sorry."
A sigh, and Hound came all the way out of his shop. "I'm not angry at you."
He should be. Jazz had so little control over his interface equipment that he'd seen a perfectly modest businessmech smile, just a crooked smile at the sight of a friend, and lost it.
An avalanche of remorse buried him when Hound leaned on the wall further up the alley. He was staying out of reach. Jazz had screwed everything up in one fell swoop. "I'm gonna see Ratchet, I swear," he promised, wires twisting with shame. "I'll keep away. I've never - honest t' Primus, Hound, I've never done this slag before. You know me. I don't - " His doors scraped down the wall as they dropped, because listening to his own babble of excuses left a sour film in his mouth. Frag him sideways with a stop sign. He sounded like every pervert he'd ever caught rubbing on someone.
Yeah, sure, he'd lost control to his spike like a brainless lusting turbofox. They had solutions for slavering technimals humping everything in sight. Holding pens and deactivating the overactive 'too powerful' interface array topped the list.
He swallowed the urge to defend himself and started dishing out the humble pie in king-sized portions. "I'm sorry. I did something unforgiveable, an' I know it. You don't gotta pretend it's okay." The ground was in dire need of staring at. Jazz got to it with a will. "I'd say I don't know what I was thinking, but what I was thinking was that it'd be okay if I took you by surprise and treated this like a joke, but it's not. Soundwave's looking to out you as - as your old job. As, uh, as Sarge. And I helped him find you."
Whatever Hound's face looked like hearing that, Jazz didn't want to know. The soft, dismayed, "Oh," was enough.
"Look, if you want to…bring this," one hand came free from the wall to make a helpless, vague gesture at himself and the hot mess he still was, "int' public view, I'm not gonna fight it. It might help, mech. Make it clear you won't stand for anybody treatin' you like shareware, and maybe the worst of - of us," he forced himself to be included in that category, "will lay off. I'm just. Hound, I'm." He hid his face behind the inadequate shelter of his hand. "I'm so sorry. Please, please forgive me. I'll stay away. I'll go to Ratchet. I'll even turn myself in if y'want me to."
Even as he said it, however, the armor over his midriff flexed. The throbbing ebb and flow of near-overload still turned his knees weak. The pleasure made this some kind of terrible nightmare where the shame and humiliation of his own lack of control kept running headlong into warm, liquid heat with no release in sight. His spike kept trying to pressurize.
Hound sighed, oddly resigned, and Jazz dared peek between his fingers. "What did I do to set you off?" the former scout asked.
He couldn't even pretend he hadn't been set off. "You didn't do anything," he mumbled.
"I know it's your responsibility, but quite frankly, spike mechs are the excitable sort. It'd help if I knew how to keep you under wraps."
Jazz's spark compacted into a tiny, humiliated ball in the back of its chamber. This. This was the stigma every mech who preferred his spike had to go up against, and Jazz had always considered himself a swinger because of it. Spike mechs were weak. Spike mechs had to be corralled and disciplined, or they'd go wild. Sluts and berth-hoppers, ready to go at a wink of an optic. Hard-ons incapable of seeing people instead of walking, driving valves.
He reset his vocalizer and studied the ground. "You didn't do anything different. I had a moment, y'know? Just realized outta nowhere that you'd never stopped doin' the porn thing." The smile crumpled as soon as it crossed his face. "You probably have all sorts of reasons for liking Earth. It's just what I thought."
There was a beat of silence, but Hound laughed. Surprised, Jazz looked up.
"Yeah, you caught me." Hound grinned and shrugged. "Organic worlds are full to bursting with sex. It's why I got into gardening."
The people who objected to spike stereotypes said that people couldn't expect a cyberhound to not lunge for energon when it was in reach. Jazz had scoffed at that objection before, because that's what training was for. Anyone who didn't have the self-control and responsibility to train himself to keep it under wraps deserved to be treated like a cyberhound.
Now he bit his lip and started constructing a training schedule for himself. He wasn't sure it'd be enough, and he was fully prepared to submit to Ratchet's external controls over him. He'd seen Hound probing a flower for pollen and lost it. Usually he wouldn't compare mechs to technimals, but right now he felt that a leash and blinders would be better than…this.
"I'm sorry," he said again, but Hound didn't step any closer to him.
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Commission for Vintage-Mechanics to go with Shibara's auction picture
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"Tell me what's real," Trepan said.
Lush lips curved up at the corners. "Give me something to work off of, and I will."
"Who says I haven't? Look around you, Overlord. Is this real or not?" The mnemosurgeon turned in place, hands spreading to indicate the empty room. It looked like an open, easy gesture, but his elbows stayed tucked in close.
Overlord was bound on his knees. That didn't mean much, considering how strong the Decepticon was. Trepan wasn't convinced the massive mech wouldn't lunge to his feet, break the cuffs, and dismember him. There was no rhyme or reason to Overlord's tortures, as far as he could tell. Violence happened without warning.
After battle, the superwarrior would enter this room still smoking, the smell of death pouring out from under his armor and spilt fuel dripping from his plating, but his hands were gentle on Trepan's shoulder. He would speak quietly. His voice fell to its lower ranges, straining to soothe, but it couldn't pull off a rich, comforting tone. The words rasped through his vocalizer and came out unnaturally calm. It served to carry a threat no matter the words. Maybe that was the point. Trepan was never quite sure.
He was grateful for the reminder of danger, because there were other times. Overlord would unlock the door and enter freshly polished, waxy sweet and clean. He acted the part of a visiting friend, often carrying choice news or refined treats. The talk centered on mundane things, as if talking were the only reason Overlord had kidnapped him, and the blank room did things to Trepan's mind. When the only break in the monotony of a cell was Overlord's small talk, he started to look forward to the visits. The repetitive days wore down his defenses.
He had to remember that charm did not make Overlord less likely to lose interest and murder him. The Decepticon imprisoned and manipulated him by keeping him confined to this empty room-turned-cell. By his whim, Trepan lived. It seemed to be another whim that Overlord wished to learn from him, but Trepan wasn't fooled. Overlord's whims were fleeting but consumptive. He remembered the news reports, the bodies found lined up where Overlord had obsessively practiced one execution technique over and over until he grew bored.
Boredom was a death sentence. Trepan's profession would protect him only as long as Overlord's interest lasted. It behooved a mech in his position to not only cooperate, but strive to make lessons continually interesting. He had to keep the attention of someone who broke his toys after he tired of them.
So Trepan taught Overlord mnemosurgery, but not how he'd taught Tumbler. Tumbler had been a student hoping to one day be a neurospecialist in his own right. Trepan had taught him the formalities and proper procedures of mnemosurgery done under sanctioned circumstances, because that's how a master taught an apprentice the craft. That was how an aptitude became a career, and Trepan had been ushering a talented individual into the profession.
Underground or not, the New Institute wouldn't hire anyone who couldn't pass the exams. Unlike Tumbler, Overlord would never pass the altmode-exempt bar to sit the exam at an accredited medical institute. Overlord would obliterate the bar meant to judge if his mind outstripped his frametype. In Trepan's experience that's what the Decepticons did: they ripped out any sign of Functionalism in Cybertron's society. Overlord was the Decepticons' superwarrior. Trepan could teach him the skills and learning required to sit the exam, but he'd probably light the exam on fire rather than answer the questions. A practical exam would be a murder scene.
Trepan taught Overlord the showmanship, the cruelties, and the seedy shortcuts experienced and underground mnemosurgeons learned. He'd have smacked Tumbler upside the helm if his apprentice tried pulling half the tricks he now taught Overlord, but it worked. It worked to keep Overlord entertained. It worked to keep him interested. It was quick and dirty, nothing like the gradual build of knowledge before experience, but it was tangible progress. That was more important than comprehensive knowledge of theory and medical background.
He wasn't teaching Overlord to be a mnemosurgeon. He didn't know what he was teaching the mech to be, but if it meant living another day? Then Trepan would keep doing it.
The lessons were fast and entertaining. Trepan ruthlessly tore out anything else. He didn't want to be destroyed, and he reminded himself that this wasn't the time for arrogance. He was more intelligent, more intellectual and far more experienced, but over-confidence would lead to lectures, to talking down to the Decepticon, to boring him. Trepan couldn't afford that. The slow frustration of education, testing, and then, finally, observation and tutelage under a master of the craft would lead to death, so he skipped them entirely.
Oh, Overlord had a certain cunning intelligence to him, too smart to risk underestimating, but he wasn't book-smart. He was street-smart, able to think on his feet and around opponents. His mind worked best in the midst of hard action, not studying. He'd have flunked out neuroscience courses, through impatience or just lack of understanding. Here and now, the Decepticon would kill him the first time Trepan gave him a failing grade.
Overlord was too impatient and proud to stoop to learning as a student should. He wanted results now, and he didn't accept that failure was a result.
He was a petulant bully in a powerful body. Petty tyrants killed out of spite and boredom. Trepan didn't want to be the next corpse found because Overlord threw a tantrum over flunking a test.
Overlord hated failure. Trepan watched for the creeping tension whenever he had to correct Overlord, and he learned to talk around the Decepticon's failures, couching it in vague terms and encouragement. Violence hovered near the surface as Overlord gritted his teeth over mistakes, and Trepan quickly rearranged the lessons to minimize any instance where Overlord might fail. Lose. Not win.
Someone had trained Overlord to fly into a rage over failure. If Trepan didn't know any better, he'd say the mech was afraid to lose, even against a test.
Whenever Trepan started to feel confident, started thinking he could stay ahead of Overlord's strange game, he remembered the unhinged look in Overlord's optics over a missed answer. He remembered how fragile his hands looked in Overlord's crude paws after the pop quiz. Overlord hadn't threatened him, not directly, but Trepan's hands had shaken in his grip because the threat was unnecessary. The superwarrior had held the little doctor's hands in perfect calm as he made his 'request' for no more boring comprehension quizzes. He'd known that Trepan would take it as the order it'd been. He'd known that everything would come around to what he wished.
Everyone did what Overlord wanted - or he destroyed them.
No more tests, no more dull study at all, ever. Trepan had needed to revise the curriculum again.
Now he spread his hands and smiled, pushing every bit of self-assurance he could fake into it. Challenges were interesting; lessons were not. "Well? Is this real or a figment of your compromised mind?"
The plush, lazy smile melted away. Overlord actually had to think about that, and Trepan saw him looking at the room. The implications of Trepan's words were alarming. Trepan knew they were. No matter how strong a mech's body, that strength was useless once he got his needles in. The Decepticon was smart enough to know that. Perhaps not smart enough to fear it, but that's where the delicate balance between raw physical intimidation and subtle mental manipulation lay.
Overlord looked around the room with keener optics, searching for anything to indicate this was an illusion. He'd agreed to the particulars of this lesson (or had he?). He'd knelt to allow Trepan to click the cuffs closed on his forearms (he remembered that, or at least he had the memories). It'd been a funny setting for an otherwise straightforward lesson in operating technique.
That had been the idea, anyway. Now the superwarrior studied the room, and doubt crept in to question everything. Had the room always been so dark? Had he spread his knees this wide? Had the door been on that side of the room all along? Did Trepan seem taller than he should be?
A good mnemosurgeon could implant anything he wanted into a perforated brain module. Overlord could be in a waking dream right now, remembering things that had never happened, but he'd think everything had been his own idea.
Trepan could almost hear the thoughts fly, and his smile slid into a smirk. Yes, he was dangerous. Not a fighter, but a killer of minds. Megatron himself had been terrified of him once, although he would never tell Overlord that. The mech had an obsession with the Decepticon leader that Trepan had no intention of feeding.
He meandered over to the low table by the door, normally empty but covered in trinkets today. Little things, random things, things that Overlord had been amused he'd request. "I'm waiting," he sing-songed as he picked through the selection. "Is it real or imagined, Overlord? Am I in your brain controlling your thoughts, or..?" Or was he justifiably afraid of even attempting the deed?
"You pose a dangerous question," Overlord said from behind him, and Trepan snorted to himself at the Decepticon's confidence. He honestly couldn't tell if it were a front or not. "Maybe you shouldn't be asking me if it's real."
"Oh? What should I be asking?" Trepan clenched his hand around the crop as he turned around. He would not be frightened. He would not.
A resolution made easier by the wave of astonishment that swamped him. Overlord's chest split down the middle, armor opening up and interior plating shifting apart. The layers of protective metal over his spark moved aside. "You should be asking what you'll do if I take control of it," the superwarrior said in a husky, rasping purr that sounded less intimate than predatory. A poisonous green light glittered through the next layer, and Trepan stared. "If this is real, then I'm going to think we wasted valuable flirting time with mere shop talk." Red optics flicked to the whip in the mnemosurgeon's hand. "If this isn't real, then you are catering this dream right in line with my fantasies."
It took a second to regain his footing. Trepan allowed himself a single startled blink before squaring his shoulders and sauntering back toward the kneeling Decepticon. "Ah, but it's not hard to find such fantasies and tweak them. I can't recall the number of perverts like you," the crop slapped Overlord's cheek, hard enough to sting even his thick metal, "sent to me for…adjustments."
The huge mech leaned into the sting. If anything, his smile widened. "Really. Why did the Senate send its tame neuro-flunkies after perverts like me?" He put the same emphasis on the words that Trepan had, but his optics gleamed as the crop came to rest against his lips. "Seems like a waste of resources."
A kernel of something like fear, resembling terror, not-quite nervousness quivered in Trepan's core. "Ah, but you see," he crooned, tilting his head up to look down at Overlord's smile, "it's kinky slaggers like you that expose your sparks to the wrong people. Disposables opening their spark chambers? Who'll see but another disposable? Who cares, they'll be used up and gone before they think to wonder if frames outside their classification house sparks that look the same. Mechs like you are the type who find someone outside their class to give them a little," the crop smacked Overlord's other cheek, "discipline."
He'd liked that. Overlord's optics went smoky, dimmed in pleasure and anticipation. "I see. Creates an awkward predicament to see the same sparks in different frames, does it?" He chuckled and let his head roll to the side under slight pressure from the crop. "Functionalists can't have even the perverts questioning why frames determine the social order while the sparks are all the same." Trepan pushed down, and Overlord bowed his helm to allow the crop tip to tease over the exposed back of his neck. It gave the superwarrior a look at the light now pouring out of his own chest. "Most of them."
"Yes." Trepan eyed the green light. A Point-One Percenter. That explained a lot about Overlord, mind and body. Loadbearers were always different in some way. "Yes, well, a few tweaks here and there in your head, and you'll never be foolish enough to flash your spark to someone again. It's not healthy, you know. So many studies support that."
"Functionalist-funded studies, I suppose."
"No no no, it's a fact that exposing yourself is unhealthy. Do it enough, and the Senate will send you in to be saved from yourself. One visit to the New Institute, and you'll be fixed up, I guarantee." Trepan tried for an innocent expression and knew he failed when Overlord threw his head back, laughing.
The crop tapped under the Decepticon's chin when he finally stopped. Trepan looked down at him. "What is real, Overlord?" he repeated. "What is true and what is false?"
He looked up at the mnemosurgeon. Around them, the room was dark and empty. There were no clues. It could be real. It could be in Overlord's head. It could be figment, a moment before erasure, or it could be exactly what it seemed.
"I don't know," Overlord said, smiling. His chest spread fully open, and the crop dropped toward the light. "But you can tell me later."
[* * * * *]
rejected commission (Trepan and Overlord)
[* * * * *]
His fingers proclaimed him out of place in this base, in this faction, even before the lock on the door clicked shut. His smile might be greasy, his words ingratiating, but his fingers didn't fit the picture. Long, delicate, and entirely removed from the life Overlord had lived for so long, they declared their owner in a separate class. Those hands weren't made for manual labor, would break in a fight. The joints couldn't bear the wear and tear of it. Trepan was a specialist, and his hands locked him into his specialty as much as Overlord's hands locked him out of it.
In a Functionalist society, the only interaction someone from the dark underbelly of Kaon would have had with a mech of Trepan's frametype would have been brief, brutal, and forgotten by the end of their meeting. A gladiator like Overlord would have been stripped bare and defenseless in the Institute for Trepan to have had his way with. Overlord found turnabout to be deliciously forbidden, tasting the power. The taste had to sour in Trepan's mouth. Fear had a bitter aftertaste all its own, and anger, ah, the anger. Trepan had to be furious beneath the terror for his life. He'd been taken from a position of power, and he had to hate Overlord for that.
Trepan could pay the polite games, face blank as his mouth said whatever would obtain his survival as a captive. His mouth smiled at Overlord, self-confident even as the little mech bent to imprisonment, but he couldn't hide his hands. They were what Overlord observed on the monitors, live feed from the room serving as Trepan's cell.
It was a nice enough room, as far as these things went. The other Decepticons on the base didn't set foot in it. When battle required Overlord's presence elsewhere, the impersonal, distant rotation of the stockade guard tended to Trepan in his stead. The Decepticons assigned to the rotation weren't known for their curiosity or imagination. There was no conversation with prisoners, and they didn't care who the person behind the door was. They knew their orders, and their orders were to shove prepackaged rations through the slot near the floor until Overlord returned to deliver those rations personally.
The mnemosurgeon sat through it all, calm and patient as he waited for Overlord to visit. Perhaps he was glad for the monotony when Overlord was gone, or perhaps he was bored by the unbroken tedium of isolation. At least when Overlord was at the base, something happened. Did he stare at the door in apprehension or anticipation? Overlord wasn't sure. Trepan's face gave away nothing, not rage or fear, but his hands fidgeted. Their small, involuntary twitches were what the Decepticon watched when they spoke. They were Overlord's barometer of the mnemosurgeon's real thoughts, but they didn't actually tell him what those thoughts were.
Spidery fingers curled into the palms as Overlord entered the room, and fluttered over Trepan's knees if the silence drew out too long. They betrayed fear in tinny taps on the mnemosurgeon's thighs whenever he stood over the shorter mech. They clawed into those same thighs if Overlord sat beside him, and every bird-quick flick of those elegant hands told the Decepticon how helpless his little toy felt in his hands.
Overlord's hands were heavy tools of industry, tweaked through rebuild on top of rebuild until their industry was the gladiator ring, and they his weapons of choice. By Functionalist rules, he was meant for combat. By those same rules, Trepan was not. Their hands both dealt out fear, however. Overlord never forgot that as he watched the nervous movements of Trepan's hands, listened to the rapidfire clicking of fine joints shifting about in anxious little motions. Trepan's hands had little physical strength, but they manipulated minds to wipe away memory, thought, and self.
Different as their hands were, the difference between Overlord and Trepan wasn't as large as it seemed. The mech relied on others to bring about the brute force necessary to restrain his victims, but they were still his victims. Overlord had chosen to take him - not the other mnemosurgeon, not the injured and possibly more biddable subordinate surgeon - because the way Trepan had stood over Soundwave had struck a chord in the killer. He wanted the best teacher possible, but more than that, he'd wanted the fearless cruelty he'd seen in a slender, weak mech.
Even trapped in the Decepticon base, reduced to an amusement for a superwarrior, that strange confidence lurked in Trepan. Overlord could see it. Oh, Trepan was no fool. He knew that his fragile hands held his only value here, and he wisely feared the raw power in Overlord. The Decepticon had no finesse. What he wanted, he took. If he wanted it faster, he threatened and hurt and shook until he either got what he wanted, or the source broke.
He feared the violence, but he didn't fear Overlord himself. It was important distinction to make, and plain to see once the massive Decepticon deigned to allow the cuffs. On his knees before the slender mnemosurgeon, Overlord smiled, and Trepan smiled back. This time, those graceful fingers didn't contradict the sly expression. This time, they traced languid shapes in the air as Trepan spoke. This time, the casual ease in his narrow face was echoed in his thin hands. Overlord had been bound, and the fear evaporated from Trepan's optics.
In its place, confidence lit. Trepan no more feared Overlord within mnemosurgery than Overlord feared Trepan in a fight. Absolute power, of course, corrupted absolutely, or maybe they were just rotten people at spark. Their smiles even looked alike.
Overlord's electrical system ran higher voltage than normal as temptingly vulnerable fingers dancing lightly, unfettered, over his armor. "Bold, aren't you?" He tilted his helm to the side, well aware that it exposed the back of his neck to the hand spread across his collar armor. "I fail to see what groping me has to do with tutoring." Unless student and teacher were into that kind of classwork, which Overlord rather thought he might allow himself to be tempted into. Those lithe hands were giving him ideas that heated his wires.
"Neurosurgery is no place for impatience," Trepan said, as if that were an explanation. "Patience, Overlord. Patience." His hands were unnaturally long, thin but oddly alien if a mech studied the length of the fingers for too long. Even with that extra length, he couldn't get a grip around Overlord's throat. Instead of bringing his other hand up to join the first, he merely extended his needles and turned his wrist to drag the sharp points up.
The tips scraped the finish over armor microplates, screeping metal against metal. It was a skreeling, hissing noise, high-pitched and too screechy to be musical. There was something hypnotic about the sound, a snake charmer's song matched by the quicksilver play of needles along Overlord's throat. They picked between armor sheets to pluck at cables, and one pierced a soft tube somewhere out of Trepan's sight. He felt the needle go in, the resistance and sudden give, but the connection pinged incomplete. No circuitry available to connect to. Liquid pulsed over the prongs instead, rushing into the hollow needle points to flow over his connectors. He'd hit a fuel line, evidently.
If it hurt, Overlord didn't seem to notice. "I'm being patient," he rumbled, the low tone rattling Trepan's fingers as it ran up the needles. The Decepticon tilted his helm the other direction, almost trapping one needle between contracting plates, but Trepan had being doing this job a long, long time. The needle retracted. "Patience alone won't educate me."
"No?" The mnemosurgeon pulled his needles out of the bigger mech's neck, uncaring of the pink drip of fuel from the end of one. "I'm learning quite a bit."
Deceptively mild optics narrowed. Trepan took it as the warning it was.
"I'm learning how far I can push your temper," he said. "I'm learning that you enjoy playing dangerous games, and that you haven't gone under the needles before. Despite that, you know to be more interested in my hands than my words." Thin wrists twisted in illustration, and Overlord jerked. Trepan smiled wide as the mighty warrior visibly resisted the urge to tuck his head down into the shelter of armored shoulders. "I'm learning that you're not the brightest student I've ever had."
That earned him a look that sized him up from helm to feet like Overlord searched for the right spot to begin pulling him apart. Trepan's smile didn't falter, but his hands gave him away. Overlord felt the needles resting in a row of sharp pinpricks down the back of his neck, ready to plunge in and up into the vulnerable brain module. Not as confident as he appeared, hmm? They both knew the cuffs wouldn't keep a superwarrior subdued, not without Overlord's consent.
Overlord smiled back at him, lazy and unafraid. "And I am learning that you will push as far as you can," the killer said. "You will take whatever you think you can get from me, but you'll manipulate me into giving it to you. I do believe my first lesson is that guiding my victims to give me what I want is far easier than forcing them." Said the Decepticon on his knees in cuffs, being tutored by the mech he'd kidnapped. Demanding lessons would have gotten him nowhere, but Overlord hadn't demanded. He'd suggested, only suggested.
If the options were the suspended tension and empty locked room, or doing what Overlord had brought him here to do, well. Trepan had set his conditions, but Overlord had allowed him to, and somehow the suggestion had become a reality.
Thin needle points left threading trails of peeled finish as Trepan pulled them around to whisper under Overlord's chin. "I think you knew that lesson before you brought me here," he said wryly. Needles dented through surface polish, prickling unarmored mechanisms. "No, this is your first lesson, Overlord. Mnemosurgery is a connection that goes both ways. Control is an illusion." He applied a burst of pressure, puncturing metal. Overlord lifted his chin on the delicate points that could hurt even him at this range, and while he smiled in amusement at the danger, he still shivered from the tickling glide of needles down his throat cables. Trepan leaned in to finish, "You must maintain it, or find that you are the one being pushed. You are the one being taken from."
Thoughtful optics looked into Trepan's face, so confident and in control. So very in control, now that Overlord was bound and on his knees, helpless in the realm of the mnemosurgeon's area of specialty. Those hands would have betrayed if Trepan was afraid, but the slender mech was close to fearless because the huge, powerful warrior had been neutralized. Overlord posed no physical threat.
At least, not here. Here, in a place Trepan held the advantage.
"An illusion," Overlord repeated, thoughtful.
Behind the Decepticon, the cuffs didn't unlock. They disappeared as if they'd never been, because they never had, and Overlord slowly brought his hands forward to cup over the back of his neck. Thin, expressive hands went absolutely still in his grasp. Pain stabbed through up his neck as he pulled the needles out and brought the fragile hands down to cradle in his palms.
The tips of the needles were pink with his fuel, and they bled faint glowing trails across his plating. Only now did he remember the pain as they slid in, and Overlord's mouth turned down in a thunderous frown. Wet, leaked trails from burst lines under his optic frames slid down his face to join the spatters already marking the floor.
"There. It didn't take you too long to figure it out." Trepan smiled, to all appearances genuinely pleased. "You fought as hard as you could, but it's not about how hard you fight."
It was about control, and keeping the victim believing that Trepan had it all. Physical power had gotten Overlord absolutely nowhere. This was a battle that had to be fought through mind alone. That was a necessary lesson by itself, for this Decepticon.
The frown smoothed away gradually, until Overlord merely looked up at the mnemosurgeon looking down at him, and smile-to-smile, they studied each other.
"Not my brightest student," Trepan murmured, "but I've taught worse."
In Overlord's hands, fingers trembled.
[* * * * *]