Title: Prime, I shrunk the Officers!
Chapter: 07 - I'm Walking on Skywarp
Notes: Decepticon centric chapter zomg! Well ok, Decepticon -and- Sparkling centric, but then again this whole thing goes around the sparklings.
Thundercracker grumbled heavily, floating in his current position where he awaited the arrival of Soundwave's cassetticons. Soundwave had insisted one of the Seekers should meet up with Laserbeak and the others. Now he could see why.
"Thundercracker reporting. Buzzaw is injured - I'll take him and his sparkling back to base." The blue Seeker sighed heavily once he closed the com-link and transformed into his jet mode, slowing down as much as possible to allow Buzzaw to deposit the crying Sideswipe inside his cockpit before he transformed back into his tape form and dropped onto the back seat. Laserbeak and Ratbat continued their flight alongside the blue F-15.
When Thundercracker reached the Decepticon underwater base, Soundwave was ready to receive his cassette, petting his head gently before he opened his chest's compartment to allow him entrance and help his autorepair systems to fix the damage. "Megatron," He turned to the screen to his commander's quarters. "Retrieval: successful."
Thundercracker removed the sparkling from his cockpit, setting him down far more gently than Ratbat and Laserbeak did, hoping that would at least keep the sparkling's crying down a little. "They're too loud."
"Sparklings are always loud." Starscream crossed his arms and took a few steps towards the group of sparklings. Red Alert was literally wailing a storm. Ratbat had dropped him first and his little aft hadn't enjoyed the landing. Perceptor was also crying but was far more quiet than Red Alert. Mirage was whimpering loudly but wasn't crying just yet. Prowl, despite his own whimpers, had pushed the other sparklings to gather together in attempts to keep each other comforted by their proximity. "What now, oh, mighty leader?" The air commander turned to look back at Megatron as he came into the command room.
"The Autobots surely will come to try to retrieve our new hostages. Dirge, Ramjet, and Thrust, I want you to delay the Autobots," the Decepticon commander instructed the conehead trine and turned to get a better look at the sparklings, smirking when the group of Autobot babies huddled closer together instinctively. "Starscream, take one of them for analysis. You're free to do anything you need to find out how they were turned into sparklings."
"Why would you want to know that?"
"Isn't it obvious?" The silver mech turned to face the leader of the first trine. "If we can discover what triggered the regression, we can create a weapon that will turn the other Autobots into sparklings. No more Autobots to stop us."
"Very well. But I suspect this will take quite a while." Starscream looked down at the group of sparklings, looking for one that he could take for experimentation. Red Alert was too loud, Sideswipe looked ill, and he knew better than to take Perceptor with him. That left Prowl and Mirage, and somehow, Starscream didn't trust the one sparkling that was literally glaring daggers at him through his fluid leaking optics and distressed, scared whimpers. "I'll take this one."
Mirage clicked loudly, flailing his little arms as he was picked up by Starscream, reaching for the other sparklings. Prowl tried to crawl after Starscream to retrieve his friend but was sent back to the other sparklings with a push of the seeker's leg. The baby Datsun glared angrily at the white, red, and blue seeker before he did the only thing he could at that moment - cry so hard and so loud that he would have made Elita One proud.
"Ugh! Good look keeping an eye on them!" Starscream covered his audio receptors the best he could and rushed out of the command center to escape the cry of the strategist. Mirage was crying now, too, but his cries were far lower and far more bearable than Prowl's and his chorus of crying sparklings.
"Shut up!" Megatron covered his own audio receptors. He tried to threaten Prowl into silence aiming his fusion cannon at him, but he found he couldn't stand to take his hand away from his receptors for more than a few seconds. "Soundwave, do something!"
The communications officer knelt down and did the only thing he knew could calm a sparkling. His own audio receptors were suffering, but he managed to rest a hand on the baby Datsun's head and stroked it with as much gentleness as he'd do with his own cassettes. Prowl's cries died down under the comforting touch despite who it was coming from.
Red Alert kept crying, his little vocalizer was already hurting, but he had no other way to voice his discomfort. However, his optics caught a glimpse of a somewhat familiar form and made a soft sound of excitement as he crawled his way to climb on top of Ravage's back who was sprawled on the ground, covering his own audio receptors with his paws. Upon feeling the additional weight, Ravage hissed and shook his body, trying to force the sparkling off his back to no avail.
Soundwave's shoulders drooped a little when Sideswipe decided to empty his little body of unwanted energon once more, right on Megatron's boot no less.
"Argh! Why you little piece of scrap!" The Decepticon leader jumped away and shook his foot to try and rid it from the half-processed energon before he glared in direction of the sparkling and aimed his fusion canon once more.
Before Megatron could do anything, Prowl's cries filled the room once more, and, much to the Decepticon's horror, he found the sparkling was nowhere to be found. "Where is he?!"
"Sparkling: hiding under main console." Soundwave had barely caught the glimpse of Prowl's foot sliding through the crevice between the ground and the underwater base's main console before he started crying again.
"Ugh! Soundwave, do something!"
There were days when the Decepticon communications officer believed Primus had a personal vendetta against him. Today happened to be one of those days. Without a word, the Decepticon picked up Sideswipe and began to stroke his middle gently, retrieving a piece of cloth to clean the remnants of the expelled energon from his face. "Autobot sparkling: ill. Medical attention strongly advised."
When Sideswipe's cries died down under the attention of the Decepticon, Prowl's own cries ceased; however, the sparkling remained hidden under the console.
"Hook's not around though!" Skywarp rubbed his head. Two rounds of the baby Datsun's cries had been enough to give him the Cybertronian equivalent of a headache.
"I'm going to get cleaned of this mess. Soundwave, you're in charge of the brats for the time being. When Hook is back, you can hand that infernal Autobot to him." Megatron rubbed his own head in exasperation and left the room as soon as possible, not wishing to risk a third installment of Prowl's cries and whimpers.
"...Understood." Soundwave merely looked around and shook his head lightly. It was going to be a very, very long day.
Starscream wasn't sure whether he liked or not all the happy clicking Mirage was aiming in his general direction. He surely preferred the clicking over the crying, but this sparkling's happy clicks were like the Energizer Bunny... they kept going and going -- And Starscream wasn't one of the most patient 'bots in the world.
"Let's see if I can find his voice modules, maybe that'll shut him up." The seeker fumbled with one of the sparkling's open panels, trying to navigate his way through the immature structure.
The aerospace commander didn't know much about sparklings, but he did know one thing for sure: sparklings couldn't transform. This knowledge made his natural scientific curiosity get the best of him when his fingers came across the baby Ligier's transformation cog and he couldn't help but try to manipulate it.
Starscream barely had the time to take his hand away before the familiar sound of the cog doing its work filled his audio receptors, and where once laid the sparkling designated as Mirage was a miniature version of a racing car, small enough to sit a human infant in.
The seeker rubbed his chin in thought, wondering why, if the transformation cog seemed to operate normally, sparklings were unable to transform at will. He didn't have much time to ponder the matter further as he noticed the baby Ligier's engine revving rather excitedly, making good use of whatever suspension his vehicle mode possessed, bouncing on his tires lightly. "...Don't you dare!"
Mirage's happy clicking began anew, and before Starscream could utter another word, the diminutive vehicle's engine revved loudly and propelled the sparkling forward, right onto Starscream.
Soundwave sat cross-legged on the ground, struggling to keep Sideswipe calm while the sparkling Perceptor crawled all over his frame, poking, prodding and pressing any surfaces that attracted his attention. It had been four times in the past 10 Earth minutes that the sparkling had pushed the button that forced his chest's compartment open, ejecting Laserbeak at least twice and leaving Rumble's cassette form stuck on his plate the remaining two.
Ravage wasn't doing much better. The slick black Cassetticon had given up trying to buck the sparkling Red Alert off his back. Somehow, he had managed to stay firmly affixed to his frame despite Ravage's best imitation of a bucking bronco, and thus, the black cassette merely gave a back ride to the now very happy Red Alert.
Skywarp and Thundercracker hadn't had any success in trying to locate where exactly Prowl was hiding, and that had proved to be a problem. Everytime someone, anyone, so much as hinted intents of harming any of the sparklings currently under Soundwave's care, Prowl cried again.
Soundwave theorized Prowl, sparkling as he might currently be, was definitely not defenseless. His cries weren't just annoying and inconvenient - they were painful. Most certainly the sonic waves he was producing during his very, very loud crying fits were strong enough to damage internal components, and once the sparkling realized his crying immobilized their captors, he began to make full use of the unexpected weapon.
To make matters even more unfavorable for him and his comrades, the sparkling proved to understand the importance of the console he chose to hide under as they just couldn't afford to shoot or destroy the console just to retrieve him. Right now, they were at the sparklings' mercy.
"I give up!" Skywarp groaned and tossed his arms into the air. "I'll go check on Starscream."
"I'll go with you." Thundercracker followed his wingmate out of the room, leaving Soundwave and Ravage to deal alone with the Autobot sparklings.
"Primus! Those things are annoying." Skywarp huffed and crossed his arms across his chest, glad to be away from the sparklings.
"They are a handful." The primarly blue seeker nodded as he walked alongside his mate. "I just hope this plan won't end up backfiring on us."
"That won't happen." The black and purple F-15 took a few quick steps and turned to face his companion. "Once Starscream can figure out how to transform the other Autobots, we can just dump them in some hole and let them rot!"
Thundercracker opened his mouth to say something, but after a several moments without a word coming from his voice modules, Skywarp poked his trine mate's chest gently. "You ok, TC?"
"...Shit!"
"Uh?"
Thundercracker pointed behind the other seeker, forcing Skywarp to look over his shoulder as his own optics widened in horror.
A miniature Racing Ligier had stopped a few meters away from them, his engine revving excitedly while loud, cheerful clicks erupted from its form. The engine revved more, and the front tires moved from side to side, as if he was trying to 'aim'.
"Run," the blue seeker said calmly while still staring at the diminutive Gitanes 'sponsored' racing car while he filled the hall with the sound of his little engine. His trine mate nodded vigorously before they both turned around quickly and scrambled down the hall just in time to hear the sparkling Mirage chase after them.
"I hate sparklings!" Skywarp cried as he ran as fast as he could right behind Thundercracker with Mirage in tow. The halls were too narrow for them to transform and barely wide enough for them to walk wing to wing; running past each other was definitely out of question.
"What makes you say that?!" Thundercracker's voice dripped sarcasm and rushed to hit the code to enter the control room. The door was barely halfway open by the time his wingmate ran past him before the sparkling Mirage ran the black and purple seeker over.
The blue F-15 winced visibly and ran over to his bonded's side to try and help him up, but before he could even lay a hand on him, the stuck-as-sparkling spy ran over Skywarp again.
Soundwave merely watched from his place on the ground with the remaining sparklings and hoped secretly the Autobots would arrive soon.
