Author's Note: There is absolutely no justification for this story, except that it has been lurking in my mind for nearly half a year and that I very much wanted to finally write it down. It was originally meant to be a oneshot, but started to grow legs like a centipede, so I decided to post it in several chapters. I'm actually having a lot of fun writing this, and hope you will enjoy the reading!

Many thanks to my fellow author iratepirate for beta reading!

Warning: The following contains kidnapping, initial non-con, light bondage (more or less), tentacle erotica and a lot of smut. If you have problems with any of these, please do not read any further.

Disclaimer: I do not own The Transformers, and I do not make any money with this.

Tangled

Part 1: Capture

xxx

They needed more energy.

Barely a quarter of this planet's solar cycle had passed since they had devoured that swarm of robotic insects attacking them, and already they could feel their reserves beginning to dwindle again. Something had been wrong with those creatures; something that left their energy strangely weak and thin, without substance, almost like a poor copy of the real thing. And of the few scraps they were able to harvest, most had already been burned up again in their struggle to keep those annoying robots at bay.

If they didn't find another source of sustenance, and soon, they wouldn't make it much longer.

The robots - they had energy. And plenty, too, judging by how freely they spent it. They'd been trying to herd them together and out of their secluded valley for quite some time now, coming up with the most amusing ideas, and didn't appear the least bit exhausted.

If only they could get their tentacles on some of those resources... But they had no means of communicating with these mechs, and given the way they'd been acting towards them so far, chances that they might willingly support them could be safely assessed as remote.

Which basically left them with only one option.

Most of the robots could be ruled out from the start; they were too large, too sturdy or too heavily-armored. But among them were two that differed from this design. Their build types were a bit lighter, a touch sleeker; made for speed and stealth rather than pure physical strength, it seemed.

Yes, they would do. The little yellow one would be perfect, since he was the smaller of the pair, but he was standing too far away.

The black and white one it was, then.

A soft, involuntary whine escaped them when a dull ache began to suffuse their tentacles, reminding them quite sharply that they were running out of time.

If this was to happen, it had to happen now.

xxx

Something cool and sleek wound itself around Jazz' ankle joint.

With everything that was going on around him, he barely registered the touch at first, just shied away from it on coded instinct. His attention shifted only when, contrary to what his sensors expected, the unbidden entanglement stayed firmly in place. If anything, it became even tighter.

Perplexed, Jazz threw a quick glance at his feet - and in the astrosecond it took him to do so, another tentacle shot out of the surging mass of plants before him, catching hold of his outstretched arm and wrist.

"Woah!" Hydraulics clenched and unclenched in rapid succession as he strove to pull himself free, but the effort proved just as fruitless as the first time. Pit, those Morphobots were clingy, weren't they?

True to his Special Ops training, Jazz switched to Plan B. "Hey, guys, can someone lend me a ha-"

Both tendrils tightened around his limbs, and next thing he knew he was jerked forward so hard his equilibrium sensors could no longer compensate. He hit the ground hard, grunting in pain at the impact. For a brief moment, his visor actually fritzed out, leaving him with only white-grey static for input.

"Jazz!"

His vision cleared just in time for him to see Prowl flinging himself down next to him, grabbing his shoulder struts and hauling him away from his attackers with surprising ease. Both tentacles loosened at the sudden motion, and Jazz kicked his legs to dislodge the first one from his foot while the dark hands of Hound pried the second one away from his arm. The tracker grinned at him.

"Why, Jazz," he teased. "Didn't know you were into the old bondage game..."

Jazz brushed the last filaments off his limbs and retaliated with a playful bump of his energy field against Hound's. "Judging by your own standards, huh?"

Taking the hand Prowl offered him, he scrambled to his feet and ran a quick self-diagnostic scan. His photon rifle was lying several steps away, he noticed; the force of the impact must have jolted it out of his grip.

"Are you functional?" Prowl inquired.

Apart from some scratched paint and a slightly increased spark pulse rate, the data on Jazz' HUD indicated nothing out of the ordinary. He grinned at his comrades.

"Just fine. Ego's a bit dented, that's all."

The words had barely left his vocalizer when all of a sudden all hell broke loose.

Several dozen tentacles lashed out at once, filling the air like shrapnel after a violent explosion. The clawed ends collided heavily with Prowl's and Hound's chest plates, knocking them both clean off their feet so fast they didn't even have time to cry out. The unpleasant, grinding sound of sand on metal filled Jazz' audio receptors as his friends skidded several meters across the ground.

Strangely enough, he himself was not attacked.

At least not in the same way.

Instead of being flung through the air like a human rag doll, he was wrapped into a thick blanket of metallic tendrils from neck to hip, including his arms which were thus firmly captured at his sides. The Morphobots gave a collective hiss that sounded almost triumphant before their tentacles flexed and began to pull their captive towards them.

A flicker of fear pulsed through Jazz' spark then; real fear, not the pleasant jitters that tended to precede a new mission. Upon his arrival in the valley, Blaster had briefed him on what the Morphobots had done to the Insecticon clone army, and as much as he appreciated being rid of the bugs, he wasn't exactly keen on sharing their fate.

Planting his feet firmly against the ground, he leaned back as far as possible and poured all the strength he could muster into fighting the tendrils' insistent pull. Some stupid Insecticons might be one thing, but those crazy greens wouldn't get him for a snack!

The alien plants hissed again, this time clearly in anger as Jazz actually managed to stop the forward movement. Had his arms been free, escaping would have been a piece of cake now, but they weren't, and the Morphobots quickly figured out the source of the problem.

Another tentacle took a well-aimed swipe at Jazz' legs, sending him to the ground again before the rest resumed dragging him forward, only at a much quicker pace this time.

Oh scrap.

Jazz struggled and squirmed as much as he could, the beginnings of genuine panic lending his efforts a fierceness he normally reserved for Decepticons, but to no avail. At his rear, he could hear his comrades shouting at the Morphobots and at each other, Prowl's half frustrated, half frightened cries of "Grab him!" and "Stop them!" sounding the loudest.

Poor Prowler, he thought fleetingly, and for no apparent reason. His friend would surely take this unhappy turn of events to spark...

The last thing he saw before a wall of silver tendrils closed over his head were the terrified faceplates of his fellow Autobots.

xxx

Despite all the shared elation they felt at their successful hunt, they could no longer deny that they had underestimated the physical strength of their prey. They might have managed to separate him from his comrades, but the black and white mech was kicking, bucking and thrashing with all the considerable power his sleek frame held, occasionally even snapping his dentae at some vinelets that came too close to his faceplates.

That wouldn't do, of course.

They tightened their embrace as much as was possible without denting his armor, slinging several more tentacles around his legs to keep him from thrusting his feet into their bodies. Other tendrils pinned the captive down to restrain his movements, and a smaller one twisted around his neck cables to keep his head in place. They preferred biting to being bitten, thank you very much.

The robot's struggles ceased immediately. He sagged into the tangle of their tendrils, his cooling fans cycling rapidly, but apart from the occasional shudder that passed through his frame, he lay utterly still.

Although this was exactly what they had been aiming for, the abruptness it happened with caught them off guard. In the heat of the moment, they hadn't even paused to consider how things were to proceed should the hunt be fortunate. So here they were, with this juicy bite right before their maws and utterly irresolute about what to do next.

Devouring a cybernetic organism as big and complex as this robot was out of the question. That method worked fine with insects and anything else of about that size, but they were simply not designed for a meal of such proportions. Besides, the fact that they were predators by nature didn't mean they took pleasure in inflicting pain on another creature just because they could. They hadn't hurt the other robots either - dented them a bit, perhaps, but nothing severe, mainly because none of the attacks these mechs had launched at them so far had posed a real threat. While certainly a major nuisance, they were all in all not an opponent to be reckoned with.

Their attention was drawn back to the delicious flow of electric energy pulsing beneath their captive's armor plating.

There had to be a way to enjoy this treat without having to crack the shell open.

To be continued...