Chapter Text
So there's this top-secret, super special club I know of. Kinda like a secret society -- Freemasons or some shit -- except it's not really a club you'd want to belong to, because the name of the club is Decepticons Want Me Dead.
I first found out about this club a couple of years ago, when my Saturday morning anime cut out in the middle and some giant alien robot started threatening to smash shit up unless humanity as a whole found him a boyfriend.
Or, y’know, something like that. Honestly, I’ve met Sam Witwicky since, and I don’t see the attraction. But I guess Megatron wasn’t after some anal-probing action, because the next I heard was the Great Pyramid got eaten by some gigantic fucking death robot which was then shot by an experimental rail gun mounted on a US Navy ship in the Red Sea, and all of a sudden there was another giant alien robot on TV, but this time he was on the six o’clock news like a civilised person, announcing to the entire planet through Reuters and CNN International that Earth had become the latest battleground in an alien civil war. But that’s okay, because his side were around and they wanted to protect us!
As alien first contact scenarios go, it could have been worse. Thermonuclear worse. Humankind is nothing but adaptable, and the daily top stories were back to sports stars and politicians behaving badly within mere weeks.
Later on, I met a new friend online. Their name was Mlle. (It actually is not, but I didn’t know their real name until later, so I had to work with what I was given. It’s pronounced ‘mill’ in my head.) I knew they were an academic from the first conversation -- far too much biology and shit for a layman, though happily I do not mean shit in the literal sense here, something which I gather is a legit concern for them. I knew they wrote fucking evil fic, the sort I have to read backwards from the epilogue to make sure nobody else’s babies die.
I did not know they were a bloody idiot. But then they went and wrote The Paper That Pissed Everyone Off, going above and beyond in pursuit of proving me wrong. And got themself onto Megatron’s personal shit list.
Megatron. Now there’s a name.
He is, of course, the giant alien asshole who interrupted my Saturday morning cartoon. Back in the early 2010’s, he got his ass kicked big time by Optimus Prime (hell of a name there too!) and laid low for the next couple of years, fortunately while the UN was having its first few conniptions over the idea of working with real live ETs. He made his big comeback recently with an attack on some US military base in Europe, and since then shit’s been flying off the handle every couple of weeks like clockwork.
The episode which involved Mlle took place about four months ago. The first I knew of it was when they got on Skype that evening, gibbering. They didn’t tell us much at that stage -- fucking academic research guidelines or some shit -- but that didn’t matter. We found out exactly what had happened three months later, after they’d published their research.
Unfortunately for me, there's a few too many terrible fanfics floating around out there on the World Wide Web with my name next to theirs in the authors slot. Which means that despite the literal Pacific Ocean between us, I get my own cyber security detachment, just to make sure no Decepticons try to get to them through me.
I mean. Look at my tumblr, full of lovingly crafted xeno smut. Now look back at me. Doesn’t sound likely, does it?
Anyway. Moving on.
My security detachment’s name is Mirage. My first impression of him went thus: he thinks he's so much hot shit my mum coulda dug him out of her compost heap.
Let me explain some family history. My grandma grew up in a one-room shack in the boondocks of the town Mick Jagger once lovingly called the arsehole of the world. My grandpa was a real mountain man who vanished into the hills to go gold-panning every so often. My mum’s been everything from a mechanic to an electrician to a single mother and an architectural technician. The eventual result is me, a part-time fast food lackey with an instinctive distrust of anything that hints at money and class.
Mirage’s alt mode is a fucking Bugatti Chiron. This is a car that sells for two point four million euros, AKA three point fucking six million NZD, AKA more money than my family has ever had over the entire twenty-three-year stretch I've been alive -- cumulatively .
So this sonuvabitch rocks up in my Skype contacts one evening, all polite and smooth-talking, just like you'd expect from someone with a paint job that expensive. He's all like, look, your friend is an idiot -- a smart idiot, but an idiot nonetheless -- and now I'm going to be overseeing your online interactions for the foreseeable future.
To which I'm like, what the fuck.
I called Mlle on Skype that afternoon, and asked them about the same thing.
They took a while to answer. Trying to avoid the question, I'd’a thought, except Mlle hasn't got an avoidant bone in their body. That's half their problem, when it comes to giant alien robot warlords. When they finally got around to answering, they fessed up pretty much immediately:
“I, uh, may have interviewed Megatron about Decepticon ethical practices regarding medical treatment and patient rights. Look, he had my van carried off by Skywarp, and I'd filed the protocols already, so I thought, you know, may as well make the best of the situation.”
So here I am, regretting my life choices and especially my taste in co-authors. Mlle, ILU dearly, but you're fucking nuts.