Tag: Slenderwave

Soundwave has already visited Smokescreen tonight. There’s one, however, who may well be the reason the shields were dropped in the first place, and Soundwave has a borrowed mission to complete. The warmonger must be made to stay on his planet, afraid to expand.

The walking phobia shield joins his holomatter double in roaming the ship, if from the opposite end, scraping at what he can sense of Megatron’s mind, whispering to it, taunting it.

Megatron is old and weak now. His frame crumbles. His spark flickers. The war has taken its toll on him, draining the life from him, just as he has drained the life from all who have ever surrounded him. From the planet itself. From his so-called friends, and those he wanted to rule. From his beloved. Hasn’t he? And it’s so tiring.

His statues will weather. His name will fall off other mech’s lips, forgotten. His works will crumble and be built over, replaced with newer, shinier things by a mech he’s never met. These things are not important. The people are, and one by one, he has failed them. One by one, he has broken them all, and still the fires of hatred burn in his spark.

Soon, he will be alone. The few who are left will find out what he did and leave him, unable to trust him. So many have already abandoned him. So many cannot be called back. Much longer and he won’t even have the chance to try anymore. He’ll fade from silver to grey with no one there to remember him as he was, or might have been, or wanted to be. All the time he might have spent reconciling and creating will have been wasted on these petty grudges and furies, these pointless, endless battles.

It’s too little, and for both of them, much too late. Isn’t it, Megatron? Isn’t it?

These are no foreign thoughts to him. In the years since Cybertron’s fall, there have always been those who, rightfully so, have blamed him for everything. When he was laying broken in an Earthen stream, he had already felt forgotten, a relic of a bygone era, having failed from the very beginning.

These thoughts are no longer his own. He may not be immortal, perhaps his age and the constant beat of battles against his plating have worn him down, but he is still here, and he is not finished. So long as he functions, Megatron will fight to leave behind a world better than the one he was forged into. To have these thoughts crop up so suddenly and clash so harshly with his own mindset curls his intake into a snarl. The other Soundwave had infiltrated his ship. And here he thought things had been going so well.

Leaving his room, Megatron stalks the halls, on the hunt for that damned alternate. He projects the thorniest thoughts he can, about how lucky he has it all from the decision to run away.

Turning a corner, he nearly crashes into a familiar lanky frame and steps back to unsheath his sword, only to find his own Soundwave, unmasked and glaring daggers up at him. His irritation vanishes, replaced by immense relief and confusion to see his conjunx up and walking. He reaches out with his hand and with his field, but there is nothing to greet either as Soundwave backs away. He hasn’t looked this angry in eons, but his typical telepathy is completely absent. Shocking Megatron further, he begins to speak, in the beautiful singsong voice he’s missed so much.

“How dare you!” The backs of thin digits crack across the warlord’s face, the tips leaving faint scratches. Megatron can’t comprehend what’s happening, only able to stare in horror.

“He’s gone!” Soundwave continued, wailing in fury. “Megatron: took Unicron away, I can not feel him… You can not replace him. You are no god!!” He went to strike Megatron again but he caught the slim arm this time, finally able to gather his words despite the sinking feeling in his spark.

“Stop this! If he were not put to an end, not only me but our entire-”

“I WOULD RATHER HAVE HIM! I don’t want to be yours!!”

The cry echoed through the halls, leaving only silence in its wake. Megatron’s mind raced. All of this was wrong, and he could do nothing… but also felt nothing.

Soundwave’s fury was never silent. He should be able to hear and feel the rage and despair  rolling off of him in telepathic waves, but his mind was unplauged. All of this was wrong…

“This… isn’t you, is it?” It was more of a statement than a question. Someone was playing at this… It had to be. Even so, Megatron still had to fight to maintain his composure. He couldn’t bare this if it were true, surely it couldn’t be. Drawing his sword, Megatron began to advance, not quite sure if he was making a mistake. “You aren’t real. You wouldn’t… He wouldn’t do this…”

Right?

Rubbing Salt

 slenderwave‌:

 mightymegatron‌:

Megatron found himself unable to sleep despite having filmed something for an upcoming public announcement earlier. He looked over at Soundwave’s form, silent and unmoving as ever.  Laserbeak slept docked in his chest, which rose and fell in incredibly minute intervals that may easily be missed if one didn’t stare. Nothing was improving, and if those readings were accurate, Singer was having to give him higher doses of medication. He would have to ask about that.

As it did often now, Megatron’s mind wandered. Perhaps something in his archived files would keep him occupied, some memory that would give insight into a solution here. Instead, a datapacket titled “Personal Guidelines, Subject: Atonement” sat unopened at the forefront of his archives, sent from Soundwave’s alternate. He thought he had deleted it… He may as well listen to what the defector had to say.

Keep reading

Most days, nothing beyond a certain level of unpleasantness happened in Soundwave’s territory without his knowledge. Fights which could not be resolved were mediated by Ravage, who had become known for being cold and impartial but fair. Repairs and medical issues were either seen to by those with the skill to perform them or outsourced to mechs from other settlements. Threats both non-sentient and otherwise were swiftly dealt with in whichever manner Soundwave considered most appropriate – typically by thoroughly convincing them that they were not the most dangerous creatures in the area.

But even he could be surprised from time to time.

Keep reading

A small part of Megatron took great pleasure in how uncomfortable Soundwave looked when he first appeared. How anxiety read so easily in the angles of his tensed and unsure frame. 

The rest of him turns the reason that he’s able to read those cues so well into a distilled ball of bitter resentment. He sneers as if he can taste the feeling, wanting to spit it back into this other Soundwave’s mask. Instead, the only warning before he swings is the release for his sword to slide from its place in his arm. It’s not a move motivated by impulse alone; from experience, he knows that giving this opponent too much time to prepare is a deadly mistake.

“You’ve made that perfectly clear, old friend!! Fleeing somewhere I could not follow, throwing your lances from afar! All that I could tolerate, even if I couldn’t forgive your loss!” 

Rubbing Salt

Megatron found himself unable to sleep despite having filmed something for an upcoming public announcement earlier. He looked over at Soundwave’s form, silent and unmoving as ever.  Laserbeak slept docked in his chest, which rose and fell in incredibly minute intervals that may easily be missed if one didn’t stare. Nothing was improving, and if those readings were accurate, Singer was having to give him higher doses of medication. He would have to ask about that.

As it did often now, Megatron’s mind wandered. Perhaps something in his archived files would keep him occupied, some memory that would give insight into a solution here. Instead, a datapacket titled “Personal Guidelines, Subject: Atonement” sat unopened at the forefront of his archives, sent from Soundwave’s alternate. He thought he had deleted it… He may as well listen to what the defector had to say.

Moments later, Megatron was bent over himself, optics wide in agony. He deleted the file, but he’d seen it all, every tortured swing, every cry of despair as Soundwave blamed himself. The warlord was shaking. Immediately, Singer was at his side, concerned with the disturbing spikes in his read-outs, attempting to scan Megatron’s frame. Before he could get very far, the vehicon was lifted by his shoulder, made to stare into searing optics through red battle filters.

“Call in a bridge. There is someone I need to tear apart.”

Within minutes, leaving a poor frightened medic in his wake, Megatron stood in air that would have obliterated him mere months ago. Despite his appearance, there was no trace of Unicron left within him, and therefore nothing for the barrier here to react to. 

The inhabitants however were another story. 

He had arrived just outside of Dancitron, in full view of twenty or so minibots. The sheer volume of their alert shrieks forced Megatron to dampen his audial receptors, but neither the noise nor the error warnings his frame was giving him dissuaded him from his purpose. He opened up a crackling comm channel, growling across the airwaves.

::You and I have unfinished business to discuss.::

Unicron Hunting: Planning

verdigrisprowl:

Soundwave, Prowl, Smokescreen and Bumblebee meet up to discuss how they’re going to combat Unicron. The plan is to have Bumblebee bridge into the atmosphere to scout for any obvious signs of Unicron on the surface, and then they’ll all bridge down and split up to hunt for him and his herald: Prowl solo, Soundwave solo, and Smokescreen & Bumblebee together. Anybody who runs into him comms the rest of the group, and then try to reliquary him or, if necessary, Matrix him.

Keep reading

Meet Your Unmaker

verdigrisprowl:

Soundwave had a deck of many things and invited people to draw. Megatron drew. He got the card that banishes your spark from your frame. Soundwave spent a couple of minutes gloating and sending celebratory pictures to Prowl, until Megatron’s dark-energon-soaked now-sparkless body, unsurprisingly, reanimated. After a hurried explanation to Prowl, Prowl arranged to come over and help hunt for the terrorcon. And here we are.

Megatron’s Soundwave, a herald of Unicron, briefly blocks them off. After hitting the herald with the psychological warfare equivalent of a nuke, they continue on to Megatron’s body. And find that it’s already been occupied by Unicron.

They are both scared completely shitless.

They retreat. And now they’ve got to figure out what to do about him.

Keep reading

::Do any of those cards of yours do anything actually helpful?::

slenderwave:

slenderwave:

Ugh. Who told him? It was Smokescreen, wasn’t it?

Soundwave sends a confirmation ping from the throwaway frequency he’s been using and thinks. He wasn’t going to allow any Megatrons to try, mostly because of those helpful things, but… he’s seen some pretty nasty stuff as well, and there’s that Void card he heard about. Imagine separating Megatron’s spark from his frame and getting it trapped in a bottle, or a box, or something like that. It’d solve an awful lot of problems, wouldn’t it?

…He’ll wait and see if Megatron has anything else to say.

A rather sizable threat, but one he’s faced a version of before and survived. And he isn’t clueless about Megatron’s new weaknesses. As long as he can avoid getting shot or run through, he might have a chance – if forced to fight for one. He’d rather not be put in that position. He has plans that’ll be inconvenienced if he has to spend time recuperating in a hospital.

[[Those are not memories he cares to recall.]] If he could do so without damaging his understanding of how he got to where he now is in life, he would happily delete them. Especially the ones concerning his alternate. Just thinking about being enslaved by the Chaos Bringer… not to mention enjoying it and wanting to corrupt others. It made his plating crawl.

Soundwave keeps quiet while Megatron reaches for the top card, watching, waiting, hoping something unpleasant will happen to Megatron to make up for all the things he can’t and never was able to do with his own two hands.

Then the card is turned over to show a pitch-black face, and before Soundwave’s optics can even finish widening behind his mask, Megatron clatters to the floor like so much scrap metal. No biolights. No ventilations. No sounds indicating ongoing internal function.

Soundwave goes so far as to nudge the helm with a foot, but senses nothing. For all intents and purposes, Megatron has finally fallen, and it is fantastic. It is the greatest thing he could possibly have done with this deck. Why, it even outranks sending Jazz to Primus-knows-where.

He immediately subspaces the deck and snaps a few fast shots of Megatron’s empty husk as proof of his accomplishment, knowing it won’t be long before his hideous alternate comes searching for the mech. Fights with Megatrons don’t worry him all that much, but fights with himself are something else entirely. It’ll be too dangerous to use bridges once they arrive, and he doesn’t know the layout of this mine or how to get out the regular way. He’s got a couple of minutes at most. Probably closer to a few seconds.

…Definitely sending these to Prowl. That should take care of any lingering doubts about his willingness to do what needs be done when it comes to Megatrons across the multiverse.

Megatron sees the card’s face and the light fades from his optics, frame collapsing, lifeless, to the floor. His spark is elsewhere, the weak light sealed in a photonic crystal, unaware of anything but the cold darkness that surrounds him, and the presence of something large. 

Meanwhile, his frame is the star of Soundwave’s photoshoot, but the spy may notice in his last few shots that his subject hasn’t remained completely still. After he’s done sending the images, Megatron’s husk makes a gutteral snarl, clambering to his full height. His optics are nothing but a vivid purple as the massive, armed terrorcon makes to grab Soundwave in any way he can, a wild roar in Megatron’s voice echoing in the bowels of the tunnel.

::Do any of those cards of yours do anything actually helpful?::

 slenderwave:

slenderwave:

Ugh. Who told him? It was Smokescreen, wasn’t it?

Soundwave sends a confirmation ping from the throwaway frequency he’s been using and thinks. He wasn’t going to allow any Megatrons to try, mostly because of those helpful things, but… he’s seen some pretty nasty stuff as well, and there’s that Void card he heard about. Imagine separating Megatron’s spark from his frame and getting it trapped in a bottle, or a box, or something like that. It’d solve an awful lot of problems, wouldn’t it?

…He’ll wait and see if Megatron has anything else to say.

mightymegatron

He wanted to snap back, to explain how wrong Soundwave was. Energon, dark energon, what he fueled with didn’t matter. The corruption was systematic, spreading to whatever new fuel he consumed. He could drink nothing but the purest mid-grade and it wouldn’t make a Pit-damned difference! But, arguing wouldn’t get him much farther, either. This version of Soundwave had no reason to believe a word he said, after all. Megatron wondered briefly why he didn’t feel the same.

The place he chooses is a spot deep underground, an abandoned mine that has yet to be re-excavated. As a result, energon crystals erupt from the ground and hang from the ceiling, massive chandeliers lighting the cavern with their blue glow. Apart from them, there is nothing above or below ground for miles. He’s given a message to his own spymaster to follow to his coordinates if he does not return in an hour. When the portal swirls open, Megatron opens his arms as if to greet an old friend.

“Welcome back, Soundwave. What a pleasure to see you again in person. I assume the feeling is not mutual.”

Megatron didn’t have to explain. Soundwave knew. He’d seen the experiments Shockwave did with it, and he’d watched the corruption grow inside his planet after they used the energon bridge. It was just easier to blame the dark energon he doubted Megatron had given up consuming – especially since he’d received no word that Megatron had ever even looked into having his corruption burned away, as was done for others. By Primus, by a Prime… whatever would work, though the idea of Megatron asking any of the latter for help was so unbelievable Soundwave nearly didn’t have it in the first place.

But that’s a matter for another meeting.

Soundwave ignores the open arms and fails to offer his former leader any form of polite greeting, instead staring over Megatron’s head at the energon glowing above it.

[[You assume correctly.]]

It looks normal. And aside from Megaton, nothing here gives him that feeling of being sick to his spark. Nor can he sense others lurking in the background.

…He should’ve brought one of the twins. They could’ve told him if Megatron had weakened the mine in preparation for bringing it down on his helm. Hopefully he’ll be able to get a bridge up in time if so.

[[He’d rather not stay longer than necessary. Draw your cards.]] And don’t touch him in the process. He doesn’t want those tainted claws so much as thinking of brushing across his fingertips. They’re already curled in as close as they can be without dropping the deck.

Megatron allows Soundwave to confirm that he’s come alone, although the former warlord is a rather sizable threat by himself. The cannon and sword mounted to his arm are merely reminders of this. He closes the distance between them but keeps his claws to himself, for now. Let Soundwave remain free of his vile touch.

“Pity. Here I thought that we could reminisce.” He smirks, looking the other over as well. He seems genuinely anxious, which comforts Megatron. If Soundwave had something up his servo and was assured that it would work, he would be calmer. He takes a single card from the innocent-looking cards, but their power is a palpable thing. This might be a mistake, but it’s one he’s certain he can curtail.

The one he takes is from the top, with little hesitation.

::Do any of those cards of yours do anything actually helpful?::

 slenderwave:

 mightymegatron:

slenderwave:

Ugh. Who told him? It was Smokescreen, wasn’t it?

Soundwave sends a confirmation ping from the throwaway frequency he’s been using and thinks. He wasn’t going to allow any Megatrons to try, mostly because of those helpful things, but… he’s seen some pretty nasty stuff as well, and there’s that Void card he heard about. Imagine separating Megatron’s spark from his frame and getting it trapped in a bottle, or a box, or something like that. It’d solve an awful lot of problems, wouldn’t it?

…He’ll wait and see if Megatron has anything else to say.

Not knowing anything of the severity of these cards, Megatron figures that he’s been through and shrugged off enough magic in the past. Surely it can’t do any harm that couldn’t be reversed… 

And as far as he knows, he’s on better terms with this Soundwave. Not good terms, not by a long shot. But better. He hasn’t forgotten their agreement.

::Alright then. Although, if I am to draw one for myself, I’m afraid you’ll have to come to me. My fuel “disagrees” with your atmosphere.::

[[Perhaps you shouldn’t be fueling on it, then.]]

He managed to cut the thought off before the word coward slipped out of his mind and into Megatron’s, but not before he had the thought at all. Damnation. Well, if Megatron knew it was him and still wanted to risk drawing, that was fine.

[[Very well. He will go to you… but you must provide a location as barren as this one, come alone, and leave all other tainted mechs and objects behind.]] If he catches one whiff of his alternate or that vile substance, all deals are off – and he might just try to finish the job Bumblebee didn’t. [[Has he made himself clear?]]

He wanted to snap back, to explain how wrong Soundwave was. Energon, dark energon, what he fueled with didn’t matter. The corruption was systematic, spreading to whatever new fuel he consumed. He could drink nothing but the purest mid-grade and it wouldn’t make a Pit-damned difference! But, arguing wouldn’t get him much farther, either. This version of Soundwave had no reason to believe a word he said, after all. Megatron wondered briefly why he didn’t feel the same.

The place he chooses is a spot deep underground, an abandoned mine that has yet to be re-excavated. As a result, energon crystals erupt from the ground and hang from the ceiling, massive chandeliers lighting the cavern with their blue glow. Apart from them, there is nothing above or below ground for miles. He’s given a message to his own spymaster to follow to his coordinates if he does not return in an hour. When the portal swirls open, Megatron opens his arms as if to greet an old friend.

“Welcome back, Soundwave. What a pleasure to see you again in person. I assume the feeling is not mutual.”