I spontaneously had the idea for this fic appear to me while I was in the shower for some reason, though I think the idea might have been funnier in my mind.
If you guys are wondering why I sporadically update anymore, it's because for the past year or so, I've decided to put more focus on writing my own original work over fanfiction. I'm hoping to maybe finish and publish a novel within a year or two.
Soundwave rearranged his room for maybe the sixth or seventh time. One side of the room looked perfectly pristine, like a serene scene out of a holiday card, while the other was full of uncharacteristic clutter that occurred as a result of moving everything out of the shot that he didn't want to be there. He dragged Ravage's bed into the shot and dug through a drawer until he found a pretty pink bow to tie around the cat's neck. Ravage of course wasn't so keen on the idea and fidgeted a little, but he seemed content to just lay back down in his bed and wait for further instruction afterwards.
"Stop playing with your bow," Soundwave ordered when he turned his head and saw Ravage pawing at it. Ravage put his paw down and huffed in irritation. Ravage was ready. Time to get the rest of the family ready too!
He bustled into the next room were the rest of his babies were sleeping. Laserbeak had found a perch on a tall shelf and was asleep with his head tucked under one of his wings while Rumble and Frenzy were both curled up right next to where Soundwave's head would have been if he were still asleep himself. He nudged the twins awake first, knowing it would take them longer to get up, while Laserbeak only took one gentle command and a raised arm to get him to hop down from the shelf onto Soundwave's hand.
"Rumble, Frenzy, get up," Soundwave said again, giving them both another nudge. The pair of them both groaned and pushed his hand away.
He carried Laserbeak into the next room and placed him on the back of the crash couch. Laserbeak yawned, the lower half of his beak shifting slightly to realign his jaw. "What's going on?" he asked before rubbing the sleep from an optic with the end of one wing. Soundwave merely pointed to the camera drone waiting at the other side of the room. "Oh scrap, is that today?" he asked.
"Rumble, Frenzy! I want you both out here now!" Soundwave said to them both through the door.
While they both fumbled around on the other side of the door, Laserbeak once more yawned and looked around the room, settling his optics on Ravage. "Nice bow," he teased.
"I have one for you too," Soundwave said before sticking a bow that resembled a flower and was meant for a gift package to the side of Laserbeak's head. He stared at his creator, mouth agape, while Ravage snickered from his bed on the floor in front of the couch.
"Do we really have to get up this early this morning?" a small, purple Decepticon grumbled as he stumbled out of the room, his normally incredibly hyperactive silver twin practically dragging his arms along beside him. "I couldn't sleep because someone decided to sing me the song of his people all night!" Rumble glared at Ravage who made a face as though he had absolutely no idea who Rumble could be talking about.
"It's family picture day," Laserbeak informed him.
Rumble turned his head to the camera drone. "Aw scrap, is that today?"
"Yes. And we are sending these to your mother, so look nice," Soundwave said as he grabbed them both off the floor and plopped them onto the couch in front of Laserbeak.
Frenzy slowly started to nod off next to his brother while Soundwave continued to run around, adjusting one of the pillows on the couch with an outstretched tentacle so that it looked better in his opinion before retracting it and looking directly at the drone. He coordinated it to snap the photo.
"That's good, right? Can we go now?" Rumble asked.
"Wait..." Soundwave replied. He looked at the result and then snapped his head at Frenzy. "Frenzy, wake up. You're asleep in this shot."
Frenzy babbled something in an obscure Cybertronian dialect and then leaned forward and fell off the couch. "If he refuses to wake up, can I go back to bed too?" Rumble asked.
"No!" Soundwave snapped. He picked Frenzy off the floor by his head and plopped him back on the crash couch. "Wait here," he said before getting up and going into a cupboard.
"Boss, do you really think we should be resorting to that?" Laserbeak asked. "You remember what happened last time?"
"It will be fine," Soundwave said.
He returned from the cupboard with pure, unadulterated energon, unfiltered, undiluted, so incredibly strong that it was known to burst into flame just by being left unattended for too long. It was the Four Loko and vodka of energon drinks, responsible for four known deaths and illegal in seventeen Cybertronian cities. He made sure to give Frenzy only a tiny amount, just enough to wake him up a little. Frenzy drank it slowly and handed the glass back and at first there didn't seem to be much change until Soundwave sat back down on the couch next to them.
"Ready?" he asked.
Rumble noticed that he heard a rattling sound and turned his head to the side, realizing that it was coming from Frenzy, who was beginning to shake so hard that the individual plates of his body were knocking together.
"Uh...boss?" he said.
Soundwave gave the command to the drone to take the photo, grabbing a perfectly timed snapshot of Frenzy springing straight up into the air, catching everyone by surprise and jump kicking Laserbeak in the face.
Rumble and Ravage admired the result while Soundwave chased after Frenzy as he babbled so quickly that they could only hear bits and pieces of his speech, threw armfuls of assorted files throughout the room, and took a joyride from one of Laserbeak's legs as the bird flapped around the room frantically trying to shake him off.
"I think this is a great one! We should frame it in the bedroom!" Rumble said.
Soundwave finally got Frenzy to calm down enough for another attempt, though he was still jittering, but that was normal for him. Ravage was back in his bed at the foot of the couch, Laserbeak had returned to his post on the back of it, and they were ready to try this again.
"Ravage, stop taking a bath when we're trying to take a photo," Soundwave scolded. Ravage put his leg down and stopped licking it and sat up for the photo. "Is everyone ready?" he asked.
"Just take the photo," Rumble sighed.
Soundwave hesitated and waited. He looked from the camera drone to the twins then back to the camera drone then back to Rumble and Frenzy.
"Why do you keep looking at us?" Rumble asked.
"I was worried you were about to do something that would ruin the photo," Soundwave replied. "Hold still."
There was another brief hesitation before he finally snapped the photo, right as Frenzy turned his head to ask, "Like what?"
Once Soundwave stopped silently fuming enough, he sat back down, forcibly redirected Ravage's face from the tinkle ball he was playing with towards the camera, readjusted Laserbeak's bow, slightly adjusted the spacing between Rumble and Frenzy on the couch, and kicked the tinkle ball aside so it wasn't in the shot.
"One more time!" he said as he clearly started to get exasperated.
This time everyone looked at the camera and were all nice and ready to go when Soundwave snapped the photo…
...right as the door opened in the background, catching a very angry Barricade in the shot.
"FRENZY! Did you change the password to my Stream account again?!" Barricade shouted, oblivious to his sudden photobomb. "How am I supposed to watch 'Kaon's Most Wanted' if you keep changing my password?!"
Soundwave accidentally snapped the photo again, getting a nice shot of Barricade shouting, Frenzy standing on the couch with his arms in the air shouting back defensively, and Soundwave's face buried in one of the pillows from the crash couch while the others looked on anxiously.
Now that Barricade was back in his Stream account and happy enough to stay out of the shot, Soundwave flopped onto the couch and was noticeably lacking in the normally cold and emotionless demeanor that he was known for. "Are we ready?" he asked, and for a brief moment his monotone drawl had a hint of anger in it.
"Ready!" Rumble, Frenzy, and Laserbeak all shouted.
"Right," Soundwave said. "Let's go."
"Wait...where's Ravage?" Laserbeak asked seconds before Ravage popped up out of nowhere directly in front of the camera drone, his close-up face the only thing in the photo that Soundwave just took.
Moments later, a significantly large dent had formed in the wall just outside the bedroom door where Soundwave was repeatedly banging his head.
"Okay, let's just try this again," Laserbeak said as he tried to organize the others for the photo. He retied the bow around Ravage's neck, which wasn't easy when you didn't have hands, and then hopped back up to his perch at the top of the couch. "You both sit still, Ravage, stop licking yourself. This photoshoot isn't supposed to be X-rated!"
"No! Don't want to sit still!" Frenzy shouted.
"SIT STILL AND SHUT UP, IT'S FOR MOM!" Laserbeak snapped.
Finally everyone stopped fidgeting (or at least in Frenzy's case, he stopped fidgeting more than usual) and were ready for the photo. Soundwave sat down and got ready to take it. "If any of you moves, I'm leaving you on the nearest asteroid," he warned. Frenzy held completely still, which looked like it took every ounce of self control that he had.
"It would really suck if someone looked away right now, wouldn't it?" Laserbeak noted.
"What was that?" Soundwave asked, unwittingly looking away just as the photo snapped.
And thus was their final photo before the battery core on the camera drone died, Ravage, Rumble, Frenzy, and Laserbeak all looking perfectly at the camera and smiling like a perfect, happy little family unit...and Soundwave turning his head from the camera to look at Laserbeak. The indentation on the wall almost became a hole that night.
No I don't know who their mom is, but I imagine anyone willing to get close to Soundwave is probably either Megatron or in a Cybertronian prison by now.
EDIT: No, Megatron's not their mother either...