Title: Gone Fishing, Pt. 16
Warning: Seduction, awkward social issues, weird power issues, dubcon? Canon character death. Spoilers for MTMTE.
Rating: R
Continuity: IDW
Characters: Nautilator/D.J.D.
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Acting Motivation (Prompt): In the More Than Meets The Eye comic, there exists a Seacon with the voice of Megatron, and a group of sadistic murderers who idolize all things Megatron. Naturally, they have to cross paths. + Shibara needed some motivation.
[* * * * *]
Trap
[* * * * *]
He'd intended to stay behind on Cybertron. He really had. Who in their right mind survived being a not-quite-prisoner Decepticon aboard a ship full of crazy Autobots, escaped the ship, and then got right back on? Nautilator had pulled his act together, paused just long enough to say goodbye to the nice therapist, and hauled claws into the ruins of Iacon. The last thing he'd wanted was to get dragged into another insane adventure!
Unfortunately, he'd forgotten to free the rest of his team before fleeing into the night. His team, who were freed later and came looking for him, were more than a bit pissed off about that oversight.
Oops.
Nautilator spent an exhilarating few months escaping Snap Trap's fists by the barest margin. This was easiest to do, he found, when hiding among the crazy Autobots he'd originally run away from. They might be lunatics and madmechs, but they'd taken the Seacons out once before. They'd do it again just for the fun of it.
He still hadn't intended to leave Cybertron, however. That was nowhere in his plans. But then he heard the rumor about Starscream looking for the Seacon with the voice, and, well, getting off-world started sounding like a really good idea all of a sudden. Lucky for him he didn't have much to pack.
He would have bolted the second the new captain was announced, but someone locked his habsuite door. Nautilator suspected Whirl. He wasn't wrong.
[* * * * *]
Someone asked to see this happen
[* * * * *]
"This is a really bad idea." His head was in his hands already. He knew bad ideas when he heard them. His unit spouted them all the time.
Used to spout them. Whatever. But the fact that he was alive and free - sort of, conditionally, and he wasn't sure he was free so much as plonked into place like some kind of not-quite-prisoner bar mascot just because it seemed to upset Ultra Magnus something fierce - accounted for the fact that his team had gone along with an abominably stupid plot at Megatron's trial and he hadn't. Hence the reason he was here on the Lost Light saying that this idea, like many ideas before it, was a bad one.
Which wasn't stopping anyone. The microphone shoved further into his face. "Free driiiiiinks," someone coaxed. It might have been Whirl, but he was betting it was Skids. Skids, as it turned out, was worse than Tailgate once Getaway started egging him on. "Free driiiiiiiiiinks."
"I want that in writing," he muttered.
There was much rustling about and furtive whispers. After a minute or so, a bar napkin slid through the narrow opening between his forearm and forehelm. Scrawled on it was a list of names marked down for who was paying. It wasn't a binding agreement, but -
But, well. He knew a bad idea when he heard it, yet the only reason he hadn't responded to Snap Trap's demand he help storm the trial with his unit was because he'd been busy at the time. He'd been recruited to be a temporary medical flunky. Flatline had heard from Ratchet who'd gotten the bright idea to press him into service after Autobots and Decepticons collapsed post-battle with Shockwave. Injured Decepticons stayed where they were put when they heard Megatron himself told them to stay down. Imitating the Decepticon leader in the medibay hadn't been a bright idea, either, but he'd done it for a couple months. That likely said a lot about how easily Nautilator caved in when people told him to do stupid stuff.
He grabbed the microphone in one hand and a strong drink in the other. Swerve had already helpfully provided both. Primus, he really was predictable.
"All idiots report to the bridge; the Rodimus Look-Alike Contest begins in ten," he said in his deepest, most bored tone. Stifled laughter swept the bar. "Check your ego at the door."
In a smaller voice, he added, "Somebody please come save me from the Autobots." The laughter got louder.
The P.A. system clicked, and he winced as the microphone shrieked feedback from an override code. "That was not an authorized announcement," Ultra Magnus boomed.
"That wasn't me. Who was that?" A horribly recognizable voice cut in on the standard lecture on misuse of ship equipment, and probably a new one on impersonating a captain.
"Nautilator!" the bar chorused at the same moment Rodimus yelled through the P.A.
Despite himself, Nautilator returned the bar-wide toast made in his direction.
[* * * * *]
[* * * * *]
Swerve took advantage of having Nautilator in his pocket. Admittedly, Nautilator was mostly in debt to him because the trouble the Autobots nosedived into drove him to drink, but debt it was. He owed Swerve.
At least the bartender had his back when it came to dodging authority. Neither Megatron nor Ultra Magnus had caught up to him yet due to judicious use of Whirl, a deliberately off-time clock, Skids, and the air ducts above the bar. Rodimus had been ready to deck him one until everyone in the bar persuaded him it was funnier watching his co-captain and Second chase the Seacon about the ship, frustrated at every turn by innocent-seeming crew members.
Nautilator had been uneasy about getting caught for a while, but lectured into statis wasn't all that frightening. Ultra Magnus had never warmed up to him, so he was used to lectures. Megatron had gone all Autobot; what was he going to do, yell at him? Nautilator was afraid of a great many things, but after Tyrest and the associated slag that'd gone down? Screw it. Worst they could do was lock him in the brig. He wasn't scared of that.
Ultra Magnus had tried going that route. Nautilator had refused to tell him the combination of mechs who ended up smuggling him out, only that they'd been very drunk at the time. It'd taken three more break-outs before Rodimus told his Second to leave off. Nautilator wasn't exactly a threat, by himself. Oh, sure, he'd dutifully tried to break the other Seacons out of the cells, but somehow his attempt had ended up with locking himself into a cell with Fortress Maximus. By intense therapy alone had he managed to get over that incident.
Rung was Nautilator's favorite Autobot.
Brig time? Pssht, bring it on. Rung would visit and bring him extra energon candies, and Skids had taught him the Ways of the Ceiling Mech. Combining the two resulted in a 50/50 chance of Nautilator spilling candies on people's heads and getting stuffed back in a cell again, but that was a risk he was willing to take. Maybe they'd pitch him off the ship instead, but he doubted it. If Atomizer could get away with accidentally shooting people in the skidplate, then surely Nautilator's weird voice trick got a pass.
Even if Swerve did misuse it for his own ends.
Nautilator tore his attention from tonight's movie when the barkeep shoved a drink menu in his hands. "Huh?"
"Read the drink specials before the intro ends!"
"Oh. Right." The Seacon sat up straight and reset his vocalizer, dropping it into the lower ranges. "Listen up! Tonight's specials include Bending Me Over the Bar for half a shanix," sniggering swept the bar, "a free Fist Up The Manifold with every combined purchase of nine shanix," the crowd went 'ohhh', still laughing, "and Doing The Captain Like A - dead guy!"
"Ewwww," half the bar said.
"Kinky!" came, predictably enough, from Whirl's direction. He shrugged at the score of revolted expressions turned on him. "What? Nasty, but kinky."
Swerve yanked the menu from Nautilator's hands. "That's not what I wrote!"
Nautilator pointed with his now-free hands, optics as wide as the visor staring back at him. "Dead guy!" Oh frag, oh frag, he had to see his therapist right now, right now, major flashbacks to the Overlord incident and his one shining moment of complete and utter stupidity when he'd been dumb enough to go, "Um, okay, I guess I can do that?" when somebody demanded he use his voice for bait.
Let it be noted for the record that he wasn't a hero, hadn't known he'd been cast as a hero, and wanted to resign from any potential future nominations to be a hero. He'd used up a lifetime supply of any recessive Autobot tendencies his spark might have ever harbored. The only positive thing he'd gotten from the experience was a clap on the back from Fortress Maximus afterward in thanks for that one crucial moment of distraction.
He still had nightmares about Overlord. Some of those nightmares featured the brave idiot Autobot standing in front of him.
"I think I need to go away," Nautilator said quite unsteadily. "Far away. Excuse me." Wobbling slightly around the knees, he clambered to his feet and stumbled toward the door. Primus help him, he was seeing a dead guy. Rung was going to need more than energon candies and a minibot swimming pool to coax him out of the ceiling this time.
"Didn't anyone tell him what happened today?" Skids hissed over the bar at Swerve.
"Does anyone actually know what happened today?" Swerve turned his hands up in a shrug. "I didn't think it was a big deal. I mean, he never knows what's going on. We're not supposed to tell him anything that could be remotely classified as Classified, and you know how Mags puts that stamp on everything!"
Meanwhile, Rewind continued staring - gaping, really, because that voice shocked everyone the first time they heard it come out of a genericon - at Nautilator's back. "Who…is that?"
Chromedome looked between Decepticon and conjunx endure, visor pained. On the one hand: Nautilator. Very vehemently a Decepticon, stubbornly still a Seacon, a genericon to the struts and proud of that fact. On the other hand: Nautilator. Very incompetent, inappropriately hilarious due to said incompetence, well-mannered to a fault and impromptu straightmech on movie nights for the past year-plus of travel. He'd been doing narrator voice-over work for Rewind's war documentaries. He was a threat because Decepticon meant threat, but Whirl had a habit of casually throwing an arm around his shoulders and whispering what would happen if any Autobots happened to feel unduly threatened. Nautilator got extremely timid around Whirl, for some reason. Chromedome approved.
Chromedome didn't like him, not even a little bit, but Rewind had. The other Rewind, the one that had died. Nautilator had been the only person aboard the Lost Light who hadn't handled Chromedome as if he were made of spun glass, and the only one who'd talk about Rewind without wincing and looking guiltily in his direction. It'd hurt, but there had been something about hearing someone blather on about stuff his dead conjunx endura had said or done that tore bleeding holes in Chromedome's spark that let off pressure in a way he hadn't understood. Grief had been a new process, for him. It hadn't been going so well.
Brainstorm had been intentionally hauling Nautilator into his experiments for a while there, just to traumatize the poor Decepticon enough to immediately run to the bar to self-medicate. Brainstorm had just as intentionally dragged Chromedome to the bar to witness the drunken storytelling. Nautilator spent those nights earnestly trying to convince the mnemosurgeon to A. get some therapy, or B. make Brainstorm go through therapy. Nautilator was an ardent believer in Rung solving everything.
Chromedome really wasn't ready to try and explain Nautilator to this Rewind.
"He's a 'Con we picked up," he said as neutrally as he could. "Harmless for the most part. Interesting voice."
Rewind blinked, looking totally dumbfounded. There was a Decepticon with the voice of Megatron walking around free. For some reason, that one small detail of difference between his Lost Light and this one was just too much. "Chromedome, I - I think I'd like to recharge for a while."
In a separate room, as they'd discussed. Chromedome's spark squeezed. He glanced around, hoping to see Brainstorm because he could really use some help, but no luck. His friend would probably drop by the bar after the movie ended. He usually avoided the movies.
So Chromedome swallowed hard and reached for Rewind's hand, giving it a light touch instead of clinging greedily. "Okay."
He could explain Nautilator later. They had plenty of time to talk, now. It wasn't like anything important was going to happen in the next few hours.
Right?
[* * * * *]
[A/N: And then everything important happened.]