Purple.
The color of that damn face.
I can see him just staring.
No. That's not what it is.
He is analyzing me. Studying my every circuit, servo, and fuel line. It was nerve-wracking. You really can't tell anything with that single yellow optic. It made my arms tingle just thinking about it. His hands move deftly from the console in front of him to a monitor hooked up to my left actuator setup, sending short bursts of energy to test my basic motor functions. Every little shock just made the tingle worse. My internal sensors are telling me that my neural lattice around that area is numbing. Probably slowly degrading too. Not that my "Doctor" really cared. He was busy comparing notes of my data with some other bot. Can't really tell who it was. I felt sorry for the poor guy though, because the only way he gets notes on you is if he takes them himself. And if the pile of half dismantled bodies in the corner were any sort of suggestion, note taking doesn't end in people applauding his power-point.
Back to the facts at hand.
I have been captured. As to how, well, that a bit of a story. Keeping it short, I tripped and fell, they found me, and now I'm here. There's nothing too interesting to look at, its pretty stark in here. A little bit of what I assume is bodily fluids stain the walls every now and then. A few energon cubes in the corner, and what appears to be a heavily modifies rifle of some sort. Probably another experiment of his. Maybe it shoots faces at people or something. Sounds about up his alley. Anyhow. I can also see a table with some rather sharp pointy things I'm not too keen to have poking my chassis. I wriggle a bit thinking about it.
He turns back to me suddenly, causing me to freeze. His footfalls echo around the room like a heavy timer, ticking away the seconds until I'm opened up like a can. He looks towards my face, gesturing to the terminal he was at.
"It occurs to me that you may not know why you have been handed over to me." His voice slices through my spark, making me wince despite not having been physically hurt. I shake my head quickly, jerkily as the fear of this imposing bot standing over me threatens to overwhelm. "Then perhaps..." He says. "I should explain."
He motions toward the monitor again, and images of me appear. I can see the plaza where I live, my friends are in some of them, and some are even in my own home! How long has this been happening?
As if he could read my mind, he speaks. "The intel I have on you has been gathered over the course of two stellar cycles. I was notified of your existence a few weeks before that time and as such, made arrangements to prepare for your imminent arrival. As for why..." He leans closer to my face, probably to maximize fear factor. If i were an organic, I'd have already pissed myself. Several times over. He continues. "You are a very unique case of the cybertronian race, Autobot." He rights himself, and refers to the panel hooked up to me. "According to my extensive research, it seems that you are the one of the few bots with a unique energy signature not unlike many artifacts that have been studied from the era of the "Ancient Explorers." At first, I waved it off, due to your overall physical demeanor. But when I looked closer, I found my assumptions to be severely underestimated."
My optic twitched. Even a Decepticon couldn't help but jab at my height. And people wonder why I developed self-esteem issues. But I still couldn't figure out why that was important enough to involve a kidnapping. It was still just the wavelength that my spark frequency emanated at. After a long time of not using it, mostly out of fear, I found my voice.
"You know I'm not a mini-con, right?" It was true. For some reason, I came out of my protoform stage maybe only twice the height. During a short visit on Earth, a couple of humans actually measured how tall I was in feet. Apparently I'm about eleven of them. But I'm not a mini-con. I mean it. I can't boost power or convert into a weapon. All I can to is...well, I haven't gotten that far yet. I don't know what I'm good at.
His reply was swift. "I am well aware. While you don't have the energy generator cores of a mini-con, my tests are revealing that you hold a much greater power held back by some unknown source. But not for long." I stiffen in fear at whats about to happen. He continues talking. "Though i have to say, any procedure i try on you might not lead to success, but I calculate that there are approximately 1,579 more test subjects if things go wrong." His hand wraps around a saw, and it whirs to life. He turns and begins talking, but not to me.
"Shockwave's Log: Experiment number 7452304-65. The subject brought in is identified as Cannonfire. I am preparing to make an incision at the forefront panel on the subject's helm, to provide the quickest access to his central processing core and brain module. beginning the incision in 3...2..."
'This is it.' I think quietly. 'I am going to be lobotomized by a guy with one hand and he didn't even bother to shut down the pain receptors in my neural lattice...'
Right before the blades make contact with my helm, the ground shakes as a massive, thundering boom rocks the building. I can see the walls shake and Shockwave slips, not prepared for whatever just happened. His attempt to balance the table failed when I squirmed a bit and tipped the table over. I hear a thud behind me as the purple bot loses his balance. I cheered silently, but then the rumbling got worse. I could see the walls start to crumble at the edges. and the tray with all the tools fall on top of me. One of them lodged between two of my side plates, but through the pain I could feel one near my hand. my fingers fumble as I maneuver the little device, and i find the switch. With a click, my restraining cuffs steadily became warm, and all of the sudden it breaks, but the tool cuts into my thumb, causing me to yelp. I look at my free hand to see a deep, cauterized gouge. I was using a laser scalpel! Damn that hurts.
I quickly free my other trapped limbs and stand up, trying to get my fluids circulating. I was given a reminder of the danger I was in when the back wall gives away to the outdoors. I run over, but to my disappointment, I'm a million stories up. Go figure.
My optics notice the rifle again, and they also notice Ol' Cyclops getting up. My legs carry me to the gun, and I find a good hold on the thing.
"Stay back, Shockwave! I dunno what this does, but I'm assuming since its yours, it probably hurts." I raise the rifle and point it at him. He didn't seem to worried though, which unnerved me. What was he doing? I have a potential doomsday device pointed at him! He calmly walks towards me, and I can feel my legs shaking and clattering with each step. I never break eye contact as I feel my entire body freeze in terror.
"While that would be threatening to me in most situations, you have made a terrible error in your reasoning. How are you supposed to fire the rifle..." He grabs the rifle from his end, and suddenly I knew what I did wrong. "If you are holding it backwards?" My optics widen in horror as his index finger wraps around the trigger. "This is a little project called Hyperflux. It generates miniaturized black holed that instantly compress the target into an infinitesimally small point of matter. You are about to undergo that process." I squeeze my optics shut as he pulls the trigger.
The blast hits me with the force of an entire star, which I guess is what it is.
It rips through me and penetrates my spark chamber easily, like I was made of paper. When the singularity makes contact with my spark, I feel something shifting around inside me, and suddenly I can feel my systems working at a speed I'm not sure is actually possible. I look down to see my body warping around my chest, ans the singularity was diminishing in size, and swirling all around me as it unwound into a strand of energy. My entire chassis felt as if I were in a smelting pit, but i couldn't make a sound. I could only watch as i saw energies from my spark join the black hole strand, and it forms a more perfect circle. I follow its movements as it spins downward, embedding into the ground. Other strands started to form lines and angles, converging to a point in between my feet, and suddenly a star forms in the middle of the intricate pattern, and lights up with a brightness akin to the core of Cybertron.
It took a minute to realize that Shockwave was watching this phenomenon the entire time and I could tell he was genuinely surprised and...heh...shocked.
Before I could say anything further, however, the lines disappear and the entire thing is replaced with a swirling hole, and then I'm falling.
"OH MY GOOOOOooooooooo..." My voice fades out as the hole abruptly closes, leaving a rather estranged Decepticon in his wake. He makes a mental note to run some new tests on the next patient, and runs out the building. He converts to the thing he calls a flight mode and maps a trajectory to the Decepticon capital, Kaon.
I'm not even sure if I'm still all connected. My limbs look like spaghetti and wiggle every which way, and I can barely think. To be honest, I'm too busy screaming. For all I knew I was already dead, and this is what ascending feels like. All I know for sure is that I'm tumbling and rolling, like being on an interdimensional slide that threatens to tear you apart and scatter you across the multiverse. Right before I think my limbs can not take anymore, I snap back in a fashion similar to a rubber band, and I can finally orient myself. Which wasn't really all that easy to figure out. I realized while I definitely was falling, I was lurching sideways. At first I assumed it was simply a matter of rotation, but moving my body made me feel weird and uncomfortable, so I righted myself again.
For a while I just kind of sat there, whistling and taking in my new surroundings. The "Tube", as I was calling it, seemed to flash with an infinite amount of colorful, shiny stripes of energy. I could see that some of them intertwined with one another, and others made loud noises like a loud bang or a pop. I saw some disappear and some materialize into existence. Shifting my light exposure into the other, invisible wavelengths let me see other, stranger things among the lines of light. Symbols and glyphs, all swirled around the lines, binding the lights together in a huge, mess of entanglement that wasn't there before. Where lights disappeared, the symbols glowed brighter before disappearing as well. I could see that there were also the circular patterns scattered about, woven in between the glyphs and line-energy. Shifting into the higher levels of the spectrum was a bad idea, because suddenly my audials were bombarded with a cacophony of horrible screeches and torturous screams, despite the fact that I was looking at another aspect of light energy. I decided that i would never do that to my poor head again. It felt like I had been travelling for days, but my internal chronometer proved otherwise. What was a bot supposed to do here? My boredom was threatening to overcome me, but luckily something started happening after a while of travelling. I noticed that every now and then, a hole would appear, and something would fall in with me. Most of it I didn't recognize, and before I could investigate it was taken by another hole. Right as that one closed up, another one opened ahead, And i watched intently. To my surprise, The thing that popped up was familiar! It was a fruit from Earth, shiny and plain as day. I actually grabbed it, and inspected it.
'Yep,' I thought. 'this is indeed an apple. but why Is this here with me? Is there more to this "Tube" than I can tell?'
Before I can put another thought in, my arm is suddenly yanked towards another hole that opened without me noticing, and I'm pulled in before I get to let go. "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" I scream as My body is squeezed into noodles again, and this time I can sort off see what's going on. There is a huge rumble and crackle noise that permeated through the air. Lightning is twisting around the lights lining the surface of this smaller tube. My hand manages to let go of the apple, and I watch it vanish at the end of the tube. The lightning around me was violently striking me until one of the bolts caught my injured side, where one of the tools got me earlier. I tumbled around before my foot touched the side of the tube, and a whole new world of pain flowed through me. It wasn't necessarily physical. It felt as if everything in the universe tried to pour into my head, and i was sure I was screaming louder than I ever had before. I couldn't process anything but the pain. my foot started ripping a hole of its own, and i was forced in it abruptly, and the pain stopped as soon as I lost contact. Emergency lights flicker across my HUD, telling me the need to go temporary stasis, and a whole slew of other alerts and malfunctions.
This time I could tell I was falling the right way, but my mind was already powering down as I descended. The warnings blinked out one by one. Soon my systems were shutting down, and the whistling of the wind vanished as my hearing went out. I wasn't out yet, and I made an effort to look around.
The last thing I could make out were the mountains on each side of me, and the blue sky above.