Rebecca Hb. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beckyh2112) wrote2008-02-15 09:00 pm
beckyh2112) wrote2008-02-15 09:00 pm
50kinkyways - Chaotic Neutral
Title: Chaotic Neutral
Characters: Scavenger/Long Haul, Scrapper, the other Constructicons
Prompt: #45: Roleplay
Word Count: 3068
Rating: R/NC-17
Summary: When Scrapper's the GM, you have to roleplay, not rollplay.
Author's Notes: The names of people's DnD characters were borrowed from such illustrious sources as "The Eye of Argon" and "Knights of the Dinner Table".
---
The six Constructicons sat around a cleared-off worktable in the back of Scavenger's junkroom, dice scattered on the table. Hook's dice all seemed to have the same faux-bloodstone effect on them, while Mixmaster was slowly building a tower of d6s. Scavenger had his head and shovel down, idly rolling a d20 back and forth in front of his face. It had been a long session today; Megatron had business on Cybertron and their next assignment was not particularly pressing or difficult.
Scrapper was arguing with Bonecrusher over feats. A stack of Third Edition DnD books sat at his elbow, and The Book of Vile Darkness was under the magnifier they used to make it readable. "-Look, Bonecrusher, you can't take that feat. See the alignment requirement? I know it starts with 'any' but then it goes on to say 'evil', not 'neutral' or 'good'."
"I can play chaotic evil," Bonecrusher growled.
"I'm sure you can. Any Decepticon can play an evil alignment. And what did we decide at the start of the campaign? The players have to keep good or neutral alignments, or the GM gets your character as an NPC." Scrapper leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands. "So Zaarg Bonecrusher can take the Evil Brand feat if you want to turn him over to me."
Bonecrusher scowled and leaned back on his 'This Side Down ^' crate, folding his arms across his chest. "... I can get him the bonuses another way."
"Good, good. Now... Anything else before we break?"
Long Haul raised his hand. "Sledge wants to seduce Monoko to find out what she knows about all these demon attacks lately. That's a Charisma check, right?"
"Princess Monoko of Shou Lung," Scavenger mumbled.
Mixmaster's hand slipped and his tower of dice wobbled for a moment, but the flying buttresses kept it stable. "Can he do that? Agafnd can't use any of his divination spells to find out what she knows! Why should the thief be able to do that?"
"Well..." Scrapper began slowly. "That seems a little complicated for a Charisma check-"
"There's a supplement for that sort of thing," Hook pointed out. "We would need that one to know what rolls are required."
"No more new supplements!" Mixmaster snapped, grabbing Hook by one arm. "You always wind up with some neat new feat or spell-combo or whatever that makes Teflon William that much more uber than the rest of us!"
"It's not my fault that I actually read them when Scrapper gets them and think about what I can use them for." Hook deliberately tilted his head to look down at Mixmaster's hand then looked up again.
Scrapper coughed, interrupting the trouble before it got serious. "Long Haul, that's a little complicated for just a Charisma check. But we don't have the rules on-hand for you to just dice it out. So...!" He paused to wait for Mixmaster to finish giggling; the chemist always seemed to figure out what new twist Scrapper had devised before any of the others. "So, you get to roleplay it out!"
Long Haul's optic-bland flashed a blink from one side to the other. "Roleplay it out...?"
"Yes!"
"Roleplay seducing Monoko to get information from her?"
"Yep!"
"... Right now?"
Scrapper glanced at Scavenger, whose tail was hanging limply off the back of his crate. "Well, no, Scrounge looks too tired to play her right now. But between now and next session. Record it so I can go over everything and know what's going on in my campaign."
Long Haul nodded slowly.
"Anything else? No? Good. Session's over, we've got a space-bridge to build in Antarctica in five hours."
***
The day after they lost the spacebridge to the Autobots (but managed to get the shipment they built it for through), someone pounded on the door to Scavenger's junkroom. The excavator canted his head, remaining crouched amide his pile of Artifacts from Darkest New Jersey until he could get a read on his visitor. That steady slam of fist against door... That was Long Haul. Which meant he had half a minute before the supply officer decided whether or not to open the door for him.
Scavenger dove for the door, slapping the open-close switch before his visitor left or broke the door down. "I'm here, I'm here!"
"Yeah. Wouldn't have come if you weren't." Long Haul shifted the pitcher of energon on his hip. "You got a coupla hours to spare? I want to get that seduction over with."
Seduction? Scavenger's shovel-blade flicked up and down; he barely managed to keep a "huh?" from coming out of his vocalizer. Hook said he sounded stupid if he couldn't articulate his questions.
"Sledge and Monoko? Openin' up for the good of the party?"
"Oh! She's not going to tell him anything," he warned.
"Yeah, yeah. Lemme in and we'll see about that." Long Haul stepped forward as if he'd already been given permission to enter and for a moment, his truck grill pressed against Scavenger's chest. The excavator could feel the heat exhaling from it, prickling his sensors, flickering straight down to his shovel-blade, and his tail flexed slowly. Then he had to scramble out of the way as Long Haul kept walking forward.
"So, how we going to do this?" Long Haul set the pitcher down on a sturdily-balanced pile of paving slabs. "Monoko's in her room, or what?"
Scavenger nodded. "We're back at the inn, resting up and getting our supplies together for whatever new adventure or rumour the barkeep has heard of."
"And it's night," Long Haul rested one elbow on the paving slabs, too. "So Monoko's got her own room, because she's a princess of Shou Lung and doesn't sleep in the common room with the rest of us."
"Right."
Long Haul's optics dimmed and his shoulders settled a little bit. He knocked against the paving slabs, the sounds more ringing than when he knocked against metal. When he spoke, he'd switched to the Scottish brogue that was his in-character voice. "You in there, lass?"
Scavenger eeped and quickly looked around, then hauled over a crate from Cybertron with bright pink warning stickers. He quickly switched over his voice to Monoko's accented soprano, and sat on the edge of the crate. He then leaned mimed brushing his hair, which got a snort from Long Haul. "Yes, friend Sledge. Come in."
Long Haul picked up the energon pitcher and stepped away from the paving slabs without bothering to "open" the door between Sledge and Monoko. He did that sort of thing a lot, though, and even Scrapper had gotten tired of calling him on it. "Shouldn't you be checkin' to make sure I'm no rakshasha?"
"Torm would tell me if evil had entered your heart."
Long Haul paused and his voice switched back to normal. "Scavenger, why is your Shou Lung chick a priestess of Torm? Isn't that a whole different pantheon from what's there in the Far East?"
Scavenger sighed and went back to his own voice. "Because it gives me the abilities I want her to have. I asked Hook about it, and he said that was a perfectly good reason to do anything."
Long Haul's optic-band flickered. "Uh-huh. Right." His voice switched back to the brogue. "Ah, right. Neat trick, that." He stalked towards Scavenger, paying careful attention to the toe-heel pad he'd adopted for Sledge. "I brought you something to drink."
"She's getting ready for bed, you know." Scavenger mimed laying the hairbrush aside and switched back to the Monoko preset on his vocalizer. "I can't drink any fermented fruit or grain, Sledge. You know that."
"Luckily, this is a good dwarven mead."
Scavenger ran that through his dictionary, then decided Monoko wouldn't know what that was anyway. "I don't believe I've heard of such a drink before..."
"It's fermented honey, lass. Nothing to bother yuir priestly virtue." Long Haul picked up one of the fluted glasses from Crystal World jammed on a shelf and poured a measure of energon into it.
"Hai, but I must not just keep the letters of my vows, but also the spirit-"
"Ah, Monoko-chan, you're not going to ask an old dwarf to drink alone, are you?" Long Haul handed the glass to Scavenger, seeming like he'd let it drop if the excavator didn't take it.
"You're not an old dwarf," Scavenger pointed out in his Monoko-voice, a bit sulkily. "You're not even a middle-aged dwarf."
"And that's exactly why I shouldn't drink alone!" Long Haul poured himself a drink and set the pitcher on the shelf in place of the glasses, then plopped down half-off the edge of the crate. The side of his leg rubbed against Scavenger.
The excavator scooted further over to give Long Haul a better seat. "I am a priestess of Torm! My vows are very important-"
"And your vows don't say anything about drinking fermented honey!" Long Haul didn't shift over himself, just watched Scavenger, then raised the glass to his face. He couldn't actually drink it, per se, but the gesture was important.
"Well, no, but-"
"So what's wrong with it, lass?"
"As a priestess of the god of justice, I must also keep the spirit of the laws as well as the letter of the laws. It's very important, so I don't get lured down the path of abusing laws to suit my own selfish ends." Scavenger thought that sounded very good. He'd found it while doing some reading up on how other people liked to play their characters, and it seemed like something Monoko would believe in.
"Uh-huh. And what about me?" Long Haul gazed imploringly at Scavenger. It wasn't a very good sort of imploring, but he was trying. "Or have you forgotten what I do?"
Scavenger ducked his head, tail curling up against his back. "Well..."
"If you can stand me, I don't think one little glass of mead will hurt." Long Haul wrapped his free hand around Scavenger's glass and hand and carefully pushed it towards the excavator's face.
Scavenger's tail twitched, shovel-blade marking his lower back. He could feel the subsurface hum of Long Haul's systems, and it was making his own hands vibrate just a little more than they were supposed to under normal operating conditions. "Well..."
"Please?"
Scavenger's shovel-blade clinked against his lower back as he felt a bolt go from his head to the tip of his tail. His hands clutched at the glass, then hastily shoved it to rest just under his mask. Carefully, trying to retain a little dignity, he uncurled his tail and let it stretch out on the crate.
"That's better." Long Haul glanced at Scavenger's tail, then set his glass up on one of the nearby crates. "That's enough preparation," he said in his own voice. "Let's shag."
"Long Haul!" Scavenger protested. "Monoko's not a Seeker! You can't just make her display her wings with a drink!"
"Eh, most Seekers aren't that easy, anyway." Long Haul grabbed Scavenger's tail right where the shovel-arm met the shovel itself. "Look, I know how this goes. You're going to be huddled in a ball and finished before I'm halfway through. Less you put it off, less worked up I get."
"Long Haul..." Scavenger wriggled as the dump truck ruthlessly exploited his tail, hands running up and down the length of the shovel-arm to the first joint and back to the shovel. Long Haul really wanted him to give in, and Scavenger really didn't see why he shouldn't eventually. But Scrapper would be annoyed if they didn't do this right. "You could make a Charisma check!"
The dump truck clamped down on Scavenger's tail, making the excavator whimper as it sent a thrill through his shovel-tail, up his spine, and directly into his processors. "A Charisma check. You want me to make a Charisma check."
"Y-yeah. See if Sledge seduced Monoko. Otherwise Scrapper will say we did it wrong."
Long Haul gazed at him silently, thumb rubbing against Scavenger's tail.
"I have dice?" Scavenger offered weakly.
Long Haul tilted his face up to the ceiling briefly. "Fine. What's the DC?"
"Um, I don't know," Scavenger wriggled a bit as he sorted through his subspace pockets, making Long Haul give his tail a hard squeeze. Ooooh...! "Here's a d20."
The dump truck grumbled about how the frag he was supposed to figure out if he succeeded or not when there was no DC, shook the die in his hand, and rolled it on Scavenger's leg.
They both blinked at the result.
"Hah! Natural twenty!" Long Haul crowed, hand squeezing Scavenger's tail once again. "Automatic success, Sledge seduced Monoko, and we're going to shag right here, right now, don't you complain."
"Wasn't going to," Scavenger assured him as he pressed his fingers to the Decepticon symbol on Long Haul's abdomen and slowly rubbed circles over it. The dump truck twitched under his hand, then groaned as he pushed his fingers up the purple and green metal to slip into the machinery on the underside of Long Haul's truck cab.
"Stoppit, I told you how we were going to do this-"
Scavenger leaned over and nuzzled the exhaust pipe on Long Haul's shoulder, making the dump truck lose his train of thought. The pleasant heat against his face almost made the excavator lose his, too. "You should get some fun, too, Long Haul."
Long Haul didn't disagree, so Scavenger put a leg over the dump truck's, one set of purple treads settling comfortably into the half truck-bed.
"Stop pussy-footin' around," Long Haul grumbled as he nuzzled the top of Scavenger's head, hands working rough and fast on the excavator's shovel-tail. "I ain't going to break, so stop tickling me. If you're going to do this at all, you'd darn well better do it right."
"I will- oh!" A shudder ran through Scavenger's body at a particularly intense manipulation by the dump truck, and he jammed his hand further up into Long Haul's machinery. Fingers grasped and twitched, rubbed and scraped against engine and transformation systems. They were heating up, and faintly he could hear him-Hook pointing out that it would soon get even hotter than the exhaust pipe against his face.
"Remember that lock I picked on the emperor's treasury?" Long Haul said in that low brogue of Sledge's as his hands finally drifted from Scavenger's tail to the shovel proper. "How it must have taken, oh, a candle's worth for my tools to open it, because I had to do it just- right?"
A thumb ran over the teeth of his shovel-blade, and Scavenger whimpered agreement in Monoko's voice.
"I'm going to pick you like that," Long Haul growled, "And I have just the right tool down here."
Laughter burbled in Scavenger's vocoder. He tried hard to suppress it, knowing Long Haul would be unhappy to have his efforts laughed at- But he really couldn't help it, and burying his face in Long Haul's shoulder didn't muffle the choked laughter.
"Scavenger!" Long Haul thumped the inside of the excavator's shovel. "Stop that bolt-breakin' laughing! Scrapper said we're supposed to roleplay this out, not just roll some dice and call it a night."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Scavenger gabbled out. "I don't mean to!"
"Then why don't you stop?" Long Haul's engine grumbled as the dump truck waited for his gestalt-mate to run out of chuckles. "Like you could do it better."
The vibrations running through the machinery all around his hand sent a tremor down Scavenger's arm. He wasn't Hook or Scrapper, thank Megatron, but oh, it felt good. Too good - he'd overload if Long Haul kept doing this and started fondling his shovel again.
"Why don't you take your hand off my tail," he husked in Monoko's voice, "And I'll show you just how much better I could do you."
Long Haul yanked his hand off Scavenger's tail and grabbed onto the side of Scavenger's helm. His fingers dug in hard, pulling a small sound from the excavator as he was bent back so Long Haul could look him in the optic-band. "Say that again," the dump truck demanded roughly. "In your own voice."
Scavenger didn't think his neck was supposed to stay bent like this for too long. "Long Haul..."
"Say it!"
Scavenger's optic-band dimmed, and he twisted his hand still inside Long Haul's machinery. The dump truck's groan sent tingles down Scavenger's back and tail. "Take your hand off my head, Long Haul, and I'll show you just how much better I could do you."
Long Haul growled, half with his vocoder and half with his engine. "Yeah. Like that."
Scavenger tugged his head against Long Haul's hand, hoping that would remind his gestalt-mate to let go. Reluctantly, the other's fingers loosened, and Scavenger shift-twisted until he sat squarely in Long Haul's lap and could give him a good, hard face-nuzzling.
"You know- Scrounge, I ain't on duty again until tomorrow..." Long Haul wrapped his hand around Scavenger's tail and tugged hard.
"That's good," the excavator all but purred as another bolt of pleasure shot up his back. "Oh, Megatron, that's so good. Stay here? Please?"
"You couldn't bulldoze me out of here," Long Haul assured him. "Quit squirming and go back to what you were doing to my chest."
***
"Well, I've watched the tapes..." Scrapper tried to look considering and malicious instead of slightly speculative about the possibility of getting Scavenger to invite him along the next time Long Haul got randy. "I don't think Monoko ever agreed to reveal anything for the good of the party in there."
Long Haul lunged across the table, fists balled. "Slaggit, Scrapper! I worked for that information!"
"If you call that work," Mixmaster sniggered.
Out of the side of his optic band, Scrapper noticed Scavenger's tail droop and his shoulders slump. The excavator gave him a slightly hurt look, before staring down at the edge of the table.
"Well..." Scrapper began, glancing sidelong at Scavenger until he caught the excavator looking hopefully at him. "I suppose I could accept that somewhere in all that, Monoko whispered the information Sledge needs to know to him."
"That would actually allow this idiotic plot to advance," Hook sniffed.
Scrapper jabbed a finger at the crane. "Roll for initiative. Or save vs. death effect, I don't care which."
Hook smirked as he picked up one of the d20s. "This is third edition, Scrapper. It's called a Fortitude save these days."
"Just make one."
-End-
My Table
Characters: Scavenger/Long Haul, Scrapper, the other Constructicons
Prompt: #45: Roleplay
Word Count: 3068
Rating: R/NC-17
Summary: When Scrapper's the GM, you have to roleplay, not rollplay.
Author's Notes: The names of people's DnD characters were borrowed from such illustrious sources as "The Eye of Argon" and "Knights of the Dinner Table".
---
The six Constructicons sat around a cleared-off worktable in the back of Scavenger's junkroom, dice scattered on the table. Hook's dice all seemed to have the same faux-bloodstone effect on them, while Mixmaster was slowly building a tower of d6s. Scavenger had his head and shovel down, idly rolling a d20 back and forth in front of his face. It had been a long session today; Megatron had business on Cybertron and their next assignment was not particularly pressing or difficult.
Scrapper was arguing with Bonecrusher over feats. A stack of Third Edition DnD books sat at his elbow, and The Book of Vile Darkness was under the magnifier they used to make it readable. "-Look, Bonecrusher, you can't take that feat. See the alignment requirement? I know it starts with 'any' but then it goes on to say 'evil', not 'neutral' or 'good'."
"I can play chaotic evil," Bonecrusher growled.
"I'm sure you can. Any Decepticon can play an evil alignment. And what did we decide at the start of the campaign? The players have to keep good or neutral alignments, or the GM gets your character as an NPC." Scrapper leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands. "So Zaarg Bonecrusher can take the Evil Brand feat if you want to turn him over to me."
Bonecrusher scowled and leaned back on his 'This Side Down ^' crate, folding his arms across his chest. "... I can get him the bonuses another way."
"Good, good. Now... Anything else before we break?"
Long Haul raised his hand. "Sledge wants to seduce Monoko to find out what she knows about all these demon attacks lately. That's a Charisma check, right?"
"Princess Monoko of Shou Lung," Scavenger mumbled.
Mixmaster's hand slipped and his tower of dice wobbled for a moment, but the flying buttresses kept it stable. "Can he do that? Agafnd can't use any of his divination spells to find out what she knows! Why should the thief be able to do that?"
"Well..." Scrapper began slowly. "That seems a little complicated for a Charisma check-"
"There's a supplement for that sort of thing," Hook pointed out. "We would need that one to know what rolls are required."
"No more new supplements!" Mixmaster snapped, grabbing Hook by one arm. "You always wind up with some neat new feat or spell-combo or whatever that makes Teflon William that much more uber than the rest of us!"
"It's not my fault that I actually read them when Scrapper gets them and think about what I can use them for." Hook deliberately tilted his head to look down at Mixmaster's hand then looked up again.
Scrapper coughed, interrupting the trouble before it got serious. "Long Haul, that's a little complicated for just a Charisma check. But we don't have the rules on-hand for you to just dice it out. So...!" He paused to wait for Mixmaster to finish giggling; the chemist always seemed to figure out what new twist Scrapper had devised before any of the others. "So, you get to roleplay it out!"
Long Haul's optic-bland flashed a blink from one side to the other. "Roleplay it out...?"
"Yes!"
"Roleplay seducing Monoko to get information from her?"
"Yep!"
"... Right now?"
Scrapper glanced at Scavenger, whose tail was hanging limply off the back of his crate. "Well, no, Scrounge looks too tired to play her right now. But between now and next session. Record it so I can go over everything and know what's going on in my campaign."
Long Haul nodded slowly.
"Anything else? No? Good. Session's over, we've got a space-bridge to build in Antarctica in five hours."
***
The day after they lost the spacebridge to the Autobots (but managed to get the shipment they built it for through), someone pounded on the door to Scavenger's junkroom. The excavator canted his head, remaining crouched amide his pile of Artifacts from Darkest New Jersey until he could get a read on his visitor. That steady slam of fist against door... That was Long Haul. Which meant he had half a minute before the supply officer decided whether or not to open the door for him.
Scavenger dove for the door, slapping the open-close switch before his visitor left or broke the door down. "I'm here, I'm here!"
"Yeah. Wouldn't have come if you weren't." Long Haul shifted the pitcher of energon on his hip. "You got a coupla hours to spare? I want to get that seduction over with."
Seduction? Scavenger's shovel-blade flicked up and down; he barely managed to keep a "huh?" from coming out of his vocalizer. Hook said he sounded stupid if he couldn't articulate his questions.
"Sledge and Monoko? Openin' up for the good of the party?"
"Oh! She's not going to tell him anything," he warned.
"Yeah, yeah. Lemme in and we'll see about that." Long Haul stepped forward as if he'd already been given permission to enter and for a moment, his truck grill pressed against Scavenger's chest. The excavator could feel the heat exhaling from it, prickling his sensors, flickering straight down to his shovel-blade, and his tail flexed slowly. Then he had to scramble out of the way as Long Haul kept walking forward.
"So, how we going to do this?" Long Haul set the pitcher down on a sturdily-balanced pile of paving slabs. "Monoko's in her room, or what?"
Scavenger nodded. "We're back at the inn, resting up and getting our supplies together for whatever new adventure or rumour the barkeep has heard of."
"And it's night," Long Haul rested one elbow on the paving slabs, too. "So Monoko's got her own room, because she's a princess of Shou Lung and doesn't sleep in the common room with the rest of us."
"Right."
Long Haul's optics dimmed and his shoulders settled a little bit. He knocked against the paving slabs, the sounds more ringing than when he knocked against metal. When he spoke, he'd switched to the Scottish brogue that was his in-character voice. "You in there, lass?"
Scavenger eeped and quickly looked around, then hauled over a crate from Cybertron with bright pink warning stickers. He quickly switched over his voice to Monoko's accented soprano, and sat on the edge of the crate. He then leaned mimed brushing his hair, which got a snort from Long Haul. "Yes, friend Sledge. Come in."
Long Haul picked up the energon pitcher and stepped away from the paving slabs without bothering to "open" the door between Sledge and Monoko. He did that sort of thing a lot, though, and even Scrapper had gotten tired of calling him on it. "Shouldn't you be checkin' to make sure I'm no rakshasha?"
"Torm would tell me if evil had entered your heart."
Long Haul paused and his voice switched back to normal. "Scavenger, why is your Shou Lung chick a priestess of Torm? Isn't that a whole different pantheon from what's there in the Far East?"
Scavenger sighed and went back to his own voice. "Because it gives me the abilities I want her to have. I asked Hook about it, and he said that was a perfectly good reason to do anything."
Long Haul's optic-band flickered. "Uh-huh. Right." His voice switched back to the brogue. "Ah, right. Neat trick, that." He stalked towards Scavenger, paying careful attention to the toe-heel pad he'd adopted for Sledge. "I brought you something to drink."
"She's getting ready for bed, you know." Scavenger mimed laying the hairbrush aside and switched back to the Monoko preset on his vocalizer. "I can't drink any fermented fruit or grain, Sledge. You know that."
"Luckily, this is a good dwarven mead."
Scavenger ran that through his dictionary, then decided Monoko wouldn't know what that was anyway. "I don't believe I've heard of such a drink before..."
"It's fermented honey, lass. Nothing to bother yuir priestly virtue." Long Haul picked up one of the fluted glasses from Crystal World jammed on a shelf and poured a measure of energon into it.
"Hai, but I must not just keep the letters of my vows, but also the spirit-"
"Ah, Monoko-chan, you're not going to ask an old dwarf to drink alone, are you?" Long Haul handed the glass to Scavenger, seeming like he'd let it drop if the excavator didn't take it.
"You're not an old dwarf," Scavenger pointed out in his Monoko-voice, a bit sulkily. "You're not even a middle-aged dwarf."
"And that's exactly why I shouldn't drink alone!" Long Haul poured himself a drink and set the pitcher on the shelf in place of the glasses, then plopped down half-off the edge of the crate. The side of his leg rubbed against Scavenger.
The excavator scooted further over to give Long Haul a better seat. "I am a priestess of Torm! My vows are very important-"
"And your vows don't say anything about drinking fermented honey!" Long Haul didn't shift over himself, just watched Scavenger, then raised the glass to his face. He couldn't actually drink it, per se, but the gesture was important.
"Well, no, but-"
"So what's wrong with it, lass?"
"As a priestess of the god of justice, I must also keep the spirit of the laws as well as the letter of the laws. It's very important, so I don't get lured down the path of abusing laws to suit my own selfish ends." Scavenger thought that sounded very good. He'd found it while doing some reading up on how other people liked to play their characters, and it seemed like something Monoko would believe in.
"Uh-huh. And what about me?" Long Haul gazed imploringly at Scavenger. It wasn't a very good sort of imploring, but he was trying. "Or have you forgotten what I do?"
Scavenger ducked his head, tail curling up against his back. "Well..."
"If you can stand me, I don't think one little glass of mead will hurt." Long Haul wrapped his free hand around Scavenger's glass and hand and carefully pushed it towards the excavator's face.
Scavenger's tail twitched, shovel-blade marking his lower back. He could feel the subsurface hum of Long Haul's systems, and it was making his own hands vibrate just a little more than they were supposed to under normal operating conditions. "Well..."
"Please?"
Scavenger's shovel-blade clinked against his lower back as he felt a bolt go from his head to the tip of his tail. His hands clutched at the glass, then hastily shoved it to rest just under his mask. Carefully, trying to retain a little dignity, he uncurled his tail and let it stretch out on the crate.
"That's better." Long Haul glanced at Scavenger's tail, then set his glass up on one of the nearby crates. "That's enough preparation," he said in his own voice. "Let's shag."
"Long Haul!" Scavenger protested. "Monoko's not a Seeker! You can't just make her display her wings with a drink!"
"Eh, most Seekers aren't that easy, anyway." Long Haul grabbed Scavenger's tail right where the shovel-arm met the shovel itself. "Look, I know how this goes. You're going to be huddled in a ball and finished before I'm halfway through. Less you put it off, less worked up I get."
"Long Haul..." Scavenger wriggled as the dump truck ruthlessly exploited his tail, hands running up and down the length of the shovel-arm to the first joint and back to the shovel. Long Haul really wanted him to give in, and Scavenger really didn't see why he shouldn't eventually. But Scrapper would be annoyed if they didn't do this right. "You could make a Charisma check!"
The dump truck clamped down on Scavenger's tail, making the excavator whimper as it sent a thrill through his shovel-tail, up his spine, and directly into his processors. "A Charisma check. You want me to make a Charisma check."
"Y-yeah. See if Sledge seduced Monoko. Otherwise Scrapper will say we did it wrong."
Long Haul gazed at him silently, thumb rubbing against Scavenger's tail.
"I have dice?" Scavenger offered weakly.
Long Haul tilted his face up to the ceiling briefly. "Fine. What's the DC?"
"Um, I don't know," Scavenger wriggled a bit as he sorted through his subspace pockets, making Long Haul give his tail a hard squeeze. Ooooh...! "Here's a d20."
The dump truck grumbled about how the frag he was supposed to figure out if he succeeded or not when there was no DC, shook the die in his hand, and rolled it on Scavenger's leg.
They both blinked at the result.
"Hah! Natural twenty!" Long Haul crowed, hand squeezing Scavenger's tail once again. "Automatic success, Sledge seduced Monoko, and we're going to shag right here, right now, don't you complain."
"Wasn't going to," Scavenger assured him as he pressed his fingers to the Decepticon symbol on Long Haul's abdomen and slowly rubbed circles over it. The dump truck twitched under his hand, then groaned as he pushed his fingers up the purple and green metal to slip into the machinery on the underside of Long Haul's truck cab.
"Stoppit, I told you how we were going to do this-"
Scavenger leaned over and nuzzled the exhaust pipe on Long Haul's shoulder, making the dump truck lose his train of thought. The pleasant heat against his face almost made the excavator lose his, too. "You should get some fun, too, Long Haul."
Long Haul didn't disagree, so Scavenger put a leg over the dump truck's, one set of purple treads settling comfortably into the half truck-bed.
"Stop pussy-footin' around," Long Haul grumbled as he nuzzled the top of Scavenger's head, hands working rough and fast on the excavator's shovel-tail. "I ain't going to break, so stop tickling me. If you're going to do this at all, you'd darn well better do it right."
"I will- oh!" A shudder ran through Scavenger's body at a particularly intense manipulation by the dump truck, and he jammed his hand further up into Long Haul's machinery. Fingers grasped and twitched, rubbed and scraped against engine and transformation systems. They were heating up, and faintly he could hear him-Hook pointing out that it would soon get even hotter than the exhaust pipe against his face.
"Remember that lock I picked on the emperor's treasury?" Long Haul said in that low brogue of Sledge's as his hands finally drifted from Scavenger's tail to the shovel proper. "How it must have taken, oh, a candle's worth for my tools to open it, because I had to do it just- right?"
A thumb ran over the teeth of his shovel-blade, and Scavenger whimpered agreement in Monoko's voice.
"I'm going to pick you like that," Long Haul growled, "And I have just the right tool down here."
Laughter burbled in Scavenger's vocoder. He tried hard to suppress it, knowing Long Haul would be unhappy to have his efforts laughed at- But he really couldn't help it, and burying his face in Long Haul's shoulder didn't muffle the choked laughter.
"Scavenger!" Long Haul thumped the inside of the excavator's shovel. "Stop that bolt-breakin' laughing! Scrapper said we're supposed to roleplay this out, not just roll some dice and call it a night."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Scavenger gabbled out. "I don't mean to!"
"Then why don't you stop?" Long Haul's engine grumbled as the dump truck waited for his gestalt-mate to run out of chuckles. "Like you could do it better."
The vibrations running through the machinery all around his hand sent a tremor down Scavenger's arm. He wasn't Hook or Scrapper, thank Megatron, but oh, it felt good. Too good - he'd overload if Long Haul kept doing this and started fondling his shovel again.
"Why don't you take your hand off my tail," he husked in Monoko's voice, "And I'll show you just how much better I could do you."
Long Haul yanked his hand off Scavenger's tail and grabbed onto the side of Scavenger's helm. His fingers dug in hard, pulling a small sound from the excavator as he was bent back so Long Haul could look him in the optic-band. "Say that again," the dump truck demanded roughly. "In your own voice."
Scavenger didn't think his neck was supposed to stay bent like this for too long. "Long Haul..."
"Say it!"
Scavenger's optic-band dimmed, and he twisted his hand still inside Long Haul's machinery. The dump truck's groan sent tingles down Scavenger's back and tail. "Take your hand off my head, Long Haul, and I'll show you just how much better I could do you."
Long Haul growled, half with his vocoder and half with his engine. "Yeah. Like that."
Scavenger tugged his head against Long Haul's hand, hoping that would remind his gestalt-mate to let go. Reluctantly, the other's fingers loosened, and Scavenger shift-twisted until he sat squarely in Long Haul's lap and could give him a good, hard face-nuzzling.
"You know- Scrounge, I ain't on duty again until tomorrow..." Long Haul wrapped his hand around Scavenger's tail and tugged hard.
"That's good," the excavator all but purred as another bolt of pleasure shot up his back. "Oh, Megatron, that's so good. Stay here? Please?"
"You couldn't bulldoze me out of here," Long Haul assured him. "Quit squirming and go back to what you were doing to my chest."
***
"Well, I've watched the tapes..." Scrapper tried to look considering and malicious instead of slightly speculative about the possibility of getting Scavenger to invite him along the next time Long Haul got randy. "I don't think Monoko ever agreed to reveal anything for the good of the party in there."
Long Haul lunged across the table, fists balled. "Slaggit, Scrapper! I worked for that information!"
"If you call that work," Mixmaster sniggered.
Out of the side of his optic band, Scrapper noticed Scavenger's tail droop and his shoulders slump. The excavator gave him a slightly hurt look, before staring down at the edge of the table.
"Well..." Scrapper began, glancing sidelong at Scavenger until he caught the excavator looking hopefully at him. "I suppose I could accept that somewhere in all that, Monoko whispered the information Sledge needs to know to him."
"That would actually allow this idiotic plot to advance," Hook sniffed.
Scrapper jabbed a finger at the crane. "Roll for initiative. Or save vs. death effect, I don't care which."
Hook smirked as he picked up one of the d20s. "This is third edition, Scrapper. It's called a Fortitude save these days."
"Just make one."
-End-
My Table
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*can't stop laughing*
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The amount of glee I got out of this as a D&Der is quite sad. ;D This was awesome!