Chapter 12
Shockwave is not often frustrated. At least, he's fairly certain he's not…. But this..
He just keeps hitting dead ends.
During the four million stellar cycles of his leader's absence, it was difficult to get much done in the face of Cybertron's nearly depleted energy supply, only seekers and drones for assistance, and a small yet determined rebellion of Autobot femmes to deal with.
The fact that the purple scientist has managed to regulate Cybertron in a way that it still has energon to give while also warding off all the greedy scavengers wanting to pick the planet clean of its unique metals, is all well and good.
His most successful work, however, was the extensive archive he put together to preserve most of Cybertron and its past residences' logged data prior the war. It started out as a simple project to pass the time productively. A way to preserve the past and provide the future with all its knowledge and mistakes. The shear amount of information he'd compiled would take millions of stellar cycles to read though.
Despite all this, it's still incomplete and forever will be due to the war damaging and/or completely destroying much of it.
That still doesn't explain how Shockwave can't find a single case in Cybertron's archives of how parts could be made to draw energy from the spark. The technology was somewhat known amongst scientists and doctors during the golden age, but thought to be outdated and not worth study or replication.
No one knew how it worked because they simply didn't care to learn. Didn't care to discover the possibilities it held.
Moving on from that unfortunate revelation, the mech decided to turn his attention to finding an existing part to study instead of twiddling his digits and waiting for Gears to finish his carrying cycle.
It's never wise to rely on your enemies for progress.
Logical as ever, Shockwave began to search up medical entries pertaining to spark-powered circuits.
Many files worth of sorting through later… and nothing of use. They were all entries on the removal and replacement of these parts.
The circuits were, no doubt, disposed of. Even if a few weren't thrown out, what point would there be in checking the old hospitals without a scanner of some sort that could pick out the correct circuits from others? Especially since the parts in each of the logged cases were different?
Cybertron's guardian had switched to searching highly invasive security scans many professions had once required. The scans are not as thorough as full medical scans, but it's worth a look.
If one turns up with the right circuit, he could send out the seekers in search of a corpse.
Less than a third of the way through his search, and he's interrupted by a trine of seekers unloading different metals and parts and other materials.
Ah.
He doesn't know if he's glad for the interruption or infuriated.
The purple mech pulls away from the computer to see what he has to work with. Hopefully they brought enough and he can get forming a protoform off his to do list.
Upon seeing the pile being laid out across the table, Shockwave's head fins tilt back until flat and his optic dims…. They brought him junk.
Sure everything there had visible bits of what he needs, but in miniscule quantities. To use any of this, he'd have to undergo the tedious process of picking everything apart, tossing out the bad, sorting the good and then melting down the metals to remove any impurities.
Why did everything have to be so difficult?
He really didn't want to pull the rainmakers in for this, but they have the best built in scanners of the seekers under his authority. He prefers to keep them as a deterrent for Autobot raiding attempts. The femmes hardly ever tried to break into the tower while the weather manipulating trine was on patrol, however….
Shockwave needs at least one thing to be resolved smoothly.
He dismisses the seekers before ordering the nearest drone to remove the parts from his lab. As soon as that's done with, he sends Acid Storm a message to report in as soon as possible, and then returns to his computer.
The list of scans he'd been searching through stares back at him….
Several clicks later, Acid Storm walks in to see his superior locked in a staring match with a computer screen.
Note: I know that Shockwave is made out to be emotionless in the comics (even though he displays emotions constantly). It's a fun concept, but not one I enjoy in the g1 continuity very much.
