Dysfunctional Team: Pilot

It starts a little before the flashback in Out of the Past happens.

Here are some time for you all in case you're confuse.

Cycle = 1 minute

Megacycle = 1 hour

Joor = 6 hours

Stellar Cycle = 1 year

Vorn = 85 years

Chapter Text

Cybertron is a dead place. It was once a shiny, technological world made entirely out of metal. All there was tall buildings, vast metallic plains areas ranging form tall mountains to deep chasms. The cities were once filled with a race called Cybertronians, huge robots of varying shapes, sizes and colors. It was a very lively place, but unfortunately there was much resent between two groups, the Autobots and the Decepticons.

War happen between them and left the planet in its current form. There was no longer a civilization, just a dead planet. Walking around the place, it would be very easy to find dead bodies strewn about. Most of the resources were long gone from the war and it's core was poisoned with dark energon. Because of this, most people consider it without value and have move on to other planets to either colonize or continue the war.

Swindle was not most people.

Swindle was an average-sized bot but was quite stocky. He had a tan and purple paint job with his arms and leg being tan and his chest being mostly tan with a thick purple stripe running down the center. His helm, hands, and pedes were colored a plain black and his optics were a dark purple.

Swindle considered himself an entrepreneur, a bot just trying to make a good living. To everyone else, he's probably the most dangerous and charismatic arms dealer you've ever met. He was born with a silver tongue and he knows how to use it, convincing bots that the thing he's trying to sell them was worth the hefty price and he usually accomplishes this. Sometimes, however, there are bots who think it would be easier to just kill him and take his stuff. That usually ends up being the last thing they do, as Swindle has one of the deadliest arsenals on him ranging from small blasters to high-grade explosives powerful enough to destroy a small army.

Swindle was consider a Decepticon, but that didn't mean he sell exclusively to them. He has a extensive travel history and has deal with many races form the incredibly dangerous Vok of Nexus Zero to the small, weak, and technologically archaic (to Cybertronians) humans of planet Earth and even to the Autobots, but always for a more hefty price. He has established contacts with many planets, making rather deep information network which he able to sell to potential buyers who wish to gain an edge above others or want to know the weaknesses of their enemies.

Right now, he was in his ship cruising above the ground and flying around buildings. He has become adept at flying his ship over the vorns, due to the fact that getting the stuff he was going to sell require him sometimes to steal and get out of there quickly. He didn't pay attention to what city he was in, but if he had to guest, it was probably the Autobot capital city, Iacon. There were many Autobot symbols and he passed what looked the Hall of Records. From what he could see in the darkness, most of the city was heavily damaged in some way, but were still standing.

Swindle came here to scavenge for supplies to sell to buyers and to keep for himself, if he liked it well enough. Most of the population was gone, but that didn't mean there weren't any secrets there. He had found a few secrets here while exploring, usually in the form if a secret lab or a forgotten weapons cache. Some of it was real good while others were better left to rust where they were.

Swindle kept a eye out for anything that could be worthwhile. He was running figures into his mental processors while doing so, adding up how much his latest find would earn him. The blueprint for a advance prototype medical capacitor design to greatly increase a Cybertronian internal self-repairing abilities would be very valuable, but there was a couple of strings attach to it. First off, it was a prototype, which means it was only in the testing phases. This could mean that it could have unintentional side-effects or, worse, it could not work at all and if didn't work, there would be some very angry customers. Second, it hasn't even been built yet and looking at the components for it, there was a few that some bots couldn't get a hold of, thus limiting his potential client pool. Third, finally, it was of Autobot design. Some Cons were very paranoid and wouldn't buy something if a Bot so much as glance at it. On the other hand, it could also mean that some Autobots could want it and will pay for it at a bigger price than usual.

As he was calculating the potential price, he didn't hear the bot next to him yelling for his attention…

Until he got a slap in the back of the head.

"Ow! What the slag was that for?," Swindle ask in a angry tone. He look to the right of him to gaze at the offender, a thin and short bot. He had a black color scheme with orange stripes running down parts of his body. He'd also had on a special pair of headphones and a red visor. Killshot.

The black bot looked at him and told him simply "We're getting a transmission."

"From who?"

"I don't know. Why don't you answer and find out" he said in a sarcastic tone. Swindle look at his companion and then back to the radio. He noticed a blinking light indicating a transmission. He clicked on it and the screen turn on showing a single glowing red eye.

Shockwave. Scrap. What did he want?

"Oh, uh, hi Shockwave. How are you?" Swindle ask in a polite tone. Shockwave was the Decepticons main scientist and a dangerous one at that. He was also said to be one of the best interrogators for them as well, claiming that no one has not cracked under his techniques. Given his track record, and what Swindle has seen from him, that probably isn't too far off from the truth.

"Fine, Swindle" Oh, good. He remembered who Swindle was. Shockwave didn't get all his devices by himself. Sometimes, he requires a rare component to make a device work and Swindle was always happy to provide, for a reasonable price of course.

"So, what do you need?"

"A component. I'm sending the data to you right now.' Swindle saw the data on another screen. Looked like he wanted some chemical. A very expensive chemical that Swindle just so happen to have in stock.

"Good news, Shockwave. I have some right now in storage, but they cost quite a lot"

"Value doesn't matter right now. All that is important is that I get the chemical. It is imperative for an experiment. I'm sending my location to you now." The map beep showing Shockwave's location. Swindle looked at it.

"It'll take me about a solar cycle before I can reach you Shockwave. You're all the way on the other side of the planet."

"Alright."

"You're not getting lonely are you?" He asked in a teasing tone.

Shockwave stared at Swindle before answering "No." Not much of a conversationalist.

"Anybody coming to see you?"

"Starscream is coming to bring me some energon along with some prisoners to extract information from in a few cycles." By extract information, he meant fried their neural networks, as Swindle saw once with a meet with him. Wait. Did he just say...

"Did you just mention Starscream?"

"Affirmative."

"How long is he goanna be there."

"At the most, a joor. He will have departed by the time you get here."

"Good." Starscream was one of the few bots, Autobot or Decepticon, that he didn't want to meet with. "See you soon." He hit the button and cut the link between him and Shockwave before he could reply. He immediately set the location on his navigator and set his ship to autopilot. It should get them there without trouble. Swindle set back in his seat and wonder exactly what Shockwave needed the chemical for. Probably a side-project of his. From what he heard, he was working a space bridge as a primary goal and from what Swindle knew, the chemical wasn't use in space bridge technology.

Suddenly, Killshot spoke up. "So, we're going to see the mad scientist?"

"I guess so," Swindle replied back.

"I heard horror stories about the kind of stuff Shockwave does. A lot of those stories don't end well for anybody not name Shockwave. They say he some emotionless torture machine and a brilliant scientist. Is that true?"

"In a way, yes, but he's a lot more complicated than that."

"Is that so?"

"Yep. He's also a really valuable customer." They sat there in silence for a few cycles till Killshot open his mouth again.

"Got a question. Why were you so nervous at the mention of Starscream?"

Swindle looked at him for a moment before replying in a serious tone, "Me and him don't exactly get along."

"Don't blame you for that. I had to work with him before. He's brilliant and a pretty good tactician when he tries, but his personality really has a way of ticking you off, whether it's his constant scheming, tactical errors that a protoform could pick out, or just his gloating in general. You know, I'm surprised Megatron hasn't killed him yet."

"Yeah. Anyway, we should head to the recharge berth. Tomorrow is going to be a easy day."

"I guess so." With that, the two left the pilot's seat and head to the respected rooms for the night.

Unfortunately for them, tomorrow was really going to be a busy day.