A/N: And here it is.
Yeah, I totally lied about the Daft Punk and First Aid being trolled. Oh well.
I think I made pacifist First Aid slightly too...uh...evil...for this...
Oh, and Neon (who very politely told me that my "lingo" was all utterly wrong), I'm using the TFA jargon (servos = hands, stabilisers = feet (the word "pede" sounds weird and wrong and I hate it)) so there. Although, just to be confusing, this is set in the Aligned universe, specifically Transformers Prime. Okay? No? I don't care. Deal with my cross-universing.
Everyone who gets what the Laserbeak HUD is referencing, raise your hands!
Uh, or review, whatever works.
This is set in a time frame shortly after the Regeneration of Cybertron, so yeah, Prime's dead, Magnus is the leader, Megatron's a hermit, and the name "Soundwave" has passed into legend. (Ooh, future plot point, such fun). This is why Starscream (who's OLD now, gasp (*fangirls die inside*)) has a new Comms Officer, who IS real, I'm fairly sure. Probably. Presumably Airachnid is still vampiring about, chilling with Lockdown or, I don't know, Octane.
Additionally, I think I made Soundwave too immature, although I'm going with the fact that he's been alone for ages (and because time doesn't exist in the Shadowzone, he hasn't aged a day. REMEMBER THAT!), so he needed to let his silly side out, kay? I'm never using the word "tentacles" to describe Soundwave because I've seen enough hentai to see where that shit is going.
Hahahaha, now you've got THAT image stuck in your head, whoops!
Now, COMMENCE THE READING!
Sexy Yet Powerful
Jolt onlined her sensors and "woke up" in human terms.
Oh. There was that little bird-tiara-thing, sitting on her desk patiently.
She stood up, tapped her helm lethargically, and Laserbeak flapped up and switched to tiara mode.
Jolt looked herself up and down in a reflective screen mounted on the wall of her cabin.
"I don't look all that bad, you know." she told Laserbeak. "I look like Elita-One or Firestar. One of the greats."
She considered another option. "Or I look like Airachnid. Which is less appealing."
Laserbeak made a bored-sounding chirp.
"Be quiet. And why can't you turn yourself blue? I wasn't kidding when I said purple clashes with my finish." Jolt whined.
Laserbeak made a noise which Jolt fancied he might have made if he was rolling his optics.
"Don't give me that scrap. I get enough from Echo as it is. Can't you do anything useful?"
Laserbeak squeaked indignantly, extended two little struts, and projected an old Decepticon HUD in front of her optics. Firstly, a Decepticon symbol appeared and shot into the top left corner, then a digital map of the Nemesis in the bottom left corner, readouts of her overshields and structural damage in the bottom right, and a small icon in the top right which showed the charge on her lightning strike ability sparked into being.
Jolt switched her right hand to her blaster, and some crosshairs popped up showing where she was aiming.
"Oh, that's nifty! I like you, Laserbeak-tiara. Let's go and first say sorry to First Aid for frying his paint, and then see Echo, and then I think we'll go on patrol. Sound okay to you?" she said enthusiastically, putting her blaster away.
Laserbeak replied with a somewhat less enthusiastic whistle.
"That's a yes to me! Onwards, tiara!"
First Aid was in his torture-chamber-turned-field-triage-unit, as usual counting the supplies of things even Jolt knew were never used. She wondered whether he was just that bored or if he seriously forgot.
"Jolt, good morning. What do you need?" the ambulance asked, swiping at his operating table with an Energon scourer.
"Uh, hi, First Aid. Just wanted to say sorry for blasting your leg, you know, yesterday..."
First Aid laughed. "It's fine, after all it's so boring up here I needed the practice.
Well, that clears that problem up, Jolt thought.
"Are you sure? I mean, I fired a lightning bolt at your leg. You're okay with that?"
"Well, you could make it up to me by bringing back a Vehicon's right arm." the medic said calmly.
"Whoa, you're talking about ripping a bot's arm off and bringing it back here? That's rough, even for a 'Con." Jolt replied, slightly disturbed by how calm First Aid was with horribly mutilating a fellow Cybertronian.
"Vehicons are clones, and they carry their field orders and data on a drive in their right forearm panelling. I just need one so that I can take a look at it to try and find any intel on the Decepticon's plans." First Aid explained. "It's not like you had to do it while he was alive, just headshot him and cut his arm off."
"Still. That's a weird thing to want. But fine, I was going to go out on patrol later anyway. I'll get you your...ugh...Vehicon arm." Jolt said, making a face.
"Thanks, J." First Aid said, turning back to his archiving.
Soundwave was bored. Jolt hadn't been to visit yet, and as Laserbeak was with her, he had nothing to distract him.
Scrap, but he was bored.
He extended his tendrils and sent them off to a computer access point across the room.
Soundwave was delighted to find he could access the the systems by phasing his tendrils through the access point, and set to work screwing up the Autobots' nice tidy ship.
He fired the pulse cannons at rocks (he had discovered that the Nemesis was indeed on Earth, in fact, it was currently flying just above the Nevada desert), he activated the strobe lighting in the command room, blinding the ridiculous Jet Twins, he opened and shut doors on their own, and then as the crowning glory, he trapped the leader Windcharger in the Nemesis's brig and switched out all the lights.
He was just about to play a recording of the human designated "Carly Rae Jepsen" over all the speakers in the ship, when Jolt walked into the cargo bay with a furious look on her faceplate.
Soundwave hastily retracted his tendrils and hid.
"Echo! Get your intangible chassis over here right now!"
"Scrap." he said resignedly in Arcee's voice, ghosting out.
"Scrap is about right! Sure, locking Windcharger in the brig was hilarious, but now the Twins are convinced the ghost is controlling the ship! Okay, so you were brilliantly smart about the whole thing and made it look like a systems glitch, which is amazing, I mean even Frequency couldn't pull that off..." Jolt retorted, firstly in an angry voice then somehow turning it into admiration.
"Frequency/define?" Soundwave asked, using both Jolt's voice and that of the Oxford English Audio Dictionary.
"Frequency's the Decepticon comms handler. She's hacked us before."
"Decepticons! Sound off!" Soundwave asked, using a recording of Dreadwing.
"By that do you mean who are the Decepticons on world at this time?" Jolt asked. Soundwave nodded.
"Uh, well, there's Starscream, Frequency, Wildrider, Runabout and Runamuck, and about a million Vehicons."
"Vehicons/cannon fodder." Soundwave said dismissively in Megatron's voice.
"Sure they are, but even cannon fodder is dangerous. Anyway, doesn't Beaky here have a camera? I was going to go out on patrol now, so you can just processor-link the images over."
Soundwave had a horrid realisation and put up a "?" on his screen.
"Yeah, I think you've got a telepathic connection to this bird, because I keep getting little thoughts like "Ugh, where is Jolt?" "I'm so bored!" and "I really hate those ridiculous excuses for flying Autobots." - that one was my favourite, by the way – I'm not overly fond of Jetstorm or Jetfire either..." Jolt said, smirking.
As she rambled on, Soundwave inwardly berated himself for not turning off the mental connection and thanked Primus that he hadn't thought anything compromising.
"Aaand now you're annoyed about how you've forgotten to switch off the processor-link and are glad that you haven't thought anything which would degrade my opinion of you!" Jolt supplied brightly. "That's kinda cute, actually, not that a feared and evilly magnificent Decepticon warrior like yourself would, in fact, could, ever be described as cute by anyone least of all an Autobot femme with oh Primus please just stop me talking now, please..."
Soundwave pinged up a little "XD" emote on his screen and stepped backwards into the wall as Jolt was mid-ramble.
"Hey! I wasn't done with you yet!" she started, before a little message typed itself onto her HUD saying "Hilarious. You can go on your patrol now. Don't break Laserbeak."
"Ugh, he's even curt and emotionless when he types! I just can't catch a break, can I?" Jolt remarked to Laserbeak as she walked up to the command deck.
Windcharger was up there, fiddling with the gun controls (more fallout from Echo's little bit of fun, ugh), and he turned when he heard Jolt's distinctive footfall.
"Still got the tiara, I see." he commented, leaning back onto the console.
"I like it. It makes me feel cool. Sexy yet powerful, you know?" Jolt said. "Can I get a groundbridge down to the last sighting of Wildrider?"
"Fine, even though I wanted a shot at him first." Windcharger replied, pulling the customary lever to open the green swirly portal. "Also, on the "sexy yet powerful" line, you still aren't at any level with Moonracer."
Jolt rolled her optics, stepping towards the portal. "You have the dumbest celebrity crush, you know."
"Shut up, Field Scout Jolt, and go find a Decepticon already." Windcharger retorted primly, as Jolt transformed and drove into the green swirl.
Yeah, I know "tendrils" isn't much better than "tentacles", but it was the best I could think of! Cut me some slack in that respect!
