𝙳𝙾𝙲𝚃𝙾𝚁 𝙳𝙴𝙰𝚃𝙷.

                @doktorsterben​ ♛ from here!

       the shit eating grin upon his fascia was undeniably pure– denta sparkling against the light. leaning in further, the young autobot exhaled trapped air, hot against knock out’s lips. he was just that slagging close. they were mere inches apart.

         ❝ i didn’t ask for an invitation. i do what i want to. ❞

He doesn’t miss Smokescreen’s movements. In fact, he is paying particular attention to them at this moment, and crimson rings flick for a brief split second to Smokescreen’s intake before glaring impishly at the Autobot.

“How not-very-Autobot of you. Here I’ve been misled to believe you were all a dull bag of bolts.”

Then there’s the softest noise of a shlink !! as Knock Out releases his Energon prod right into the soft mesh of Smokescreen’s waist. It’s not active―yet.

"Really? I almost expected you to just call it tacky-- but placing it in particular spots? That makes sense. So for me, I'd probably want to put it, say, maybe on my chassis or my doorwings and that's it, right?" He's taking notes!

“Oh, don’t get me wrong ― the lower quality ones are incredibly tacky. They want to come in various colors and make you look like a kaleidoscope instead of having actual tones. There’s an art to all things, Smokescreen, even the gaudy.

Hmm...

“Not over an entire frame. It’s gaudy and overdone. There’s no class to it if you just pour it on and too many bots with no taste think the more you obviously sparkle, the more attractive you look.

“What you want is to catch someone’s eye by mystifying. Enrapture their curiosity by giving them a hint. Move a certain way in the light for the shine to come through and they wonder if they imagined it. They want to keep watching to see it again.

“Wh―!!”

He most certainly didn’t blare his horn in a startle. But he DEFINITELY turned around to return the favor by clawing onto Smokescreen’s chassis and yanking him so they were leaning into each other.

Haha, I guess that would be a problem if you were caught doing that. But man, no wonder you can do cool things that Ratchet can’t. Is Megatron really that loaded?

Wait, you guys were getting paid? … How much were you making?

… That’s really true! I guess I should really try asking around, I really would like to try some new mods. I didn’t get much of a choice once I had to get my spike replaced, so it’d be nice to spice it up, you know? Wait, me? Well, I mean, of course I’m eager, and it would be fun to recommend stuff… But I already have stuff I’m supposed to do, so I probably couldn’t. But maybe I could write reviews or something.

When you steal what you want and are willing to extort entire systems of galaxies, yes, we get quite the income from it. Especially once we got invested in the trade system and started developing our own tariffs, depots, and trading outposts for it.

Take what you want and make others pay to have it back. That sort of thing.

And of course we were getting paid. You aren’t? That’s... sad, actually. I’ve made enough I could start my own business or two off the gate and be fine with no profits for a while before I had to actually put in effort to running them. Hm.

It's Mel's fault

Everything that happens in our quaint little circle is Mel’s fault.

    “That’s wonderful to hear. I have to admit, I’m most curious on how some of these modifications can be ‘rented,’ considering how in-depth some of the mods can be.”

     “I can only imagine how difficult swapping valve linings is.”

It is a process. I never said such rentings came cheap. But they are significantly cheaper than how things are done now.

With the whole war going on, Cybertronians are considered a hostile nation by the Galactic Council. We’re blacklisted everywhere, so doing business comes at a steep cost due to the risk of associating with our kind. Theoretically we could simply bully them into obeying, but that won’t be a good look for Cybertron in the future once our planet is restored. Megatron shows a surprising amount of patience when it comes to other planets protected by the big GC.

Haha, that’s pretty awesome, honestly. Is that how you get a hold of all your polish and stuff?

… Yeah, there’s a few I’m interested in. Like, the thought of a vibrating spike, or even an expanding one sounds really cool, though I bet there’s some even better options out there if I look at like, a catalogue or something!

I’ve heard about leasing, but I don’t think there’s anything like that open yet on my Cybertron! If there is, maybe people have just been avoiding telling me- in any case, I don’t think there’s anything like that, but it’s not a bad idea. Honestly, I probably could make a nice bit of shanix if I finally sold my collection of unused toys and-

Anyway, you think there might be some universes out there that have that kind of thing? I wouldn’t mind hopping around to take a look.

My polish? Absolutely not! If Megatron found out that was part of our expenses, I’d be terminated. Or at least thoroughly dressed down. I purchase those with my own shanix every payment cycle along with everyone else. Granted my income isn’t the levels of Starscream’s or Shockwave’s, but it’s enough.

A few hundred thousand shanix? I don't even have ANY shanix, frag. ... I am interested in an upgrade. I mean, you mentioned it, and I've been thinking about it for a little while. There's all kinds of cool mods out there I'd really like to try! Do you take something other than shanix?

Perks of being in Megatron’s good graces as his primary surgeon: I’m free to spend our reserves of shanix how I see fit. Within reason, at least. The rest of it I had to negotiate with Soundwave for approval.

Of course I do them, and how much they cost entirely depends on the modifications you want.

Some require more effort to obtain if they’re of the popular sort, shortages of parts, and all that. I believe for Lord Megatron’s various modifications it took an exchange of Energon stores, some weapon and resource exchanges, and a few hundred thousand shanix for the entire lot of it.

Of course none of this includes manual labor.

Strange question and I’m not sure what gives you the impression that I would know.

Luckily for you, I do! Sort of.

How would one describe the smell of “space”?

Though admittedly that’s usually when he goes off on one of his personal trips for an extended period of time. Otherwise, he smells mostly like oil with a mixture of solvent and a hint of clean metal. He’s quite hygienic, despite his insistence that he has little vanity compared to the likes of Starscream and me.

one-shall-fall

i live here now.

thusspoke

don’t be fucking rude.gif

“…”

doktorsterben

I am certainly not parked outside, either.

“…!”

Ah, evidently I did not make myself clear.

In my universe, we do not naturally come with what you all call spikes or valves. We have pleasure ports and cables, and that is how we naturally interface. An exchange of energies that sends pleasant electric pulses through our frames and makes everything feel supercharged. Of course, it can be more intimate than that if we resort to spark-play or a direct hardline, but such things are usually reserved for the truly endeared.

Things like those mods didn’t come in until some explorer or another came across other beings on a separate planet that used such anatomy for pleasure. This was back in the age when Cybertron was still expansionist and created settlements on other worlds. Curiosity got the better of them I guess. I don’t know all the history and muck about it, I wasn’t forged at that time.

I just know it became extremely popular among the upper class as a sense of statement and style. The more complex or bedazzled the mod, the more impressive they were, and the more wealth they flaunted. It was relatively popular to have such debauched gatherings where they would show their parts off and indulge in them.

The middle class was able to afford them, but not oftentimes both types of mods. Getting a good quality could be expensive and sometimes beyond the paygrade of most. But they were decent enough.

Now, once you went to the low class, it becomes a bit tricky and at worst, heinous. Surgeons aren’t exactly a commodity. I should know. An actually trained medic was extremely rare. So having a professional do it was practically a nonexistent chance, and even if they were available, it was certainly beyond any meager shanix they could have earned back then unless they were in the big leagues with the more... dangerous crowd. But the average mech in low class? They did without. That, or they resorted to untrained self-taught medics who often didn’t know what they were doing and created more problems and possible infections.

So to answer your question: Lord Megatron, once being of such low class, didn’t really have either of those mods. I suspect that once he actually could afford such a change, it became a point of pride for him not to, given how the upper class reveled in it.