Chapter Text
Everything Motormaster had learnt about human holidays, he’d learnt it against his will. Mostly because their satellite network aired shows about them nonstop — he knew precisely what day the mythical being ‘Santa Claus’ would descend and it was the same day their hero was born (a made-up guy, like Vector Prime) for some reason. Now when the new year’d started and the TV flashed bright colours again, he did his best to ignore it and hope it’d cut back to Knight Rider.
He twisted himself and curled up a little further. Somehow he manoeuvred his trucklike legs onto the sofa (which was far too small for this sort of thing). If he could will the volume of the commercial down maybe he could take a nap.
All hopes of that were dashed when the door to Wildrider’s room swished open; Motormaster knew that sound preempted chaos. He couldn’t see from this position, but he could hear the clanks and thuds of Wildrider dancing out. Something pink landed on his faceplates and chassis. He wiped it off. It looked like shreds of paper though.
Wildrider sang some horrible, too-cheery tune as he pranced and threw confetti all over the place.
Motormaster sat up and twisted around, scowling before he could even see him. The sofa sagged as he jabbed a finger in Wildrider’s direction. “Shut up. ‘N’ clean this scrap up, now."
Wildrider had the gall (or the lunacy) to reply, “But Boss, it’s Valentine’s Day!”
“I don’t give a slag-eatin’ nanite what dumb day it is!”
“It means we gotta be nice to each other!” Wildrider hopped out of Motormaster’s swipe at him and the truckbuild debated if it was worth the effort of getting up. He could shut him up by putting a few dents in him, but sometimes if Wildrider was determined he’d just flee and say something embarrassing to someone who mattered. The Decepticons already weren’t happy with them — gossip about them being not Cybertronian enough needed to die down.
Another door slid open. This time it was Dead End’s, made obvious by him just standing there, book in front of his face. He didn’t seem disturbed by the noise even though he really fraggin’ ought to be, because if Wildrider wasn’t cleaning that trash up it’d be his duty next.
Dead End started before Wildrider could, “Actually Motormaster, I believe this holiday will be of interest to you. Saint Valentine was a Roman saint who was martyred—”
Motormaster felt as confused as Wildrider looked, but he interrupted anyway. “Gimme that.” And like an obedient dog Dead End quietened and walked over, handing his book over, even taking the care to turn it upside down for him.
Motormaster read over what he could of the text, but it lost him the moment it started using fancy words like ‘Christian’ and ‘ Diocletianic Persecution’. But he did glance over the bit on executions, ‘cuz that was pretty neat. Further reading revealed an image of a flying human wielding a weapon… though the fact he was naked perturbed him. Perhaps humans hadn’t invented clothes yet.
“Cut to the chase,” he snapped when his interest waned. He wasn’t that keen in reading what looked like a textbook.
“Saint Valentine was a deity of war and this is a day celebrating it. See this?” Dead End pointed to one of the pages featuring the red symbols Motormaster had seen plastered all over the TV now. “This is a ‘heart’, the organ that functions as a human fuel pump. Displaying one is about sending a threat.”
Wildrider was enraptured. “Well I’ll be. ‘N’ I thought it was all about lovey-dovey stuff!”
But Dead End reasonably pointed out, “Humans are famously a rather warmongering race,” and that was true. Primus forbid they ever acquired real space travel beyond the dingy little system they were all currently stuck in.
“Finally somethin’ that makes sense around here,” Motormaster muttered. But it was with the huff of his vents because really he couldn’t give less of a scrap, especially because their approach to rivalry looked the same as their approach to anything else — sweaty and gross.
“You should send Onslaught a Valentine’s card.”
“You should take my foot up your aft.”
But Wildrider’s pink optics were twinkling. “Oooh!” He threw the rest of his confetti out, which was a bunch of them left loose inside his subspace. It wavered to the floor as Motormaster reconsidered his chances of crawling back to berth.”We can all help! Since Dead End’s good at words ‘n’ I’m all good at the artsy stuff. If we pool our helms together we can make somethin’ real special.”
Motormaster doubted that.
But Dead End didn’t leave, which meant he’d been convinced.
At least when he was involved it was usually a good thing; he curbed Wildrider’s behaviour if he could be fragged enough to, and he was too smart for his own exhaust pipe. He tended to know more than he let on too. Maybe he knew this was kinda thing that’d drive Onslaught crazy.
“Fine, but you better not make me look like a blockhead.” If Motormaster was doing this he was gonna fraggin’ do it right. He’d get a fancy piece of steel and try to write on it with a laser pen, too. “You work on the words. And Wildrider, you… Uh, do whatever.”
Whatever stupid thing Wildrider came up with couldn't be any better than what Motormaster could himself but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. He nodded soldierly at his teammates and headed out the door to get started with his plans. They were left to sit there in the relative silence of the television still running off in the back. Drag Strip and Breakdown’s doors remained still. They were alone.
Wildrider beamed at Dead End. “How’d you manage that?”
They’d been on Earth long enough to know what the stupid human holiday was really about, and Onslaught probably had too — if not through cultural osmosis, then through researching what he could to gain an upper hand on invading their spaces. It was pretty fraggin’ funny how Motormaster didn’t, even though he spent all his time watching fleshy TV and pretending it wasn’t that great.
“A confidence trick,” Dead End replied mildly. When Wildrider came to him with the idea of pulling a prank on their esteemed leader, he’d thought it a perfect moment for payback on Motormaster stealing his favourite polish and the lies had easily fallen into place. “He trusts me enough not to check anything I say. And he’ll probably continue to do so after this.”
With his help they’d make the cutest, corniest card ever written, with just enough subtlety that it’d fly over Motormaster’s dull processor and right into Onslaught’s lap.