Chapter Text
The first thing Soundwave saw was a blinding flash, followed by searing pain that tore through his systems, wrenching him from stasis as suddenly as a starquake splits a magnetar. His circuits went haywire, joints convulsing, and he knew immediately the source—electric shock.
But Soundwave was a gladiator. Thus he did not lose his head for a moment even as his uncontrollable spasms sent him tumbling from the berth onto the floor. One leg shot out like a piston and impacted upon something solid, followed by a screech the dark mech knew all too well. But he could react no further, for his vision was still full of sparks, electricity coursing through his frame rendering him paralyzed and half-stunned.
A pede hooked Soundwave’s chassis, rolling him onto his back. The spy stared up at crimson optics, a baleful, arrogant sneer he had felt upon him many times, but had never before been acted upon. Energon oozed neon blue from a gash on the other mech’s faceplate where Soundwave’s razor heelstrut had gouged into it, and the sight gave the dark bot some satisfaction even as he continued to convulse helplessly upon the floor.
“Dear Soundwave, I knew you weren’t the social type, but is that any way to welcome a guest?” Starscream chided, leaning on the prod gripped in his servo and wiping energon from his faceplate. The grating tone of his voice indicated his pride was tarnished by the minor wound, but he was keeping his temper in check for the time being. “All I wanted to do was drop by and have a little chat, just the two of us.”
Soundwave tried to twist himself towards the wall behind him, to strike it, anything to make a noise. Megatron’s quarters were just beyond, if he could only alert him—
“Oh, I wouldn’t bother with that,” Starscream said, giving a cruel smile at his victim’s efforts. “Megatron will not be aware of anything for some time. Quite amazing what a little sedative slipped into his pre-stasis energon dose will do; I must try it more often.”
With every passing moment the electricity coursed through Soundwave’s systems, he fought to contain the panic threatening to overwhelm him. He had been in such situations before, but never from within his own faction. He had to use his limited range of motion to play up the frightened victim, keep Starscream talking while he formulated a plan.
“Do not worry, our lord will wake at his usual time as if nothing had happened,” the silver seeker assured him, taking a cruel pleasure in the distressed movements of his prey’s helm toward the wall where Megatron’s quarters lay beyond. “But until then, the ship could break apart around him and he would not stir.”
Starscream leaned down to caress the dark mech’s jaw with one razor digit, his voice low and predatory. “I’ve got you all to myself.”
The seeker saw the motion of Soundwave’s visor to look past him and chuckled darkly. He turned to follow his victim’s gaze to where a small, birdlike figure sat motionless upon the floor, apparently having fallen from its berth in a similar manner to Soundwave.
“Unfortunately, dearest Laserbeak will not be accompanying us tonight,” Starscream informed the slender mech before him, crimson optics like burning coals in the dim room. “It only took a minor jolt to short-circuit him; he never even saw me coming.”
The light mech took an involuntary step back as Soundwave’s tendrils lashed out, but these too fell uselessly to the floor, writhing under the effect of the electricity still engulfing their bearer. Starscream smiled, knowing he had hit a soft spot with the minicon and relishing the feeling of power. At last, the tables were turned.
“I understand you once had many like Laserbeak,” The seeker remarked, his tone deceptively casual. “Eons ago, before the war. What were some of their names? Rumble, Frenzy, Ravage…ah, so many lost, some even perishing in your very servos. Now, our dear little friend is the only survivor. It would be a great tragedy if anything were to befall him.”
Soundwave’s posture gave no reaction to this remark save for the odd convulsion. But Starscream felt the spy’s stare burning into him beneath the visor and smiled.
“I knew you’d catch on,” the seeker purred, placing one knee upon the dark mech’s chassis and leaning down until their faceplates were inches apart. “You’re a smart bot, after all. Too smart, in fact, for my liking.”
Here Starscream’s amusement faded, turning to pent-up resentment. “I understand you and your little birdie have been watching me,” he growled. “You’ve been recording my every move, and like a good dog, taking that information back to our dear Megatron.”
Soundwave allowed himself no reaction to this news, but internally his mind was racing. So that was what the seeker was after.
Starscream extended razor digits, hooking the silent bot beneath the jaw and tipping his helm up to expose the fragile mechanisms of his throat. “I do hope you have not forgotten that I am still your superior,” he said, his voice a low, deadly croon. “And I do not take kindly to being spied upon by my subordinates. How might I go about punishing such improper behavior?”
Soundwave lay very still, his systems near overclocking. The electricity was almost flushed from his circuits, he needed only a few moments more. Until then, he had to exercise extreme caution. Under normal circumstances, he could squash the seeker without a second thought, but the current odds were not in his favor should the situation go south.
A sudden stab of pain upon his neck brought Soundwave’s attention sharply back to the crimson optics hovering an inch from his face.
“Are you listening to me?” Starscream grated out, his teeth bared in a snarl. One needle-sharp digit pierced the throat of the mech beneath him, carving across the mechanisms and leaving a trail of energon oozing in its wake. Soundwave clenched his jaw, not giving the seeker the pleasure of a reaction. His pain tolerance was high after eons in the pits—Starscream would have to do better than that.
As if sensing the dark mech’s shift in demeanor, Starscream’s optics narrowed. “Allow me to give you something to remember me by,” he rasped, extending his claws fully and penetrating the spy’s throat just enough for energon to ooze forth. “Something to remind you not to slither those tendrils of yours into places they have no business being.”
The electricity was nearly out of Soundwave’s systems, and a subtle flex of his digits, a clasp of the tendrils confirmed he had regained his motion. But Starscream still knelt upon his chassis, and one wrong move could send those razor claws slicing through the energon line to his head.
“Let me be crystal clear,” Starscream went on, digging his claws into Soundwave’s throat, unaware of his victim’s regained control. “Should I catch you spying on me again, there will be consequences. I am not so fool as to take you on myself, but let us simply say that…well, every little bird falls from the sky eventually.”
He leaned down, so close to Soundwave’s visor that his optics reflected on the sheet of dark glass. “Are we clear, dearest Soundwave?”
The dark bot stared back into burning optics. The seeker’s head filled his entire field of view, but Soundwave did not need to see to know where his tendrils would land, crackling with electricity.
Starscream screeched, his form twisting as the dark bot’s tendrils latched onto him, one onto the back of the silver mech’s helm, the other on the servo gripping the prod. The seeker staggered upright, but this did more harm than good. In one swift motion, Soundwave whisked his legs from between Starscream’s ankles and sent one pede smashing into the other bot’s chassis like a cannon shot, launching the smaller mech into the far wall where he slid to the floor, electricity wracking his circuits.
“N-now, Soundwave, let us discuss this,” Starscream sputtered out, all his bravado gone at the sight of that faceless, looming dread rising to swallow him in shadow. “I may have gotten, ah, too heated in my chastisement—”
Soundwave took a step towards him, and pure panic overtook the seeker. He screamed, trying to scrabble away, but met only the unyielding metal wall. The dark bot paced toward him, his steps as silent as inevitable doom, right up until the moment one long servo shot out, wiry digits wrapping around Starscream’s neck and pinning him to the floor as though he weighed nothing.
“You wouldn’t kill me, would you?” Starscream choked out a pathetic plea, his optics wide and frightened in his narrow face. The dark bot hovered over him like a black omen, tendrils coiling like serpents ready to strike. “What would Megatron say?”
Soundwave almost felt like laughing—rich of Starscream to invoke the warlord after all he had done.
But the seeker had a point, and like it or not, Starscream outranked him, even if the gladiator’s code permitted the assault of a superior in self-defense. Much as Soundwave would have preferred otherwise, he would let Megatron decide the treacherous seeker’s ultimate fate.
Under normal circumstances, the spy would simply move on, but Starscream had attempted to blackmail him with Laserbeak, a move Soundwave was not about to forgive so lightly. He would just have to curtail the other mech’s arrogance a touch, remind him who he was dealing with…but how, without injuring him?
Ah. That was how.
The dark mech’s other servo came up, and Starscream cringed, expecting retribution for the wounds he had inflicted on the other bot’s throat. But he would have preferred a hundred such wounds to what came instead.
Long, spidery digits clasped the edges of the visor. Expelled air broke in a soft stream upon Starscream’s petrified faceplate as the space behind the glass was decompressed. Soundwave lowered his visor, and Starscream looked in abject horror upon the face of the faceless.
Fire flickered in the recesses of jagged optics, reflecting in crimson dread upon the mass of contorted, visceral plating that was the dark bot’s face. Starscream felt he gazed upon that which was never meant to be seen, like the singularity forever cloaked from observers behind its event horizon. Such things were too terrible for living eyes to comprehend.
Then Soundwave’s twisted lips parted. And Starscream discovered that his level of terror, which he had thought was at its maximum, was not quite so high as it might have been. For now he looked into a maw of black, needle-like teeth embedded in that eldritch dread of a faceplate.
Starscream lay paralyzed, his limbs rigid with terror as Soundwave leaned down, bringing that awful face nearer and nearer until it hovered just beside the seeker’s audio receptor. Not a sound penetrated the dim room.
Then into that silence spoke a voice as deep as the blackness of space.
“Soundwave: superior.”
Starscream went limp beneath the slender mech. Soundwave drew back and saw the seeker had collapsed in a dead faint. A ghost of a smile crossed the spy’s terrible visage before it was mercifully hidden once more behind his visor.
Laserbeak stirred, chirruping weakly as Soundwave knelt at his side, siphoning some of his energy to the minicon through his tendrils. The small bot gave a shudder, flushing the remaining sparks from his systems, and at a nod from his master, returned to his berth. Soundwave would not need him for what tasks remained.
The dark bot stepped into the hall with the limp form of the seeker slung over one shoulder and set off on noiseless pedes. A vehicon once spotted the silent mech passing with his burden from far down a corridor, but the trooper only shivered and turned away, pretending he had not seen. Soundwave’s business was Soundwave’s alone. It was better that way.
Reaching Starscream’s quarters, Soundwave deposited the seeker’s limp form in a heap on the floor and swiftly returned the way he had come. The silver mech no longer posed a threat for the time being, and come daylight, would doubtless receive a berating for oversleeping. But what would he say—that he had attempted blackmail but had been foiled? No, he would likely sputter an excuse about bad dreams or turbulence before retreating to nurse his bruised ego and cast murderous looks at his oppressors.
Upon reaching Megatron’s quarters, Soundwave let himself in and found the warlord just as Starscream had said—deep in stasis upon his berth, with no amount of Soundwave’s servo rapping upon his chassis able to elicit even a flicker of activity. But his systems registered nothing unexpected for one in stasis. Anger at Starscream still lingered, but for the moment, the dark bot’s worries for his brother were put to rest.
Soundwave knelt attentively beside the berth and folded his long servos across his knees to observe the warlord’s droning status readings upon his visor. He would return to stasis soon, after making thorough records of all that had happened. And tomorrow, he would inform his pit brother of everything.