Shockwave knew the type only too well.
Young punks who had risen through the ranks far too quickly, thanks to the ever-increasing casualties of war, and recruiting practices that Shockwave was not at all sure he felt comfortable with.
Not that he would ever dream of questioning Megatron, of course.
In fact, Shockwave reflected, that was where the real problem lay – these upstarts would never understand the depth of the loyalty and devotion he felt towards Megatron (loyalty, devotion, and some other emotion, which was weird, and deeply confusing). Instead, they openly questioned orders, wondered why, yet again, they were building a superweapon out of crystals, and – worst of all, as far as Shockwave was concerned – they showed initiative. The Decepticons had not gotten where they were today by asking questions, Shockwave thought. They had done it by blindly flinging themselves headlong into whatever grandiose scheme their Leader could devise. And furthermore, doing it happily.
Shockwave had had to deal with many kinds of insubordination in the past. Usually, he favoured a simple approach – tear out the mech in question's personality chip, file it, and forget. The large number of Decepticons who had recently gone into court martial and simply not come out again had sent the number of formations per week of rebellious splinter groups into a sharp decline.
Yes indeed, Shockwave thought he had seen it all. From mechs who ran from battle, to those who asked too many questions, to those who seemed to be under the impression that they could treat the Decepticons as their own personal cartel, Shockwave had disciplined them all.
This, however, was new.
This, he thought, looking down at the battle report in front of him, was the first time he had ever run up against such… such … pure, pointless malignancy.
In Shockwave's opinion, any Decepticon should consider it an honour – a joy, even – to complete Megatron's paperwork for him. This situation had recently been necessitated by Megatron's injury in battle – before he had offlined himself for repairs he had uploaded the details of the skirmish onto a disk for entry into the main central computer by the Air Commander.
Shockwave was not entirely sure what had happened next, as he was still following the long, long paper trail he was currently faced with in order to appropriately apportion blame. As much as Shockwave knew at the moment was that the Air Commander had apparently been too busy to get the work done (this was quite reasonable – with the Leader incapacitated, the Air Commander was in charge of the Decepticon army), and had delegated it to one or other member of his trine. Who had, in turn, delegated it. Whoever they had delegated it to had also delegated it, and so on and so forth, until finally it ended up in the hands of someone who did seem to have rather too much free time on his hands: the mech, a Seeker, currently standing before Shockwave, looking bored, and all but fidgeting.
Shockwave was disgusted.
He quickly scrolled through the battle report – if you could even call it that – once more, his single optic blinking indignantly as he got to some of the really offensive parts, before placing it on the table before him and directing his gaze to the mech standing in front of his desk.
"Well?" Shockwave said after some pause.
"Well what?" asked the Seeker.
Shockwave bristled visibly, half in annoyance, half in anticipation. He loved his job.
"Well, what have you got to say for yourself?" Shockwave asked.
The Seeker actually shrugged. "I was just following orders?"
If Shockwave had been holding something, he would have dropped it. "Following orders?" he shouted, standing up. "You call this disgrace 'just following orders'?"
The Seeker shrugged again. "It was like that when I got it," he said nonchalantly, not even bothering to look at Shockwave. Shockwave could feel his core temperature rising.
"That's a lie. Backtracking the traces shows the content of the disk was unaltered until your login." Shockwave brandished the disk. "Your username is 'starscream10084432', is it not?" he asked, rhetorically. "Password… password…" – Shockwave summoned his strength – "'i_like_it_in_the_aft'"?
In the corridor outside, Shockwave could have sworn he heard a muffled groan. He was considering investigating, when the Seeker in his office suddenly kicked the desk in apparent outrage and said, "Someone must have hacked my account."
Shockwave's attention immediately flashed back to him. "You know that isn't possible, I designed the login security myself," he said, a hint of triumph entering his voice. When the Seeker remained silent, Shockwave continued, "I'm still waiting for an adequate explanation for this mess."
The Seeker's face now seemed to adopt an expression of confused innocence. "Perhaps if you refreshed my memory, I don't seem to remember –"
"Don't remember?" Shockwave said incredulously. What fresh lunacy was this?
"I write so many field reports," the mech said.
"I think this one would stand out in your memory," Shockwave said, gratingly.
"Maybe you could read some of it out, to remind me?" The Seeker gave him such a look of wide-opticed innocence that Shockwave momentarily doubted his conviction of his guilt. Then he gave his internal processors a shake and launched back into things.
"You mean to tell me that you don't remember writing a report entitled" – Shockwave collected himself – "'What I Did On My Holidays, By Megatron the Poopyhead?"
There was another small noise from outside the door, but Shockwave was too wrapped up in things by now to notice it.
"No," said the Seeker, "I can't say that I do."
"You don't remember," Shockwave said theatrically – Primus, he loved this part, maybe he should have listened to his creator and gone into acting after all – "writing an entirely pornographic account of what you claim to be Megatron's recent encounter with a Seeker – whose name, coincidentally, is revealed as Starscream – in a back room of a bar on the lower decks?"
The Seeker shrugged. "No."
Shockwave was momentarily at a loss. This was usually about the stage in proceedings when the wayward mech's resolve would start to waver, fear would kick in, and they would attempt to apologise or justify their actions in some way. It never worked – not with Shockwave, anyway – but at least they tried. After a moment or two of indecision, Shockwave rallied himself and started again.
"Then let me remind you!" he said grandly, picking up the field report with a flourish. Scrolling through it, he suddenly realised what a bad idea this had been. Trying to find a single sentence in the (completely fictional, he was sure) rendition of Megatron's… ahem… activities that wasn't luridly sordid was not going to be easy. Reading it, Shockwave felt outraged all over again – simply because the honour of his commanding officer had been besmirched, you understand, and certainly not because of the jagged, unnameable emotion that threatened to slice straight through his central processing unit.
Haven't I always been loyal to you, Megatron? he thought wretchedly. Why some anonymous Seeker, and not - Shockwave snapped back into himself, shutting down that line of thought and turning his attention back to the task in front of him.
There was nothing for it – he'd just have to read out the first bit that came to hand.
"You don't remember, for example, writing the phrase 'Let me ride you like a robotopossum on heat, Starscream?'" Shockwave asked, managing to get the phrase out.
Starscream looked blank.
Shockwave tried again. "Or the phrase, 'I need your giant interface in me right now, Starscream you gorgeous sex god?'"
Outside, there was a loud metallic bang. Shockwave, annoyed at the interruption, started towards the door to find out what was going on, when Starscream suddenly dropped to his knees, a short wail escaping his lips.
"All right, I confess. You got me," he said.
Shockwave bristled in triumph. "So you admit it!" he cried.
"Yes, yes!" Starscream said, holding his hands out towards Shockwave in a gesture of appeal. "But please, please, whatever you do – don't tell Megatron! I'll do anything, anything!"
"Hahahahaa!" went Shockwave. "Oh, don't worry, I can assure you that as soon as Megatron is back online, it will be the first thing he hears of!"
"Oh, no!" said Starscream, holding his hands to his face. Shockwave could have sworn that a moment before the hands went up, he had seen a smirk threatening to force its way across the Seeker's face. He paused, momentarily unsure, and wondering if perhaps there was something larger going on here that he had failed to grasp. It lasted only a minute, before Starscream threw himself on the floor, prostrating himself before Shockwave.
If Shockwave had had a mouth, he would have let go a smirk of his own. He loved it when they did this. It was so satisfying.
"No – no!" Starscream was babbling now, clutching Shockwave's foot. "Please, I'll never do it again! Just don't tell Megatron! He'll… he'll have my head!"
Shockwave looked dispassionately down at the figure on the floor. "Very likely," he replied, before moving his foot and shaking loose Starscream's fingers. He waited a moment, then said, "Now, get out of my sight."
Starscream peered up at him. "You mean… I'm free to go?"
"Oh yes. I won't detain you," Shockwave said, turning away from him. Yes, let the little creep go. Shockwave always thought it was the waiting, rather than the punishment, that was most cruel. He never told mechs the dates of their courts martial, nor usually even if they would get one – he'd simply inform them that it was known they had been insubordinate in some way. He liked watching mechs who knew they'd been caught doing the wrong thing, trying to go about their daily business while all the time wondering when the cage was going to drop.
Behind him, he heard Starscream get slowly to his feet, and walk towards the door, before pausing to say, "Hail Megatron!"
"Hail Megatron," Shockwave replied, putting real and unforced feeling into the standard salute. He heard the door close behind him, and for a moment more was troubled. The voice at the door had sounded just a little too… smug for his liking. He pondered it for a moment, before deciding it must simply have been his imagination, and turning back to the large pile of insubordination reports he had for the day.
In the corridor outside, Starscream closed the door, then let his shoulders sag in relief. That had gone even better than he imagined it would. Straightening up, he put his hands on his hips and directed a triumphant smirk down the corridor at Octane, who was slumped against the wall, his fist still embedded in its metallic surface after he had punched it about three-quarters of the way through Starscream's interview with Shockwave.
"Well?" Starscream asked.
"Well what?" Octane asked quietly.
"Did you hear it?"
There was long pause. "Yes, I heard it. I heard it all."
Starscream let out a barking laugh. "Indeed, Octane. And what did you hear?"
Octane took his fist out of the wall and let out a resigned sigh. "I heard Shockwave say what you said he would say," he replied, knowing Starscream wasn't going to be satisfied with that.
And he wasn't.
"Oh yes, and what was that?" Starscream asked.
Octane rolled his eyes. He may as well get it over and done with. "He said, 'I like it in the aft.'"
"Aaaaaaand?" Starscream prompted.
Octane sighed. "And 'I need your giant interface in me right now, Starscream you gorgeous sex god.'"
"And the special bonus was?" Starscream asked.
"To be fair, he didn't actually say it," Octane argued. "You said he'd say 'Megatron's a Poopyhead', whereas he actually said –"
"The relevant words were all there," Starscream said dismissively. "Now, who's paying for my energon for the next six mega-cycles?"
"I am," Octane said sulkily.
"And who's covering my cleaning detail?"
"I am."
"And who's –"
"All right," shouted Octane. "I know what the bet was. Just… be quiet for three seconds at a time, would you?"
They started down the corridor, silence prevailing for a moment or two.
"I don't know why you had to put on all the theatrics," Octane said eventually. Starscream made a derisive noise.
"Hah. I wouldn't have had to if someone in the corridor wasn't making so much noise and giving the game away. Anyway, he loves it. I was just helping his ridiculous ego along," he said.
"Yeah," Octane said, "but you've basically just guaranteed he'll tell Megatron about it." Octane knew Starscream had some strange tendencies, but before now he hadn't suspected that actively trying to bring about his own painful destruction was one of them. Not for the sake of something like winning a relatively paltry bet, anyway.
"Oh, I certainly hope he does," Starscream replied.
In the silence that followed, Octane looked quizzically at Starscream out of the corner of his optic. He could have sworn the expression on his face was almost dreamy.
The end.