Disclaimer: Hasbro and Cartoon Network owns TFA. All additional culture references, locations, et cet, belong to their rightful owners. I own the story.
Chapter 13: New Guys
And now, an intermission to Soundwave's mission (hey, that rhymes!)
- - - -
At the same time as the Decepticons' Energon Raid, a couple of young gentlemen were finally hauling their late-night ravaged bodies from a night club and into the too-bright day light. Judging by the pale skin and the flashy, brightly colored clothing they wore, they were night birds by nature, living out their lives in the neon-lit world of bass-thumping club music and their nostrils burning with nightly alcohol. The way that they goofed off like children, in spite of being in their late teens at the latest proved that they were also used to being the life of the party, even when the party was absent.
Looking at their slightly squared, boyish faces and shared pointed-back spiked hair, large eyes, and small, but energetic smiles, one realized that they were twins. One was clad all up in lavender and light blue with wide-legged , belt-and-buckle covered jeans and tee-shirt with a purple bandana tied around his forehead. His brother was done up in an identical outfit, but scarlet red and black in color. As they exited the club, they made their way into the abandoned parking garage next door where their ride was parked; a super bright lime green van proudly proclaiming it to be a DJ service in splashy letters on the side.
"Dude, I'm telling ya, Rodney, that girl was totally checking me out!" the scarlet-black twin exclaimed.
"And due, I'm telling ya, Frank, that she was totally not," the lavender-and-light blue twin laughed. "I mean, if she didn't check me out, then she would check you out; we got the same face, bro!"
"Yeah, I just make it look better," Frank bragged, petting at his hair jokingly.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, hey, you see that over there? That pile of dog crap?"
"Yeah, I see it. What about it?"
"That's your real brother."
Frank exclaimed something and made to tackled Rodney. They were soon playfully fighting back and forth, exchanging mock punches and playing around. On the other side of the parking garage, a dark blue and gold news van rolled into the building casually and paused to scan the boys: Young, healthy, strong, firm mentality. They would do.
The boys found themselves sitting on the ground and kicking at each other when they stopped, hearing music. It was an enchanting track, mixed with organs, violins, and techno beats. Anyone listening to it would stop and be fascinated by the genius mix of old, classic instruments with preferred modern styles and be entranced, trapped where they were to do as they were told because that heavenly music demanded it so—
"Dude, nice tunes," Rodney whistled, "Can I get a tape of that?"
The music stopped with the sound of a record player being yanked off its phonograph. Soundwave, for once, was stunned. No human had ever resisted his music before, no one!
Whelp, time for Plan B…
The boys leaped to their feet when the van unfolded and stood up, becoming the mech that has been formally introduced as Soundwave. Rodney yanked a camera out of his pocket and snapped a picture, but Frank kicked him in the butt.
"Dude, let's go!" Frank yelled.
"Alright, alright, I'm going!" Rodney yelled back, running around to hop in the passenger seat of the van.
Frank got in the driver's seat and Rodney's door hadn't even shut before he had started up the van and fled the parking garage. Soundwave tsked and drew a red guitar from his back and flung it forward.
"Laserbeak: Pursue and capture with minimal harm," he ordered.
The guitar transformed in mid-air into a giant red and black robot bird. The bird screeched, a sound strangely kin to the strum of an electronic guitar, and flew after the van. Soundwave himself took back his vehicle form and followed on foot, or tire, if you will.
As Frank proceeded to drive like a mad man down the highway, Rodney got into the back of the van where their DJ supplies, as well as the remains of many fast food meals and dirty clothes, were kept. He pawed around and found a video camera, and began recording, frequently switching between recording himself, Frank at the wheel, and what ever he saw out the back of the van.
"Uh, hi," he greeted, "I'm Rodney Stillman, and that's my brother, Frank Stillman, and we're currently being chased by a giant transforming robot, so incase we, you know, die, I'm gonna make our obituaries—"
"It's obituaries, you moron! Not o-bitch -u-air-ies!" Frank exclaimed.
"Shut up, that's what I said! Anyway, we're being chased, we're gonna die, so here's our last words or whatever. We were DJ's-for-hire, totally screwed college, and lived life to the fullest, so no regrets there. Now for good byes: First of all, mom, I love you, but you seriously got to get help for your muffin obsession--oh Jesus Christ!"
"What?" Frank called, "What is it?"
"We got a freaking bird after us!"
Frank was silent, then, "Dude, that's lame."
"Does it help if it's a giant robot bird with a wing span wider than the road?"
"Yeah, it does, actually. Panic away."
They both screamed. Laserbeak dove down in front of them, making Frank act instinctively and slam on his brakes, bringing the van to a sudden stop. Soundwave rushed up from behind, but was unable to stop in time and slammed into the van, knocking it clear off its wheels and off the over pass they were on, towards the ground below.
"And Dad, I'm sorry I didn't get you grandkids!" Rodney screamed miserably.
- - - -
The camera was in pieces on the ground. Plastic was shattered, tape was exposed to the elements, and any data in it was gone for good. Glass littered the ground around it like petals, and a lone, stinky, need-of-a-wash sock and shoe.
But that was all of the crash. Soundwave had just barely managed to transform, leap off the road, and catch the van before it smashed on the ground with his chosen targets inside. All that had happened was Rodney getting a bloody nose when his face smashed into the back of the van when it stopped suddenly, and the camera, as well as a sock and shoe, had been knocked clear through a back window. Now Soundwave stood with the van in his arms, carefully scanning his targets. Other than the bloody nose, both were still usable: Good.
Laserbeak landed on his shoulder and watched as Soundwave unceremoniously tore the roof right off the van. The brothers looked up with wide, terrified eyes at him. Well, it was terror, but there was also excitement too—you know, is it even possible to be 100 percent terrified and at the same time, 100 percent excited?
Laserbeak shot out a quick dart of lasers from his eyes, vaporizing the belt strapping Frank to his seat. He flinched back and gasped, but before he could go anywhere, Soundwave reached in and plucked him from his seat. The chamber in his chest opened and he slid the surprised human inside. He reached in and seized up Rodney before he, too, could escape, and into the chest compartment he went.
Soundwave tossed the van over his shoulder, allowing it to crash with an extremely loud, cringe-worthy crunch of glass and metal on the pavement. He walked away a few steps as the cannon on his shoulder turned around to aim at the van. Soundwave didn't slow or falter as light flashed at the cannon tip, compacted into a ball, and shot at the van, blasting it with a flashing shockwave and deafening boom. A shockwave rushed right past Soundwave as exploding flames burst into the air. To any bystander, they would have screamed in shock, or at least ducked and ran at the sheer volume of the explosion—so much force in such a little van!
But Soundwave being Soundwave, naturally, couldn't care less about a little fire and explosion.
- - - -
"Mission: Accomplished," Soundwave announced, entering Shockwave's laboratory.
"Excellent, bring them out," Shockwave ordered.
Soundwave opened his chest and reached in. He seemed to make a face and pawed around. Suddenly, there was a crunch noise and he drew his hand back, making a pained exclamation.
"What is it?" Shockwave asked.
"He bit me!" Soundwave replied.
"What…?"
"I like it in here!" Frank whined from inside Soundwave's compartment.
Growling in frustration, Shockwave reached into Soundwave, ignoring any chance of discomfort, and yanked the two humans out from the sonic warrior, plopping them on a lab table. The twins looked about with wide, awed eyes at the robots and the laboratory. For them, this was becoming some sort of story where a character is kidnapped and finds themselves inexplicably in the middle of something big in some fan fiction.
"Do either of you have any history of mental illness in your family or suffer mental illness yourself?" Shockwave demanded, "Answer me straight, or I'll make your last minutes of humanity the worst in your life."
"Well, Frank is a retard, does that count?" Rodney asked.
Frank smacked him hard in the head, restarting their brotherly fight, but Shockwave quickly placed his claw between them, stopping their fight. Upon seeing his enormous claws, they swallowed nervously and answered in unison.
"No, sir, we do not have a mental illness."
"Do you have any peculiar physical health issues or abnormalities?" Shockwave asked.
"Um, does this count?" Frank asked, bared his chest, and began to flex his pecs. His lavender-light blue brother pointed and laughed.
"I'll take that as a no," Shockwave growled, scooping both boys up in either claw. "Let's get this over with."
Soundwave watched as Shockwave took the boys over to a crude machine rigged up especially as a test run. There was a machine making a cylinder of glowing light with several wires connected to it. When he placed the boys in side, they became instantly paralyzed, floating in the light. Shockwave quickly connected sticker-tipped wires to the boys' foreheads and bodies and tapped at a computer attached to the machine. Soundwave noted that there appeared to be a helmet-like device also attached to the machine. His examination told him that while the machine worked for little organics now, it would be a quick and simple matter of wire crossing to re-tailor it for larger mechs, like, say, Blitzwing.
"Say good bye to your pathetic flesh bodies, organics," Shockwave told Rodney and Frank as the machine charged up, "You will thank me for this later."
Soundwave's sensory systems were momentarily flooded by some sort of electrical discharge. When they were back on line, the human boys were gone from the column of light and the helmet device was smoking. Shockwave powered down the machine and walked over to the helmet placed on the table beside the light column.
"Inquiry: Fate of humans?" Soundwave asked.
"Their bodies were turned into energy for the transaction," Shockwave replied, lifting the helmet off, "Let's see if it worked."
Smoke billowed up from the helmet. When it cleared, Soundwave saw two, large-human-sized Minicons lying under it. Both were identically humanoid, with long, round limbs, and broad, flat torsos with narrow waist lines. Cylinders made up guards around a part of their lower arms and booted their legs, and their helmets had spokes pointing backwards, similar to their human hair dos. Clear visors covered their optics, and each was identical to the other, with the exception that one was scarlet and satin black and the other, lavender and light blue.
They sat up, optics wide and confused before they mutely began looking themselves over.
"Inquiry: Origin of Minicons?" Soundwave asked.
"I've been engineering a crude sort of proto-form, so that the Decepticons won't have to steal them from the Autobots every time we need fresh ranks," Shockwave explained, "The machine has just placed the minds of the organics into two prototypes of these proto-forms and used the extra energy to make them unique. As you see, they appear to be a smashing success, but fist, we must see if the ex-organics are fully functional in their new bodies."
He bent over the new Minicons and poked the scarlet-black one.
"Mech," he said, "What is your function?"
"Dude, Frank, I think he's talking to you," the lavender 'bot commented.
"I know that, Rodney, I'm just too busy enjoying how… how…" the scarlet-black 'bot leaped to his feet, arms out-stretched, "How awesome this is! I mean, dude! Check me out! I'm a freaking robot!"
"So am I!" Rodney exclaimed, leaping to his feet. "Dude…"
"We're hot, we're cool, we totally freaking rule!" the boys sang together, double-high fiving in numerous ways.
"It appears that the test was a success, Shockwave," Soundwave commented.
"Yes," Shockwave purred, standing straight, "As is the mind transfer device. Now, not only will the Decepticons be able to make their own proto-forms, but we will be able to get the organic out of Blitzwing's processor and get him, well, a little less crazy than before. Have these new Minicons freshly broken and trained into the Decepticon cause. If they refuse, kill them."
Soundwave, Rodney, and Frank watched Shockwave leave before Rodney spoke.
"So, uh, can someone clue us in on what's going on?"
- - - -
"So a human called Macbeth got stuck in a schizophrenic robot's head, and we were the test subject for the device to get the human out?" Rodney asked.
"Affirmative," Soundwave agreed.
"But I heard the Cyclops guy mention that it takes energy to work the machine, which kinda meant destroying our bodies for it," Rodney pointed out, "So how is it going to work in reverse? And I saw that Macbeth guy on TV; poor sucker's body got barbecued in the blast. How is it gonna work in reverse without a body to go back to?"
"Who cares?" Frank laughed, "We're freaking robots now! No more bills and crappy coffee for us! Just sweet, sweet butt kicking."
"Aren't you a little concerned that we have just lost all connections to our lives as we know it and are now being shanghaied into an army that wants to destroy our home planet?" Rodney asked.
"Nope," was the apathetic, but completely honest reply, "Survival of the fittest, bro! And between you and me, there're some humans who are dragging down the species, if ya know what I mean."
Frank elbowed Rodney in the side, but Rodney responded with an all-out punch to the face, knocking his brother clear to the floor. Soundwave stood to the side, watching as Frank scrambled back to his feet. He had seen the brothers' tendency to fight even in play and noticed how Rodney was more sensitive than his brother, Frank, who seemed more of the selfish, let-the-world-burn-while-I-smile kind of guy. A serious fight was imminent, so he had brought them to the training room to duke it out. If any powers emerged, the worse they could do was break some targets and training dummies.
Now, he sat on a bench and watched as the brothers lived up to his expectations.
"Hey! What was that for!?" Frank yelled at Rodney.
"Okay, we're robots, yeah, that's cool, woo hoo, now get back to reality!" Frank answered, waving his hands in the air, "We have been kidnapped and experimented on by giant alien robots who want to destroy our home planet! If we don't fight our own kind, we're dead!"
"Bro, we're already dead, anyway!" Frank exclaimed, "Did you see what Mr. Monotone did to our ride? It's gone and trashed, people will assume we died. Our bodies are gone, so there's no going back. I admit, I'm gonna hate it when I have to start popping people I know in the face, too, but you gotta face the facts too, Rodney, that we can't go back, so deal with it!"
Ah, so Frank wasn't selfish; just adaptive. He saw the way things were and rolled with them. Rodney shared the same naïve stubbornness as the Autobots and most humans: The idea that things can be undone through sheer will power, when everything points to otherwise.
"Well—I mean—can't you—"Rodney spluttered, "Can't you at least pretend to be upset about this!?"
Frank grinned and bared his chest. Rodney laughed; apparently the pec flexing was an inside-joke. But rather than pec-flex, a sudden screech came from Frenzy, actually rippling the air as it flew through it. Rodney hit the ground and the ripple flew over head, crashing into a dummy. Activated by an attack, the training room lit up as automated dummies perked up and non-fatal booby traps activated.
"Training session: Begin," Soundwave droned.
"Now you've done it," Rodney squeaked.
Then they were running for their lives. Missiles and lasers that they didn't know were harmless went flying at them from all sides. They ran back and forth in an amusing display of agile self-preservation with their arms over their heads like what one does when one is protecting against bugs.
Rodney slipped and fell hard on his stomach. He turned over and saw a missile coming right at him. He brought his hands up to shield himself, but something weird happened. His arms suddenly swelled up into perfect cylinder pile drivers attached to his shoulders. Before he knew what he was doing or how he was doing it, the pile drivers darted out and slammed into the missiles, head-on, shattering them. He heard many screeches near by and looked over to see Frank using his new-found ability to eagerly destroy everything in sight with sonic blasts.
Soundwave came over and helped Rodney to his feet as his arms turned back into arms. They both watched with mute awe, and even somewhat horrified admiration as Frank worked himself into a cackling frenzy, destroying anything that so much as moved with his chest-originating sonic screeches. When there was nothing more to destroy, he turned to them, grinning and panting happily.
"Well," Rodney ventured, "That was…" He swallowed, "Interesting."
"New designations: Required," Soundwave said. "Inquiry: New Designations?"
"Ooh, cool, nicknames!" Frank exclaimed, "Alright, let me think, ah, I'm red and black, so how about El Diablo? No, no, been done before. Hmm, ah, Scarlet Shadow? Nah, sounds like a prostitute…"
As Frank struggled over a name, Rodney walked away from them and experimented, turning his arms to and from pile driver form with small mental flexes. Curious, he tapped the drivers to the floor. He jumped and looked up and around when he felt the tap vibrating in his feet and heard it rumble through the room. He tapped harder and the rumble was louder. Grinning, he began to tap out a beat that steadily grew stronger he grew more confident.
Tap, tap tap tap, tap.
Rmble, rmmhmmhmmm, ble.
Tap tap tap tap tap, tap.
Rhmmhmmhmmhmmhmm, ble.
"That's it! I'm calling myself Frenzy from now on!" Frank suddenly declared.
"Designation Frenzy, accepted," Soundwave confirmed. "Inquiry: New designation for 'Rodney'?"
Tap tap.
Rhmble.
"Rumble," he whispered.
"What was that, bro?" Frank called.
Rumble stood tall, grinning as he lifted his pile drivers up high.
"Let's get ready to Rumble!" he whooped, slamming his pile drivers onto the floor.
Frenzy was knocked from his feet and Soundwave stumbled about for balance as the entire base shook. Light fixtures fell and already destroyed training equipment crumbled like dust. Blackarachnia and several other mechs stumbled to the doorway of the room and Blackarachnia clutched the door way, struggling to stand, even with her extra legs.
"Soundwave, what—"she stammered, "Overloading Primus, what the Spark is that?"
"Do moons have moon quakes?" Random Blitzwing whined.
Rumble stopped and turned his arms back to pile drivers, smirking over at the other Decepticons. He knew that he would feel guilty for joining the Decepticons eventually, but after cowering in the Detroit robots' shadows for so long, damnit, power felt good.