AN: It's always good to start with weekend with a laugh, dont' you think? So, I thought to myself, why not have another chapter of GBDS?Thank you all so much for the reviews, favorites, and alerts!! You guys are amazing and I'm glad you're really enjoying this!! I even managed to impress someone who doesn't like genderbenders! :D
But anyway, school will be getting in the way of my writing for a while, but I will get around it! Either way, Megatron and Starscream take the front here and the humor is back in business.
Also, Monimonika and anyone else having trouble visualizing Megatron's antennae panels, there is a link to an image of them in my profile. I did not make them up; the design belongs to Alex Milne, the colors to Josh Perez.
So, without further ado, I present to you Chapter 4 of Genderbending: Decepticon-Style!!
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Chapter 4
"Augh…"
Megatron's red optics flickered as she came online and she groaned audibly. She hissed loudly as the mother of all headaches assaulted her CPU and she offlined her optics from the pain. Her head pounded– more than pounded; it was like Rumble was using his pile-drivers on her cranial unit. At full power. She laid still for several moments, not moving one iota, and the pain diminished to a dull throb. Her optics flickered back online as her systems rebooted and she tried to move some part of her body. However, the pain in her CPU increased at her attempts, so she stayed still. The pain once again diminished.
Megatron couldn't exactly remember exactly just why she was here. What had happened? And for that matter, where was here?
Her CPU told her politely to let it do its job and not clog it up with useless thoughts about why they were in their situation.
Megatron reluctantly let it.
As the vast majority of her systems came back online, she made a short assessment of her surroundings through the light buzz of pain. The first thing she noticed (and she was forever grateful for) was the fact that she was even online.
Which meant that the Autobots hadn't killed her, yet!
A definite cause for celebration!
Yay! Megatron thought sarcastically.
Next in line for reports was her sense of gravity with a report on her position. It told her calmly that she was lying on her right side, her arms and legs at awkward angles, but still firmly attached to her body. Her side panels cut in line (throwing her energon tank's report to the end) and reported in a high-pitched, overly eager voice that whatever she was lying on was a cold, hard cybertronium-titanium-gold-iron alloy with trace amounts of other metals and (for some reason) colored a dull grey.
How do my sensor panels know what color the floor is? She thought worriedly. On second thought, she decided after two milliseconds, I don't really want to know. She went back to reading the reports on her HUD.
Her optics (patient as always) told her she was in a dark, enclosed room and that if she waved her hand in front of her face, she wouldn't see it. Not that she had the energy or the desire to test that theory, even though it was mostly likely wrong. The rest of her systems each gave their reports in a quick, concise manner. Her energon levels were at about 37% capacity and her body completely unharmed, although her CPU was doing damage recovery from a temporary loss in energon. Her other sensor nodes took a long time to come back online and her sensory network was limited to her hands, face, and for whatever reason, her right side panels.
All of this took place in the span of about 5.462 seconds.
Megatron was a little peeved that it had taken so long.
Although she didn't want to– as in she really didn't want to, the headache (though dull) making her disoriented– she reluctantly moved her arms under her and pushed herself off of the floor. She needed to know where she was. True, recharge sounded really nice right about now, but when in enemy territory, you have to look around. Her arms felt like lead weights and her body was unresponsive to movement commands, but she eventually managed to lift the upper half of her body off of the floor and take a look at her surroundings. She heard a vague clink, clink sound as she moved, but shrugged it off.
The room was fairly spacious to a Transformer, about sixty to sixty-five feet wide, eighty to eighty-five feet long and about sixty feet high. The walls were a dull, dark gray and the only furniture in the room was a chair on the wall opposite where Megatron was sitting. The chair was welded to the floor. Megatron thought that was odd.
Why would someone weld the chair to the floor? Megatron thought absent-mindedly. Why would someone even want to pick the chair up? She shook her head. Stupid Autobots…
At that last thought, everything came rushing back.
She gasped as she remembered everything now that her processor was back to semi-normal working speed. The battle, the explosion, the Autobots, Starscream and Soundwave… Prime…!! She looked around the room again. It was definitely an Autobot cell or containment unit. The Autobots always had bad taste in interior design, she mused. Dammit!! She shook her head violently. Why was she always thinking the stupidest things!?! Who cares about the Autobots' interior design aside from the fact that the designer should be fired?!!
Well, at least she was still alive.
That was one of the (or the) only good thing that happened so far.
She fervently hoped that the femme-thing had all been a bad dream; that the day's raid hadn't even started yet; that now she was finally awake from her horrible nightmare, she could get on with her life and pretend that dream never happened!
Please, pleasepleaseplease, Primus-pretty-please, she thought, getting on her proverbial knees, let everything on that desert have been a bad dream!!! There was only one way to find out.
A quick look down at herself dashed those hopes instantly.
She was still a femme.
And a rather good-looking one, too, if no one minded her saying.
Megatron shook her head violently again to get rid of the thought. Why did she keep thinking the stupidest things?! There was something definitely wrong with this picture. According to her diagnostic programs, there was absolutely nothing wrong with her physically and all her programs, subroutines, and automated responses were in working order. The only thing out of the ordinary was the fact that almost all of her offensive battle protocols and subroutines had been locked behind a medical firewall and her weapons were disabled and missing. Even her favorite fusion cannon had been disabled and removed. She could see it missing from her HUD body schematics.
Which meant that the Autobots' medic (Hatchet, she believed he was called) had seen to her. Did he do something to her mind while he had dug around in her systems? If so, he would die a horrible death, preferable on his own medical berth. But if the rumors about the Autobot medic and his Med-Bay were true, she was screwed.
And not in the good way!
The diagnostic program finished its scans and sent back the ping for the all clear.
It didn't even mention the whole femme-thing.
Stupid diagnostics… She though disgustedly. Can't tell the difference between a dead mech and a live one… or a femme…
She was going to scrap the thing when she got back to the Nemesis.
The headache was coming back again. She had ignored it completely during her argument with herself, reality, and Primus-knew-what-else, but now it came back with a vengeance. She grabbed her head as it pounded against the inside of her head. She flopped down, sitting in an upright position. She moaned in pain as the headache didn't go away.
Why wouldn't it leave her alone!?!
Through the pain, she heard the clink, clink sound again as she moved her arm. She looked at her wrist and saw a heavy, thick cuff with a chain attached to it. She followed the chain with her optics to the floor where it pooled then went behind her. She looked at the other cuff and chain attached to her other wrist, and it was the same situation with both her legs, the cuffs around her ankles.
She followed the chains to the wall behind her and looked up. The chains led into five niches in the shape of an equilateral pentagon in the wall. She tilted her head as some small part of her mind squeaked, Five? Megatron concurred (with the statement, not the squeaky voice. The voice was just creepy).
Two arms, two legs, made four limbs.
Right?
Megatron shook her head again (ignoring the headache as best she could). She wasn't too confident about her CPU's ability to do anything right at the moment.
… Maybe there was something wrong with her math units.
She mentally slapped herself for thinking that last one.
With her processor fully concentrated on her surroundings again, she looked up to the fifth niche in at the point of the pentagon. She followed the chain with her optics to the floor where it pooled, and then disappeared over her shoulders. Suspecting, but not really believing, she raised her hand to her neck.
Now that she bothered to notice, there was a collar around her neck, made of the same heavy material that the other cuffs were made of. She groaned inwardly. Something told her that this was the Autobots' doing. Duh! She though savagely, marveling at her own stupidity, of course this is the Autobots' doing! Who else would chain you to a wall!?
Okay, so maybe Starscream would chain her to a wall, but Starsceram was a femme and probably in the same situation.
Subsequently, she didn't count.
She crawled over to the lower left-hand niche and inspected the hole in the wall. The chain fed into it neatly, all the chains kept clean and oiled. She looked inside the tiny hole and saw a turning mechanism, illuminated by the glow from her blood-red optics. Apparently, the chains could retract into the wall, effectively immobilizing and binding the prisoner to it.
Maybe those Autobots weren't completely stupid after all.
She looked around the room again. If she knew the Autobots' paranoid security director as well as she thought she did (like I said, rumors in the Decepticons ranks spread fast), then there were at least fifteen or so cameras in there with her, several audio feeds, and more alarms than anywhere else. Might as well go and find them, she thought, that way I insult them though the camera!
Megatron mentally slapped herself twice.
Maybe she was going insane.
Damn it… She thought in disgust, I'm not crazy. Just… eccentric! Yeah, that's it, eccentric.
Either way, crazy or no, she got on all fours and was about to stand up, when the sound of mechanical whirring caught her audios.
She looked toward the door on the opposite side of the room. Now that she got a good look at it, the door had no groves or any other indentations into or out of the wall. It was like someone had taken a drawing tool and drew the outline of a door on the wall. There were two slots in the door: one up near the middle-top (for optics, Megatron presumed) and one at the bottom (to pass things through). She heard the mechanical whirring again and the slot at the bottom opened.
Bright light entered through the opening, cutting through the darkness like a knife through butter. She watched a shadow fell over the opening and a hand threw something into the room, before the bottom door snapped shut and everything was silent and dark again. Megatron looked at what the Autobot (whoever he was) threw into the room with her.
A single, lone energon cube sat innocently fifteen feet from the door.
Normally, she wouldn't have touched an energon cube give to her by the enemy. What if it was drugged with some sedative? However, her energon tank sent her a quick message about her energon levels and Megatron quickly agreed with it. And the standard-size cube in front wasn't going anywhere.
Not to mention that her energon reserves were at 37%...
She stared at it for a moment longer then jumped to her feet and tired to run towards it.
Notice how it says tried.
Before she had even gone one step, Megatron felt her center of gravity shift like clothes in a dryer. Before she knew what was happening, her arms flailed about her and she leaned too far back on one heeled (When the slag did my feet get heels!?! She shouted in her mind) foot before she overbalanced and fell on her back with a resounding CRASH!!
She cried out as her head hit the hard floor and the chains clattered to the floor around her. She stared up at the ceiling. "What the frag…?" she murmured staring at the blank ceiling. She quickly sat up, groaning, and looked around. There was nothing to get in her way and she knew she didn't trip over one of the trailing chains. She got shakily to her feet (now that she paid closer attention to them, they really did have heels). She stood stock still as she balanced on the precarious Transformers-equivalent of two and a half inch heels.
She felt horribly unbalanced and like the lightest touch could send her crashing back to the floor. Her legs wobbled as Megatron's weight shifted from one unstable point to another. She cried out as she leaned too far one way, then another.
How the slag do femmes even WALK let alone fight!?! She thought incredulously. And just how were the Autobot femmes kicking her men's collective afts on Cybertron!? Maybe I should look into a better training regime. Megatron didn't even try to swat away the irrelevant thought.
A few tense moments and several flails later, Megatron's legs stopped noticeably wobbling and she stood up straight.
Granted she had her arms out like she was walking on a high-wire and her upper body was leaning too far back.
But, hey, it was a start.
Megatron grinned at her success. Haha! She shouted triumphantly. Take that, femme body! You can't conquer me!!
This was easy! This weak femme body was no match for the might of Megatron!! Her optics zeroed in on the energon cube sitting in front of her and she licked her lips hungrily. She (unwisely) put her arms back down at lifted one heeled foot to take a step forward towards the cube. She leaned forward with her leg towards the fuel.
She didn't even get that one step before her center of gravity shifted again and, arms flailing, she fell too far forward, landing on the floor with another loud CRASH!!
Megatron, lying on her front, her aft in the air, and her arms flat on the floor beside her, just looked at the cube just sitting in front of her. Her optics narrowed in annoyance
It was going to be a long orbital cycle…
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"AAAAAAGGGGGUUUUUUHHHHHH!!!!"
Starscream charged at the wall again, screaming at the top of her vocal processor. She rammed into it hard and grabbed at the chains that connected her to said wall, twisting and tugging and pulling on them, trying to break them. She had been doing that for the better part of the last few hours or so.
It didn't work very well.
You'd think she'd notice by now.
Starscream screamed (no pun intended) at her futile attempts, twisting and tugging and generally making every attempt to let the Autobots know that they had an unhappy, imprisoned, sky-less seeker in their midst.
And everyone knows: an unhappy seeker is a dangerous seeker.
Starscream charged towards the door for the twelfth time that day. She was determined to tear the stupid thing off of its proverbial hinges. The chains attached to her limbs and neck rattled and clanged loudly as they slammed against each other and the walls, because of Starscream's frantic movements. She was about twenty feet from the door before the chains pulled taut. She made a choking sound as the collar pressed against her neck and pressure was put on her vocal processor. The chains (adding insult to injury) yanked her back, her feet slipped out from under her, and she slammed onto her back (and subsequently her wings) with an almighty BANG!!
She screamed in pain as her sensitive wing joints landed on the chains, which dug into her back structure. She quickly sat up and wrapped her arms around herself to get at her aching wing joints, trying to sooth them. She cursed the Autobots and her situation with equal venom, still yelling at the top of her vocal processor. She raised herself off of the floor and kept her back straight, stomping around and punching the walls with her fists. She wasn't entirely sure if this was the Autobots' main base or some hellhole underground, but she was going to get out.
Although there was one thing she firmly believed:
THIS WAS ALL MEGATRON'S FAULT!!!!
Starscream knew something like this was going to happen! SHE KNEW IT!!! Every time they left the base following one of Megatron's stupid, stupid, Primus-fragged plans, nothing ever went right! There were always holes in Megatron's plans that the Autobots could use to destroy the entire structure of that half-afted plan!! Every time Starscream tried to tell Megatron about the holes, she was always met with a back hand and a sharp comment about her incompetence. If Megatron had just listened to Starscream in the first place, they wouldn't be in this fragging mess! They'd be back at the base toasting their victory over a warm cube of fresh energon!
AND THEY SURE AS HELL WOULDN'T BE FEMMES!!!
And Soundwave might still be alive…
But NO~O!!!
Megatron had to insist on doing things her way and (as usual) they had their afts handed to them on a Cybertronium platter!! They had been knocked out, turned into femmes, captured, had their weapons removed, inspected by the Autobots' medic (Hatchet, she had heard him be called on more than one occasion by the two Lamborghini Autobots that loved to jump on her back) and imprisoned in a room with no windows, one door, and chains by the Autobots.
The Autobots!! The supposed "good-guys" had imprisoned a flyer– UNDERGROUND– and was– CHAINED– to a wall IN. A. DARK. BOX!!!
And she used to think the Decpeticons were evil, but this just took the proverbial energon cake.
It was the worst day of being online she ever suffered! If she had her weapons, she would have already busted herself out of this room and flown to the Nemesis, with or without Megatron and Soundwave. What did it matter if either of them were alive?! They were nothing but thorns in her side panels.
"Do you hear me, Autobots!?!" She screamed at the top of her voice, she pounded harder on the wall for extra emphasis. "Do you hear me!?!?! I'll make all of you suffer so that you'll beg for death at my hands!!!" She got to her feet, the extra Transformers equivalent of an inch to the bottom of her foot not bothering her in the slightest. The seekers were used to walking in something resembling high-heels, their turbines acting as the heel. She grabbed the chain attached to the collar at her throat and bit down on it with her fangs. The metal screeched and whined as the sharp metal ground itself on the chain. They weren't going to keep her here, she swore to herself.
She was determined to get out, fly, have an energon cube or forty, get all the dust and grime out of her systems, and recharge for a month or more.
In that order, she might add.
And then she would kill the Autobots.
Either way, they were going to die and quite horribly, too!
When it became apparent that her fangs weren't working on the chains, she abandoned the attempt, throwing the chain from her, and started shouting at the fifteen little, hidden cameras she knew were in there with her.
"ALL AUTOBOTS WILL DIE BY MY HAND!!!!" She roared at the walls, her arms failing about tugging at anything she could get her hands on. "STARTING WITH YOU, SKYFIRE!!!" If she was going to start with the death threats of individuals, she might as well start with the Autobot bane of her existence: Skyfire (though Prowl and Prime were close seconds).
"I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME, SKYFIRE!!!" She continued to scream. "YOU DESERVE TO DIE FIRST FOR BETRAYING THE DECEPTICONS!!! I'LL KILL YOU WITH MY BARE HANDS, TEAR YOUR WINGS FROM YOUR BACK, FORCE YOU TO WATCH AS I DESTROY EVERYTHING YOU HOLD SACRED, RIP OUT YOUR STILL BEATING SPARK AND HANG IT AND YOUR HEAD ON MY WALL!!!!!!!"
After all, the flying fragger deserved to die for betraying the Decepticons (more specifically her) and defecting to the ground-crawling Autobot ranks.
He had signed his death warrant when he ripped the Decepticon symbol from his person.
She charged at the wall with the chain mechanisms again, determined to break those chains through a sheer force of will. She slammed into it head first and tried to claw into the small niches to get at the mechanisms.
Yeah, good luck with that, Starscream.
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Red Alert turned off his security monitor and swiveled in his chair to face the congregation of Autobot officers behind him.
"Well," he said to the room at large, "that explains what Megatron and Starscream have been doing for the past few hours." He turned his head to look at two monitors on the wall, one depicting Megatron still trying to reach the energon cube; the other depicting Starscream's rant still going at full speed.
Red Alert got up from his chair and walked past his commanders and the other officers toward the door. "You know," he said with a mischievous grin, to the stunned Autobots, an amused glint in his calm optics, "we can't make a plan if all of the officers are here staring at a blank screen."
No one moved, too stupefied (or immobilized by laughter) to hear the security director.
Red Alert's optics narrowed. He sighed and shrugged. "Okay, then, I'll just put my entire collection of videos of you all out onto the human's Internet."
All the officers (including Prime) ran out of the room like the smelters of the pit were on their heels. He heard the distinct sound of them getting down to business. "Come on, Red!!" One of the officers called, "We don't have all day!"
"I'm coming!" He called after him. He walked out of the security room and walked calmly down the hall. He wouldn't be late. Not if a certain Prime wanted his blackmail on the Internet.
Sometimes, it paid to be a security mech.
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AN: Because Red Alert is awesome, glitch or no glitch. *Evil laugh*
Anyway, I hear that some are anxious to know about what happened to Soundwave? I've heard some interesting things in my reviews. But rest assured, I will not tell you which ones were correct!! X) You'll have to wait one more itty-bitty-little chapter to find out.
Also, I am a total believer of Itchy-Bitchy Starscream. X)