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“Damn it, another fake one,” muttered Sentinel, prowling the IKEA halls.
Airachnid narrowed her optics — yes, all of them — and flipped the tag on another golden tile. She squinted at it, rolled her optics, and let it flutter back down from her grasp. “This one too. Are you sure you really need —”
“ Yes , I’m sure I need more gold furniture. I’ve almost got the whole set, all except for —”
“A toilet, yes. Why do you even need one? There’s no point. We don’t even have a bathroom.”
Sentinel huffed and crossed his arms. Airachnid just didn’t understand the aesthetic he was aiming for! Everyone knew that a full set of gold furniture bought with embezzled money from the nearest megachurch was really what tied the glimmering opulence together!
“It’s not just about the function, dear,” Sentinel told Airachnid earnestly. “The toilet will complete the air of allure pulling them in toward Sky Daddy Mega Mansion House Church /JOKE, I just know it! Now help me find a solid gold toilet.”
“You fucking idiot,” Airachnid said affectionately in a tone that could only be interpreted as completely serious. “IKEA doesn’t have what you want.”
“Well, sometimes, IKEA has good stuff,” said Sentinel defensively. He thought back to the rare time he had found a marble sculpture of half a monster truck admidst the couches and chaise longues. Now that had been a true beauty. “Well, even if it doesn’t have them today. These golden-painted ceramic pieces of scrap are for broke people! I need to flex my wealth on everyone who has the fortune of coming across my furniture collection. Now, I’ve got to keep looking. Will you help me?”
“This is just about the 27th time you’ve asked me that today,” said Airachnid. “Find it yourself.”
Sentinel huffed. What did she know about interior decoration? He finally just went with his last resort, which he had reserved specially for his wife: “How about ... please .”
Airachnid crossed her arms and rolled her optics yet again, though Sentinel knew that was secretly a “yes.” He cheered internally as he continued his quest, checking room after room of bathroom applicances and decor. However, nothing was quite perfect yet ....
“Hey, is that a solid gold toilet?” came a cry from the next aisle over. Sentinel swore he saw Primus at that moment.
“Come on, let’s go,” he said, pulling Airachnid along.
In retrospect, maybe having an entire room built with gold hadn’t been a good idea.
Sentinel wasn’t saying that he regretted it; he was just hoping that he had planned it out better before having the construction crew get to work. Now, he stared at the scuffed floor that sagged like a slingshot, ready to shoot his furniture directly into his face.
No matter how vivid the vision was, the floor didn’t magically bounce back into shape and instantly pelt Sentinel with a rain of gold paraphernalia. In fact, quite the opposite happened — as soon as the mech installing the toilet stepped back, the floor sank in, the toilet dropping like a cinder block with a crash indicating it had reached the floor below.
“I told you it wasn’t a good idea,” said Airachnid. “With this level of decision-making, I’m wondering how the church is still up and running.”
“Hey!” retorted Sentinel. “I set a goal, then I executed! What more do you ask for?”
“Common sense.”
“My sense is plenty common!”
Airachnid shrugged. “Well, in all the wrong areas.”
With that, she gracefully leapt into the golden funnel that the toilet had left in the floor and slid down to the bottom floor, leaving Sentinel gaping after her wake.
“Wait! No! If I need more sense, tell me things! I need to know! Like, what happened to that hammer guy? The one who nailed stuff into the door with nothing but a rusty bolt and the front of his helm?” called Sentinel. He jumped and slid down the funnel, sparks flying up around him as his pedes left long scrapes on the golden floor. “Augh, someone polish that!”
Then, he came flying out the bottom —
— and directly onto Prowl, who proceeded to immediately snap a pair of handcuffs onto him and reach for a parking ticket.
“Why are you handcuffing me?” exclaimed Sentinel, attempting and failing to get up from his position on the floor. His day was definitely not going how he had planned. Getting cuffed and ticketed by his brother-in-law for what was probably the millionth time in the past week had not been on his to-do list, the last time he’d checked.
“Force of habit,” said Prowl from under him, retracting the cuffs and subspacing the parking tickets with his one free arm. The other was trapped under Sentinel’s sprawl on the floor. “Although you did park incorrectly. Again. I told you to stop parking horizontally through three spaces at once. You don’t even have a license.”
“I don’t need a license,” Sentinel argued vehemently. “I shouldn’t need one! It’s fine if I didn’t pass my driving test, because I haven’t killed anyone yet.” That was true, albeit barely. This morning (and many mornings before that), he had nearly (nearly!) hit some random pedestrian. Actually, it may have been one of his and Airachnid’s three adopted children. Or something.
Well, it was good that he hadn’t actually hit them. Then, he would never beat the infant punter allegations.
“You hit me that one time,” commented Airachnid from where she was watching them lie on the floor.
Sentinel nodded, finally getting up. “Oh, yeah. That’s how we met, after all.”
Prowl stared. “That’s ... that’s illegal. You were driving without a license and hit an innocent pedestrian.” His fingers twitched, almost as if he was preparing to get the cuffs and ticket again, though there really was no reason to. He would attribute it to reflex at this point, from the number of times he had pulled Sentinel over for breaking the road laws. “I would take away your license, except you never had one in the first place, so ...”
“Wait, why are you even here?” asked Sentinel, changing the topic before Prowl got a little too invested in attempting to charge him again.
Prowl pulled out a datapad from his subspace. “I pulled over the mech who had been delivering a shipment related to” — he squinted down at the datapad for a moment — “a solid gold toilet? Does the toilet on the floor next to me have something to do with this?”
Sentinel side-eyed the toilet, which was no less than elegantly highlighted by a beam of light coming through the hole in the floor. He flailed for a response. “Um. Perhaps?”
“Yes,” Airachnid answered dryly.
“I ... am not even going to ask about this,” said Prowl, monotonous. “I just expect you to know that the driver with the shipment didn’t stop at any of the stop signs and didn’t yield at any of the yield signs, either.”
“Yeah, that was probably because he can’t read,” Sentinel replied.
Prowl stared, not for the first time. “Are you serious?”
“Completely. Darkwing was never taught to read.” Sentinel narrowed his optics as he mentally searched his memory for the pink one’s name. Sure, he adopted her, but he still didn’t really know anything about her. The adoption thing had been a last resort, especially because of the infant punting (and infant embezzling) allegations, which were true completely false. Anyway, what was it? Something that started with an E? El ... oh, yeah. “... Elita-1 is currently tutoring him in reading, if my data is correct.”
“Another quick question,” said Prowl, looking back at the datapad in his hands. “Why is your brother half of the Cybertronian economy?”
“Who knows?” Sentinel shrugged nonchalantly. He had more pressing matters, anyway. For example, where would he put the toilet now? The room of pure gold couldn’t hold the majestic fixture, as the funnel made of warped floor above his head showed well enough. He wanted the room to have a consistent theme, but he was ninety percent sure that the combined mass of all the gold furniture would snap the floor like a twig and end up being so heavy they would burrow a hole halfway to Primus.
Oh! The obvious solution had been there the entire time: a portapotty! That would keep a consistent bathroom theme in addition to being a grand display for the toilet! Now ... just how to get it done ....
“My dear brother-in-law,” began Sentinel, brushing off the eyeroll from Prowl, “would you be interested in helping me out just a bit? I just need —”
And that was how they ended up lugging several tons of gold in the form of a toilet-shaped lump out of the building.
“I refuse to believe you are helping at all,” said Prowl, looking Sentinel directly in the optic as they slowly inched across the tiled floor of the hall.
“I don’t trust anyone to do this themself,” replied Sentinel, gritting his dentae as he carefully took a miniscule step, then another. He soothed himself with a promise of soon . He had gotten Airachnid to give the Constructicons a call to begin work on the portapotty project, and given that Scrapper had been helping install the toilet in the first place, he doubted they were far. He hoped they would have something for him — after all, they always knew what he wanted in terms of design.
And speak of the devil. Or, devils , plural.
The Constructicons had arrived.
“Oh, no,” Prowl muttered in a completely serious deadpan through his gritted dentae. “My exes.”
“Fuck you mean, your exes?” Sentinel wheezed as he lugged the toilet, shifting his grip as much as he could without setting it down. Seriously, was his brother-in-law some sort of Casanova? How many lovers did he even have? And he was not dating, but rather divorced with all of them? “What the hell even goes on in your side of the family?”
“Do not question it. It will overwhelm your inadequate processor.”
“Oh, you take that back, you —”
“I, uh. What’re the orders, boss?” asked one of them, looking somewhere in their direction but refusing the acknowledge the banter between them. Honestly, Sentinel wasn’t sure exactly who it was, just that they were one of the Constructicons from their green and purple color scheme. Was it ... Scrapper? No, shit! This wasn’t Scrapper! That was the guy from before! This was ... Primus, what were their names again? Mixmotor, Bone ... cranker? And, uhh ... um.
Sentinel just gave up. “Um.” He struggled to right his derailed thoughts. “I’d like a large portapotty-shaped gold tower put up right there,” he said, attempting to point in a general direction by way of helm-flicks. “Like, out of solid gold parts. It’s for this gold toilet, you see.”
The Constructicon stared blankly, as if waiting for him to say more. “I. Do you have more specific instructions?”
“Do I look like a design specialist?”
As the Constructicon flailed for a response, Prowl rolled his optics so hard they practically sparked with annoyance. He huffed from the strain of lifting the gold toilet, a bit of the effort leaking through his voice. “He means do whatever the hell you want.”
“On it.” The Constructicon saluted awkwardly, as if he didn’t know where to look or whom to salute to, then turned and nodded to the rest. The rest began to get to work.
By the time Prowl and Sentinel (with the toilet in tow, of course) just barely reached the construction site, the Constructicons already had the foundations laid out.
“We can’t promise this will work,” said the green one. Oh, wait. They’re all the green one. Whatever.
“Yes, you can,” replied Sentinel, inspecting his golden hands for damage. If they were Construct icons and construction specialists , couldn’t they just figure it out? “ Make it work.”
Sentinel thought he heard a “That’s not how physics does things” as the Constructicon left. He ignored it and turned around, only to see that Prowl had somehow disappeared. “What the —”
“He left because he didn’t want to be around his exes,” said Airachnid, answering his unspoken question without having to ask what it was. She had suddenly popped up out of nowhere, and at this point, Sentinel could proudly say that he was at least a little bit more adjusted to it than he had been when they had first met. He definitely hadn’t just startled violently.
Sentinel took a moment to regain his composure before formulating a reply. “Yeah, I wouldn’t either. It’s already bad having my one-night stand be my brother-in-law, but —” He didn’t get to finish his sentence as a roaring explosion of sound came from behind him, accompanied by the shrieks and shouts of some of the Constructicons. Airachnid dove to the ground, taking Sentinel with her.
“Seriously?” came a high-pitched cry from within the explosion as the dust began to settle.
“Who — oh, it’s you !” screeched Sentinel. It was the hammer guy, the little brown mech that had been used as a mallet to nail the 95 theses to his door!
The small mech stared up at him from inside the exploded toilet. “Um. No, it isn’t! Bye!” In another puff of explosion dust, he disappeared.
“No! Foiled again!” wailed Sentinel.
At least he had his solid gold toilet.