Chapter Text
Scrap. The transmitter was crushed under the fallen plating, so this whole mission was a bust. Rushing behind the pede of Omega Supreme, Bumblebee began to panic. Okay, what would Optimus do? Wait, Optimus could tell him what to do! No need to wonder when the source was available!
“Come in, anyone! I need some help up here!” He yelled quietly, trying not to scream his voice box out.
Only static responded. After four separate comming attempts to each of his teammates, no bot answered. Once that failed, he tried sending S.O.S. to every bot he knew, from Blurr to Jetfire and Jetstorm, but was met with radio silence.
No transmitter, no back up, and he was quite literally surrounded by Decepticons. Could this cycle possibly get any worse?
Within the nanoclick of him thinking that, an unknown grasp was on his lower leg plating.
“Hey, what the frag-”
His whole frame was yanked forward, snaking through the whole Decepticon base, dragging him along. No matter how much he pulled away or blasted his stingers, the impenetrable cable didn’t unleash him! Whatever Decepticon was orchestrating this, he would be ready to shock them back to their motherboards! Plus, one of his teammates would sense something was up and come and help him. Despite his urge to prove himself as an independent bot, Bumblebee knew he was in for over his helm.
By the Allspark.
Or rather, the being furthest from the Allspark was the one who caught him. Couldn’t he be lucky and have some dumber bot such as Lugnut or Blitzwing catch him? Even Megatron struck less fear in him than Shockwave, his beady optic staring him down as he retracted his arm cable.
“Oh Bumblebee, isn’t it past camp curfew? Although, you were never one for following orders.” Terror was taking over executive function the closer he got to the vicious voice, kicking and flailing as much as his frame would allow.
“Yeah, I’d never follow the orders of a Decepticreep like you!” His frame was now suspended upside down, Shockwave’s one-servo grip tight and his red optic fixated on the hybrid minibot. A familiar anxiety came over him, he liked having attention, but not of a merciless trickster.
“But you did, Bumblebee. And what a wonderful, useful fool you still are.”
Unyielding in his capture of the yellow car, Shockwave turned into the ship. Room after room, he heard various Decepticons arguing. Part of him, disgusted to think this, hoped Starscream would be here. Perhaps he would have another failed plan, and he could use it as a chance to make a break for it.
As Bumblebee continued to kick and cry out, Shockwave had no reaction. Not even the typical gloating and reveling Decepticons usually did! The whole ordeal didn’t mean anything to him.
After seemingly endless familiar but uncanny halls, Shockwave threw him in a cell within a dark room. Based on his guess, Bumblebee assumed this was the shape-shifter’s personal lab. And what a wretched place it was to be. Mutilated parts of other bots were on a grotesque grand display, from some poor bot’s spark chamber sliced into so many pieces it looked like an exploding star, to a horribly familiar blue block neatly crushed and used as a paperweight. He swore he could make out an offline optic, cracked and gray. It was similar to those art shows Bulkhead loved, except with the subjective pieces of humanmade designs swapped for the macabre desecration of the dead.
“Is he going to dissect me?! I’m too young to go offline!” Bumblebee anxiously muttered to himself, trying to send another round of distress signals.
Tapping on the field with his spindly claws, Shockwave answered his rhetorical question. “Why would I end my newest project?”
“I won’t tell you scrap if that’s supposed to intimidate me into cooperation! The Autobots will come for me and they’ll kick your shifty tailpipe back into the void!” He declared, trying to sound confident and self-assured. To be truthful, he felt anything but.
The most awful sound was the mimic’s cruel answer. A cold, husky laugh. Something he never believed Shockwave possibly could do, and the discovery only worsened his uneasiness.
“I assure you, you will cooperate, but I am in no need of information I already know, Bumblebee. As for your friends…”
A prodding wire emerged from the wall, and had no care for Bumblebee’s shocks and dodging. When he backed himself into the other side, Shockwave’s cold grasp went through the stasis field, keeping him upright and still. The wire inserted itself into the side of his helm, and his whole frame felt like it weighed triple.
“The Autobots’ stasis technology is fascinating. For a group insisting on your ethical limitations, the ability to keep a processor online while immobilizing their frame and scan their schematics, well, the practice doesn’t seem to match your preaching.”
“What?” Everything felt groggy and overwhelming, like the world was too big and he was far too small.
“Don’t worry, your team is unaware of your failure. Any attempts at communication here goes through me, didn’t you realize?”
No. No no no. This couldn’t possibly be real. This had to be some sort of awful trick, an illusion! There was no way he was captured, alone, and at the mercy of Shockwave!
Before his stressed optics, Shockwave began his awful operation. From some scrap plating ripped off a long-since dead trophy mounted among others, he remolded it into a carbon copy of Bumblebee. The gray lifeless husk was exact, down to the little scars he accumulated from cycles of working on the bridges and battling. Smoothly, Shockwave inserted a protoform into the new body.
“What-what the scrap are you doing?”
Without a mouth, the bot seemed to smile, and he really shouldn’t do it ever again, because it was horrifically creepy. “Your Autobot friends will come looking for you, won’t they?”
Unnaturally, the mock-up of Bumblebee rose, no life behind his optics. With his digits converting into cords attaching to the fake, Shockwave pulsed something into the wire that caused a splitting helmache in the real Bumblebee. Each time the pain increased, the knockoff seemed to gain more consciousness.
When he fell over from the agony, Shockwave retracted his servo from the newly online mech. The uncanny clone was identical to him, but completely and totally obedient to Shockwave’s orders.
“Go back to the Autobots and inform me once you learn something useful. Do not engage or attempt to sabotage, you are reconnaissance alone.” Nodding, the new Bumblebee ran out of the lab.
Turning away from the original Bumblebee, who was completely dumbfounded, Shockwave called Megatron. No matter how many times he battled the leader or how overwhelmed he already was, fear popped within his spark upon seeing the warlord.
“Lord Megatron, Project Goldbug has initiated."
“Excellent, Shockwave. I trust that you can handle the little one?”
“I live to serve your will, my liege. He will make a fine assistant.”
Mustering up the little strength he had, Bumblebee shouted through the containment field. “Can some bot explain what’s going on here?!”
“Hush now, you must be exhausted. You are of no use to me if you cannot be attentive.” With the press of a button, painfully he felt the wire pulse him into a forced recharge, no matter how much his spark protested.