AIR! BORNE! INTESTINES!

[koilungfish]

10/10/07 - Day Off
11/10/07 - 542 words on The Other God of Charr
12/10/07 - Ill
13/10/07 - 851 words on The Other God of Charr
14/10/07 - 856 words on The Other God of Charr
15/10/07 - Day Off
16/10/07 - 508 words on A Death Like This
17/10/07 - 693 words on It's Not Funny


18/10/07 - Bad Press

         [Starscream!]
         Startled, the Air Commander dropped what he was holding, and cursed as it fell screaming into a container of liquid nitrogen. [What is it, Megatron?]
         [Explain this!]
         Starscream mentally blinked. [Explain what?]
         [This!]
         [Did you have a total cognitive array failure, or am I supposed to have installed long-range wall-piercing sensors recently?] Starscream asked, using tongs to pull his now frozen experimental subject out of the hydrogen. He held the humansicle up and turned it this way and that, examining the odd shape it had torqued itself into, and the expression of rudimentary agony on its rubbery face. There goes that experiment, he thought.
         [Get over here now, you sarcastic dolt!] Megatron yelled.
         Tossing his head in exasperation, Starscream flicked the dead human into the waste-to-fuel incinerator and went to find out what the fuss was about.
         Entering Megatron's quarters, he found the Decepticon leader standing over a large computer console. Megatron was fuming and Starscream was faintly surprised, given the old glitch's expression of barely-contained rage, that the console wasn't as well.
         "Explain this!" Megatron shouted, pointing to the console's screens.
         "I didn't do anything!" Starscream protested as he moved closer, wondering whether he was being blamed for something Skywarp had done, or if it was just Megatron using him as the world's most handsome scapegoat, and whether or not he should just skip the shouting and run right now.
         "When you were an explorer, you were a xenologist!" Megatron said, still shouting, as if it made sense of everything. "You specialised in xenolinguistic analysis!"
         "Well, yes, amongst other things," Starscream said, reluctant to admit to something that seemed liable to get him battered. "What of it?"
         "Look at the blasted screens, you fool," Megatron said, scowling.
         Starscream glanced. The main screen was full of text - human text, written in a language developed from but distinct from English - and all the subscreens displayed similar contents. "It's human writing. They call it ... " he began, then stopped in mid-superciliousness as the actual substance of the text filtered through his processors. " ... lubricated ... rubber ... balls ... ?"
         Megatron nodded, still scowling. "Explain."
         "I didn't write that!" Starscream exclaimed immediately, more keen to distance himself from the disturbing words than out of any sense of being blamed.
         "I credit you with better translation skills than that," Megatron said, the anger starting to fade.
         The danger dormant for the moment, Starscream slipped into the seat before the console and examined the main text more closely. Four paragraphs down, the words "I - you - up my thrusters?" exploded from his vocaliser.
         "Check the one on subscreen four," Megatron said, leaning on the back of the chair.
         Starscream did. He read. His optics widened and he pushed himself away from the screen, deep into the seat, fear on his face. "What new lunacy is this, Megatron?" he asked, voice low.
         "Soundwave found it, trawling the humans' 'internet' for power source data," Megatron said. "He said it is called 'fan fiction'."
         Starscream flipped through the subscreens, reading with a morbid interest that bordered on nausea. " ... oil there? ... Optimus Prime? I would never - "
         "I had often suspected it," Megatron said with leaden sarcasm.
         Starscream snapped at him, ruffled to see himself stretched out across reams of bad prose, twisted into unrecognisable beings - a wanton flyaway with no interests beyond sensual promiscuity, an emotional wreck dependant on a traitor's smothering comfort, a masochist begging Megatron for cruelties, a soppy xenophile coddling humans from their petty problems, a pompous clown with the intellect of a cleaning drone, a fragile psychological disaster-area clinging to Megatron for emotional support. "Who is responsible for this wretched nonsense? I need to express my displeasure with high explosives!"
         "They're scattered all over the globe," Megatron said, waving a hand at the screen. "Hunting them down and destroying them for their crimes against our reputations would take months. A waste of fuel and time."
         Starscream continued to flick through the texts. "I can feel my higher cognitive functions shutting down in self-defence," he said. " ... oh, it's just Autobots in this one, that's a - what? Me? A female Autobot?" He jumped up from the chair, wings pulled up like blades, shoulders tense, fists clenched. "I'll rip the plating off anyone who dares say such a thing about me!"
         "Good luck finding them all," Megatron said, more amused than angry now that someone else was suffering humiliation by amateur prose.
         "There's more than one?" Starscream asked aghast, turning to face the gunformer.
         "I saw seven before I called you over," Megatron said, straightening up. "And worse."
         Starscream tipped his head, optics so wide they were almost round. "How can it get worse? As if I'd ever -"
         "The Autobots must be seeding the human population with deliberate misinformation, perhaps some sort of allegiance by propaganda," Megatron said. "According to some of these things, we reproduce the same way the humans do - via internal parasitism."
         " ... ick," Starscream said, flinching at the thought and ignoring Megatron's ignorance of organic biology. "That's disgusting." He saw Megatron's smirk. "Oh no. Not me."
         "Yes, you," Megatron said, nodding his head, expression stretched between amusement and horror. "Two of them were mine and one was ... "
         Starscream stared, too revolted to ask, shaking his head in disbelief.
         "They invent new Decepticons," Megatron said, grimacing. "Very strange ones."
         "If they believe we do ... " Starscream looked over his shoulder at the screens, " ... those things, I cannot begin to imagine what they conjure up."
         "Nobility," Megatron said, spitting the word. "Honour. Compassion. Mercy. Paperwork."
         Starscream leant against the console. "What was it you wanted me to explain?" he said, voice softened by confusion.
         "Why?" Megatron said. "What are these flesh-things planning? Do they hope to defeat us by embarrassing us into deactivation?"
         Starscream frowned at the floor, kicking his higher cognitive processors into overdrive and activating his xenoculture analysis routines. "It's hard to process this babble," he said, wincing as he re-assessed the texts he'd read. "It makes me want to wash my brain module out with acid." He heard Megatron hiss. "Whatever disgusting thing do they have us doing now?"
         "Declaring undying love and devotion," Megatron said.
         "Oh, for Cybertron's sake!" Starscream shouted, throwing his arms in the air. "Will they leave us nothing of our Decepticon programming?"
         "Apparently not," Megatron said, looking disgusted. "Well? Analysis?"
         "They fear us," Starscream said. "We have absolute power at our disposal and nothing to restrain us from unleashing it upon them except the Autobots." He started to smile. "At some deep level, not fully processed by their primitive wet brains, they realise and understand that we are more terrible and more awesome than anything they can ever hope to be, that we are gods to them!"
         Megatron turned a hand towards him, gesturing for him to continue.
         "Your lack of an education is a disgrace to the Decepticons," Starscream said, shaking his head.
         "There's little time for sociology when you're being hunted by Guardians," Megatron said. "Keep explaining."
         Starscream sighed. "In order to quell their pathetic little terrors, they write this - this drivel - to make us small, make us weak, to bring us down to their miserable level. They depict us in relationships familiar to them because that is all they can imagine. They show us performing those revolting acts together because they have no idea what our highly advanced and vastly superior technology is capable of."
         Megatron frowned, folding his arms as he thought. "So this is not a coordinated attack on our collective dignities?"
         "Oh no," Starscream said. "It's nothing more than the frantic scrabblings of vermin who know but cannot admit that their time is over."
         Megatron nodded. He lifted his head, and Starscream felt a twinge of fear and anticipation at the High Commander's smirk. "So, you'd never consider using lubricated rubber balls -"
         "Not a chance!" Starscream shouted, tossing his head huffily and crossing his arms as he turned his back on Megatron.
         "Not even if I were to -"
         Starscream could feel the heat of Megatron's gaze on the back of his wings. He could almost see the old glitch's smirk, the familiar glint in his optics promising dents and sensations that made the dents worthwhile. "Well ... maybe ..."

Final Version Posted

Comments

[navigatorsghost.livejournal.com]

..........! *hands you an Internet* Someone's been needing to write this fic for years, Koi, and I'm very, very glad it was you. Now crosspost it to every TF slash and het list, board and comm you can think of, please?

"Honour. Compassion. Mercy. Paperwork."

*DIES* One of these things is not like the others... unless you're a Decepticon. I think this may be my favourite line right here, if only because to an office employee with Decepticon leanings that strikes such a chord.

[I was torn between this icon and the "Fish Happens" one, but I decided I'd save the latter for when the screaming starts... *grin*]

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

:: beams:: I suspected I was onto a winner when I was reading through for errors and couldn't stop grinning. I'll slather it across the internet when I've had someone [like Luna] tell me where all the problems are.

I get awfully fed up with "paperwork" in Transfic. One of my many bugbears.

Oh dear, have I Happened again?

[sapphirebreeze.livejournal.com]

Isn't Ratbat a Master Accountant in Marvel canon?

That seems to imply the existence of some form of Cybertronian paperwork.

Not to mention such things as watch rotations and patrol assignments (which you've used as plot elements in fics in the past) fall under the realm of "paperwork" if you're in the military. They do routine inspections, which at the very least requires a 'done/not done' or 'passed/not passed' mark in a box somewhere, unless it's the top dawg doing the inspection, and even then the top dawg needs to alert his subordinates that it's been done so they don't do duplicate work. And then there's the follow-up reports from inspections to make sure that any discrepancies found are being taken care of. That sort of thing.

[lunatron.livejournal.com]

These fics amuse me on a meta-level, because what happens when Megatron and Starscream run into a fic about what happens when Megatron and Starscream read fics?

Poor Starscream, morale officer of the internet. *Throws him an Underbase to console himself.*

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

What, no spelling errors? Hurrah.

Ah, but what happens when Megatron and Starscream read a fic about Megatron and Starscream reading a fic about Megatron and Starscream reading a fic? *Then* ... people's brains melt, I suspect.

I'm sure the Underbase will be a consolation to him if nobody else, until it explodes him.

[lunatron.livejournal.com]

Koi, I haven't error-checked yet. Brain is neither engaged yet (nor married).

Then I laugh maniacally.

[seiberwing.livejournal.com]

It's a bit of a new take on the old 'characters find fanfiction about them' idea, and I like Starscream's interpretation of it. It halfway makes real life sense, actually, and halfway makes sense within the bounds of a Transformer-infested reality. People write RPF all the time, why not about mechs?

Although I still want to know where 'lubricated rubber balls' came from.

"Nobility," Megatron said, spitting the word. "Honour. Compassion. Mercy. Paperwork."

Without that last one, Starfighter's halfway out of a job. ;_;

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it's been done before, but I can't recall ever seeing it done for TFs, or at least not well enough that I'd want to remember it.

"Lubricated rubber balls" came from two sources, neither of which I'm mentioning here.

Meh on consumptive jetweeds!

[seiberwing.livejournal.com]

It has. There was one godawful one where they found a TF pron site, and Soundwave thought it was some sort of weaponry thing and made Megatron a...well, you know. Author thought he was so damn clever, too.

Now I have to find out where it comes from.

....jetweeds? What?

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

Excellent, excellent! The "canon characters find fanfic written about them and are appalled" idea may be nothing new, but I much like your take on it, especially Starscream's sociological analysis.

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

Heh. Glad it amused.

[themicemen.livejournal.com]

"According to some of these things, we reproduce the same way the humans do - via internal parasitism."

He sounds like those pompous English men dealing with reproduction in those public information documentaries, Harry Enfield style. >:]

Hah, Starscream = hypocrite Y/N?

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I wasn't aiming for 'pompous Englishman' for Megatron's dialogue. That's not so good.

Not a hypocrite, perhaps. Just ... open to new ideas?

[themicemen.livejournal.com]

Well, it'd be good for Megatron all concerned if he stays that way.

I don't mean 'pompous Englishman' in tone but rather in how he deals with the concept of pregnancy. Although, I suppose, in a species that doesn't get pregnant, that round-about method would be how they'd describe it.

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

That might be a little *too* meta, although I did see a very good fic on that premise some time ago. I think it was by Rob Powers.

[leronze.livejournal.com]

XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

BRILLIANT! It is a Koi-take on an old topic, and it would be just like all the others if your way with characters didn't just beat all. XD

One question though:

Starscream drops the human in nitrogen, then takes him out of hydrogen?

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

^-^ Thank you. How many other takes on this topic have you seen?

Ah, zut, will have to correct that. It should be nitrogen.

[leronze.livejournal.com]

Well, not too many, but they aren't exactly rare either... and none of them stick in my mind. Yours does, because of your language. Your language is truly beautiful, you know that? It's the way you make the words flow. :D

"Nobility," Megatron said, spitting the word. "Honour. Compassion. Mercy. Paperwork."

At this point, I just want to cut in with "They craeted Armada." X3

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I hope I can make it even better when I buff it up for final posting.

Hey, Armada wasn't *that* bad! I rather liked it.

[sapphirebreeze.livejournal.com]

Very amusing treatment of the concept. Someone else has caught the nitrogen-hydrogen error, which was the only technical error I noticed.

The analysis is especially cute. Not entirely applicable to the real world (where these things are written, largely, for amusement value and nothing more), but it's funny to hear an explanation from Starscream's perspective, anyway.

I rather like the experiment-gone-wrong in the beginning.

I disagree on the subject of paperwork, as already mentioned in another comment. Not only are some forms of it plausible in Cybertronian society, they're canon.

Weeds, I will point out, are actually generally quite hardy, and tend to thrive in conditions that are adverse to many other kinds of plants. A better analogy may be called for.

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that one's been seen to. Bad fish.

It would be applicable in-canon though, no?

I'm still not quite sure what he was planning to do there.

Some forms, yes, but not to the extent it sometimes gets written.

Perhaps it is a British thing. "Weed" is a perfectly good insult in the lines of something feeble and lacking in vitality. To quote Molesworth; 'thou art a weed and a wet and I shall utterly tough you up."

[tehsongsong.livejournal.com]

Hi! You don't know me, but I want to say just how much you WIN for this. I like to poke around FF.net to get a good laugh out of stuff there for fun, and this is just brilliant. There's so many perfect stand-out lines, like "... oil there? ..." and you string them together wonderfully. I got some great laughs out of it. XD

[koilungfish.livejournal.com]

Hi! Thanks for commenting. Hopefully the edited version will be even more so.