Content advice: death of an unnamed Quintesson, talk of slash

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"Oh slag no," Vortex said. "I'm not touching that."

Blast Off, for once, didn't sigh. He didn't flap his ailerons impatiently, or make his leg cannons hum in a half-veiled threat. Instead, he simply glared at the sorry heap of organic matter flailing its tentacles on the floor of the storage bay. And glared some more.

"You'll have to," he said eventually. "You want Onslaught to know you did that? And here?"

"Frag no!" Vortex grimaced, glad that his expression was concealed behind his visor. The tentacles continued to writhe, a greenish liquid oozing from a dozen scrapes and lacerations. It had been fine before he'd broken them; they'd been kinda fun to handle then. But that… stuff coming out of them, it turned his tanks. Vortex took a step back. "You do it."

"I'd rather not," Blast Off said, in the same tone that Brawl might have used to say 'slag off and die'.

"The drone can do it!" Vortex backed up a little more. How much pus could come out of one alien, anyway? It was horrific.

"What?" Blast Off said. "That drone you broke and never took to repair bay? Or maybe it's some other drone that I don't know about?"

"Slag slag slag slag slag!" Vortex edged around the ever-growing puddle. "Thrusters," he began, ignoring Blast Off's irritated sigh. "You get rid of this for me, and I'll do you so hard you won't even know what city you're in. How about it?"

And now came the flutter of ailerons, and the cautionary whine of the occasionally-orbital death lasers. Why the slag didn't it work with Blast Off? They'd interfaced. Loads. It should work. It had even worked on Onslaught once. But the shuttle seemed impervious to his obvious charms.

"It's your mess," Blast Off said. "You clean it…" He stopped, then stooped, looking a little closer at the mess of mangled flesh and fragments of cybernetic tech. "This isn't a legal alien. Where did you find this Quintesson?"

Vortex shrugged.

"Where," Blast Off said, turning the full scrutiny of his optical sensors onto the copter. "Did. You. Find. This. Quintesson."

"He, uh…" Vortex began to regret moving to Blast Off's side of the ichor. "He followed me here?"

"No," Blast Off said. "No, he didn't. Where did you find him?"

Vortex vacillated. If he told Blast Off, the chances of Onslaught finding out were pretty high, but if he didn't tell Blast Off, the chances of him getting any sweet shuttle action in the near future were next to nothing. "Crates," Vortex said. "In with the bunny bombs from Quintessa."

For a moment, he thought that Blast Off was going to punch him. Instead, the shuttle opened his comm. link. "Swindle, this is Logistics, pick up."

A tiny green and purple hologram sprang to life, complete with a tiny pink energon cube. "Hey, Blast Aft, what can I do you for?"

"That," Blast Off snarled, and pointed. The energon cube vanished, accompanied by a rather loud smashing sound. "It came in with that shipment of contraband from that planet you were expressly forbidden from trading with."

"Ah," Swindle said. "Now, y'see-"

Vortex went to lean into Swindle's field of vision, but one of Blast Off's leg cannons swivelled in his direction. He got the message, and stayed where he was.

"No," Blast Off said. "You see. There's a dying Quintesson in Storage Bay Delta. A dying Quintesson that would neither be dying, nor in Storage Bay Delta if you hadn't allowed it to stow away in your contraband."

Swindle's little holographic mouth moved, but the comm.'s speaker remained silent.

"Do the decent thing and come clean it up," Blast Off said. "Or I will personally hunt you down and shoot you in the head. Do you understand?"

"Uh… yes?" Swindle said. Blast Off's engine rumbled, and Swindle began to nod. "Yeah, sure, OK, I'm leaving now!" The little hologram flickered and died.

On the floor, the tentacles twitched, then seemed to fold in on themselves. Vortex snickered. "You," he said, "are magnificent."

Blast Off's engine continued to rumble, but the pitch had changed. Not angry any more, just amused, and maybe a hint of something better. "And you," he said, "are leaving. We both are. Unless you want Swindle to know he's been duped."

Vortex gave the Quintesson one last, disgusted glance. "Good plan," he said, the final word morphing into a yelp as Blast Off brushed against his rotor hub. Not that it wasn't welcome, it was just completely unexpected.

"Now then," Blast Off said. "I seem to remember something about a reward."