milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

bumblebee,
rad

(no subject)

"-I was passing my time away
To the left and to the right
Bulidings towering to the sky
It's out of sight-"

Bumblebee's still pretty thrilled about how things worked out at home after all the hell Megatron and Shockwave put everyone through. Hence the choice of song. On the other hand he's here now, and that's good too; it's been a while since he's seen some people. Getting everything back in working order at home keeps a mech busy as anything. Nothing wrong with a little R&R.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Which is cheery enough to make Rad think a little less about the situation back in his home universe.

Perhaps he will ask bar to serve up two suitably-Cybertronian drinks as a way of extended greeting?

When the glowing cube arrives Bumblebee looks up and waves. It's been a good day, busy as it is.

They're modest-sized cubes, given that both mechs are roughly the same size in the bar.

"I've never seen you this happy and content in some time. Good news from your world?"

A comic-book style speech bubble appears above Bumblebee's head:

"You could say that, yes."

That's so new it earns a double-take and a near-dropping of the cubes.

"I'm glad to hear that and when did you learn to do that?"

If Bumblebee had lungs he would sigh. Instead he merely changes the words in his speech balloon.

"Skywarp shattered my vocalizer. Ratchet doesn't think a new one will take. I got a hologram projector built instead."

Rad's used to Bumblebee's speech issues. But this? Is weird with a capital W.

"Ingenious."

Pause.

"What happened and when was this?"

Yeah, he's concerned about the well-being of his other-universe friend.

"Once upon a time," says the voice of Jon Bon Jovi, "not so long ago-"

"I'm sorry," says the speech balloon. "I couldn't resist. It was recently. A lot of things have happened... you'll want to hear them."

"And I'm going to sit for this."

The cubes are placed at a table.

This sounds Important.

Bumblebee nods and sits down at the table. After some thought he switches the balloon out for a projected white scroll on which the words roll up from the bottom. This may, after all, take a while.

"I believe I said last time we met that Earth had been orbitally blockaded by the Decepticons. A handful of Autobots had tried to run the blockade- Hound, Moonracer, and Wheelie. Wheelie did not make it through alive; Moonracer was badly injured; and Hound was hurt so badly his trajectory brought him down out of our sensor range."

"Strategic."

It takes a master tactician to pull that off with casualties.

"Hound survived, right? Moonracer too?"

Bumblebee nods. "Ratchet was able to save Moonracer," the scroll says. "Hound landed on a military base. One with many of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. They put him back together."

The text pauses.

"There was one other in their group, but he fell back at the minor planets to hold off their pursuers. Shockwave captured him and put his parts to use."

Rad might have turned pale at that thought.

Using the parts of others after spark-loss is not as widely-practised on his world, but it is done.

And always with the utmost respect for the deceased.

So he feels cold inside thinking of Shockwave recycling someone else for nefarious purposes.

"Without full honours given. Was he the only one to suffer that fate?"

He's also feeling sick inside.

"It is worse than that," the scroll says, and then disappears. In its place a minuscule crawler drone perhaps half the size of Frenzy's final form in Bee's universe appears. Then another, and then several more. A moment later they vanish and the scroll resumes. "Shockwave apparently found a process by which he could convert an entire mech into an equivalent mass of sparkless drones under his command. He called them the Swarm."

Consuming energon will have to wait until Rad can even think of consuming anything.

This is... This is...

Sickening is what it is.

"There was a Swarm back home. People died. It devoured them." Pause. "Even Prime faced it. Only his spark chamber was left when it was done. He said the last person he saw consumed was Jhiaxus, who dared to challenge it."

And this Swarm was likely more mindless and even more ruthless than Rad's. Optimus managed to reason with that one in the end.

Bumblebee nods.

"I am afraid," the scroll says, "that the mech that Shockwave used for this was Hot Rod."

Rad is just one big :O!

There's nothing he can make his audio circuits say in response.

Sitting down for this was a wise choice, and better than falling down in shock.

"I am sorry."

After the words scroll away at the top, he resumes.

"The Decepticons began a series of strikes across the planet shortly afterwards. We had secured the full cooperation of several major governments and their militaries, so we moved to assist them wherever we could, but the strike zones were scattered across the planet. It was very obviously a diversion tactic, but one we could not afford to allow to pass."

Rad will mourn later, because to him Hot Rod became Rodimus Prime after Optimus. And this is part of the reason why he will keep this information away from his leader.

Rodimus feels enough guilt over Optimus. No need to trouble him with alternate selves too.

"Shockwave is a master tactician. One of the best the Decepticon army has ever had."

Pause.

"And he knew you had to be out-numbered with some of you on Earth and the others in space. Diabolical."

"Yes. And he had another plan in mind from the beginning. The waters where Megatron's body was sunk by the humans are deep and were patrolled by the humans' navies, but there isn't much their fleet can do when a Decepticon the size of an aircraft carrier smashes into them from orbit. They had brought Tidal Wave to serve as their base of operations, and they sent bots down to retrieve Megatron from the deep- among other things."

That's Shockwave for you. His plans are as dimensional as a dodecahedron, and possibly more so.

"New name for me."

Pause.

"That couldn't have been much trouble for them. We can survive space. Water pressure in the tons is not that hard to withstand."

In other words the mission to secure Megatron's corpse had to be absurdly easy. With intentions that did not involve recycling their dead leader.

"Did... Did they make him operational?"

Zombie-tron is a scary thought.

"It required locating the Matrix of Leadership," says the text scroll. "And capturing Sam Witwicky, the last living being to handle the Allspark."

"But yes."

"And together they made him more than just operational."

If he knew about it he'd liken it to Optimus Primal's return to life after the destruction of the Planet Buster. Not just kinda back but BACK.

"Shockwave would never leave the leadership open to chance when he had a proven leader to rebuild and the means to rebuild him."

Bumblebee nods. "The Matrix was lost long ago, in the time of the Second Prime and Second Lord," the text-scroll says. "When Megatron's plans for the galaxy first began to take shape he ordered Shockwave to search for anything that could bring him to victory. He had been calculating its likely path and position for longer than most mechs had been alive. It was not very hard for him to send Skywarp and Thundercracker to find it, and then to find where we were trying to retrieve Sam as quickly as possible."

Time and patience and logic.

Rad never wanted to face his own Shockwave in battle, and he wanted to face this one even less.

"What happened to Sam? Is he alive?"

Note that he did not ask if Sam was well, when Sam would be lucky to live through it.