The Odd Couple Plus One

[Swindle]

Day 21, Open to 'Cons, though it's in private quarters.

The door to Stateroom 5 opens and Swindle drags himself through, then flops face-down onto his berth. "Sweet golden spires of Iacon, I'm tired. What a day. Never let anyone tell you managerial work is easy," he informs anyone who will listen, voice muffled by the bunk, "because it isn't. But it's not the long hours that get to you, my friend. It's the stimulant crash."

[Cannonball]

Cannonball's kicked back on his berth, nursing a flask when Swindle flops in. The pirate watches him collapse, then shrugs. Cannonball looks a far sight better than he did several days ago, but his pride is still bruised after Holi rearranged his facial plating.

"Eh, it's easy when you've got the clout to make all the lil' peons do the hard work for you," he muses with a rather homesick frown.

[Swindle]

Still prone on his berth, Swindle turns his head to look at Cannonball and extends a hand toward the flask. "I'll be your best friend," he says with a winning smile. "Once they make a self-clouting peon my only job duty will be the money-counting. So what have you been up to lately?"

[Cannonball]

Cannonball's optic band narrows a bit at the request, but pulls a second flask from subspace. "An' I'm the Lord 'Igh Governor o' Polyhex," he answers, but smirks.

"Outside of a botched 'ostage situation, been nursin' me wounds and keeping my 'ead down a lot."

[Swindle]

"Thanks, governor," Swindle replies, sitting up as he accepts the second flask and takes a swig. "Whew! That's good whatever-that-is!"

"You too, huh? There seems to be a lot of that going around. Who'd you snag?"

[Cannonball]

"Bit of 'ome brew I made back on Gillanan. Prolly strong enough to reset yer BIOS settings if you're not used to hard stuff." Cannonball chuckles a bit, leaning his head back against the wall. "Ah...lil' lady Autobot. Apparently, the girlfriend of a 'bot I took 'ostage on Gillanan, and he'd been nursing a grudge. Lot stronger than I expected. He showed up, with friends."

[Swindle]

"You ever consider distributing it commercially?" Swindle asks, ever the entrepreneur.

"That's tough. Nothing worse than a deal gone sour. I wandered into a pawn shop and walked out with a little Autobot camera-former. Real wetpaint, totally naive. Sparkless jerks were letting him wander around without a chaperone. It was practically more babysitting than kidnapping. I mean, he told me their frequency. And then the 'Bots wouldn't negotiate to get him back! What's this world coming to, I ask you?" If someone kidnapped Mistwind, Swindle would pay to get him back. He'd just find a way to indenture the Micromaster to make up for it.

[Cannonball]

Cannonball shakes his head. "Considerin' that I made it up as I went along, I have no clue what all went into it. And despite 'ow much I do like money..." Cannonball swigs again. "I don't like it enough to sell me booze."

Cannonball shrugs. "I dunno - if they still got the same guy in charge that was back when Starscream 'ad me try an' infiltrate, he didn't seem like the negotiatin' type."

[Swindle]

"Hmph. Doesn't matter if you're the negotiating type or not, sometimes you just have to be willing to cut a deal. Like when there's an innocent life on the line." Swindle has another belt from the flask, then hands it back to Cannonball and lies back on his berth, hands behind his head. "Reminds me of the Autobots back home, actually. They tended to have the same attitude."

[Cannonball]

Cannonball snorts. "Back home, they'd all drop everything to come rescue just one of their lot. 'Course, that would make negotiating tricky, since they'd bring so much backup." Cannonball frowns a bit. "Seems like they'd be stronger than normal too, when one of their own was in trouble. Strange, that."

[Swindle]

Swindle raises one eyeridge, turning his head to face Cannonball. "So you mean in your universe, the Autobots' claims of moral superiority are actually based on fact? Now I've heard everything." Because the Autobots back home liked to hide information from the general public, conduct dangerous experiments on injured civilians, and create sentient weapons of mass destruction. And judging by his recent experience, the ones here aren't much better.

"So did they juice up on high-grade fuel for rescue missions or what?" Because Swindle's home reality is the wrong flavor for him to know anything about Burning Justice.

[Cannonball]

"Buncha real goodie-goodies - the ones 'ere are kind of a strange experience for me. Big on justice and all that scrap." Swig swig. "I s'pose it makes things more interesting - thought I could pull of a 'ostage situation and not 'ave a whole damn cavalry rain down on me, but that didn't turn out as planned." Cannonball scowls.

"And...slagged if I know - seemed like the more motivated they were, the more powerful they were, if you could believe that."

[Swindle]

Swindle nods, pulling a datapad out from under his bunk and absentmindedly holding the stylus in his mouth, wiggling it up and down, as he scribbles on the datapad's touchscreen with his finger.

"Back home it's stodgy bureaucrats on one side and gun-toting fanatic revolutionaries on the other. Sometimes I think I'm the only Transformer back home who's ever heard of enlightened self-interest."

Swindle clears the touchscreen and begins doodling blueprints. "Power tied to emotions? I guess you could make a mod like that, but what would be the point? If you made something to inject fuel additives and tied it to the emotional circuitry. . . I suppose it'd free up conscious processor cycles during combat, since emotions are handled automatically and you wouldn't have to turn it on." The arms dealer is silent for a moment, fiddling with his diagrams. "Still, it'd wear the bujeezus out of your joints and fuel lines. Better just to upgrade your hydraulics or get a bigger gun."

[Cannonball]

Cannonball snorts at Swindle. Cannonball might not explicitly trust him, but he's kind of a kindred spark in how they both look out for numero uno.

Again, he shrugs. "Like I said, I got know idea, I'm just pointing out what I observed. Then again, I come from the universe where everyone calls on the Creator 'imself just to unlock weapons temporarily..." Cannonball shakes his head.

[Swindle]

Swindle looks up from his datapad and fixes a hungry look on Cannonball. "You call on what to do what? How does it work and can you get it into a form where I can sell it? Man, a planet with this many different religions, I could make a mint telling people they can requisition weapons from the gods."