Hello everyone!
It's been fun to write up all these stories.
it's fun to be creative, and write all these great stories. I know I'll have a lot of fun with this and Shadows and Silhouettes as you can probably tell, good bad guys are my favorite, I've seen quite a few in the TFP universe with Breakdown and Knockout, and a lot with a random OC. not many with Dreadwing or Skyquake, and very few with Soundwave, Shockwave and Megatron so I decided to write some for the former two. now, while my poll allows all you folks to determine which story gets my focus, I will still continue writing each one, and when I have a second chapter for each one, I will try and post all at the same time. so that means:
Shadows and Silhouettes.
The Sound of Silence.
the Alien Deity on my Shoulder.
The Rule of 4
Entree the Sharkticons
now, if you want one in particular to recieve more attention please go vote on my poll after having read the first chapter.
anyway, onto the last addition to this poll. I've got way too much on my plate.
-.-. ... .- .-. - . .-. / .-
The party was going strong, I was stationed on the stage behind the booth, massive speakers on either side of me and 4 slightly smaller speakers in each corner of the room. Each blasted the same song, one that I was constantly splicing and remixing. Soon enough the flashing lights died down and the reflective disco ball stopped twirling. I slowly ended my final song of the night and headed home. I stepped outside and turned my key in the lock, then I went around to the back and climbed the exterior (and only) staircase up to my apartment. The place used to be owned by my grandfather. He would repair old appliances, after his death I turned it into a club. I called it the Golden Lagoon, it fit with my stage name as "the Siren".(1) I walked into my apartment and locked the door behind me. I made sure the chainbolt was closed and ensured no one could enter. I took my headphones off my ears and rested them on my neck.
As I walked past the mirror in the entryway I got a look at my troubled expression. The long blond (almost yellow) haired girl stared back at me with a small nose, with big eyes and what would normally be a big grin(2). Now it was a face of worry and exhaustion. I was in hiding, from a company, and the government had done jack squat to protect me, which is how I ended up out here. The company in question was MECH. I never wanted to return there. It was a horrid place. So much happening all at once. And so many uncaring faces. Dad's sneer everytime something slipped through his fingers, and lately his obsession with robots. Giant 20 foot tall machines. I thought he was delusional and so I went against MECH and met with a counsellor about him. I had him come saying that 'the school wanted to see him.' When he arrived and entered the school I brought him to an office instead of a classroom. Inside was a mental doctor. As soon as he introduced himself as such my dad whirled on me, eyes nearly ablaze.
"Signey. What do they know?" He asked in a dangerous tone.
"About your obsession." I answered.
"Mr Bishop please. We are only here to discuss…"
"That'll be enough." He said gruffly.
He then stood up, turned, and stepped to the door which I blocked.
"Let's go Signey." He sighed angrily.
"You need help. There are no giant robots!"
"That's because they are a government secret." He grumbled.
"And there's probably a reason for that." I replied
"Yes, because they are keeping the technological advances hidden from the public and from me." He glowered, then he shoved past me.
And because of that incident. MECH is after me because I then went to the government itself after.
Ever since, whenever they have something that requires my expertise they come to me. The 16 year old half legal owner (half illegal) of "the Golden Lagoon" the reason is, my mind is specially trained to decipher meaning in sounds. This arose from several things. 1. Dad's training. Because I couldn't fight or engineer. I was placed into different training for different things. The one I excelled in was communications. And 2. Ironically I have a fear of silence, which stemmed from my original fear of the dark. There is nothing worse than absolute silence. Hence the headphones and the playlist with over 5,000 entries saved to it.
I ripped my attention from the mirror and turned to continue into the apartment. I placed the cash I earned tonight in the safe in the corner. I turned and sat at the only desk in the apartment. On it sat my decade old pc. It was originally an off white color… Now it was beige.
I checked my email for any assignment from the government. As usual there was none. It seems they've been trying to avoid asking for my help. Understandable but irritating just the same.
I turned away from the computer and flopped down onto my bed. A small single size mattress with a pillow that seemed to flip between too firm and too yielding every night. To pass the time I lifted my headphones over my ears and put on some soft music to get me ready for bed. With the music going I went to the bathroom and got ready for bed, brushing my teeth, going to the bathroom and making sure the windows were closed and the door was locked. Then I flicked off all the lights.
I returned to my bed and crawled into it.
And I was slowly beginning to drift off to sleep when I began to hear little beeps in my headset. I took it off part way so only one ear was directly receiving the sound. Unfortunately the noise persisted so I switched ears. And yet still the beeping continued. I took off my headphones and tried to sleep like a normal person, until the silence got to me. I threw off the covers, grabbed my headphones and put them on. The beeping continued. I groaned and went to see if I could figure out what it was. Bringing the headphones to my desk I opened a drawer and pulled out a screwdriver with interchangeable heads. I found the screw ports and the correct screw and pulled my headphones apart. I'm not good at this sort of stuff, I don't even know what I expected to find inside the thing. I just poked around to see if anything I did would stop the beeping. After repairing the headphones and putting them on, I was elated to find the beeping had stopped… for all of 5 seconds. At this point I noticed it wasn't one beep every time, sometimes the beeps were longer, shorter and had a pause between them sometimes.
I opened another drawer, intrigued and pulled out a notebook and a pencil. I then wrote down all the beeps, drawing lines for long beeps and leaving spaces for pauses. It could be some extremely under the radar morse code. And coincidentally my assumption was correct. Because after a few minutes I received the full message. "Trapped in a shadow realm, with terracon."
I didn't know what a "shadow realm" or a "terracon" was but the meaning was the same either way. Someone needed help.
Thoughts of sleep abandoned, I got dressed and hurried down stairs to the club.
I went inside and pulled out a broken disc that just played one tone, I put it on the booth, on the paper I'd brought down with me I wrote out what I wanted to say and then translated it into Morse so I knew how to play it.
"How can I help?" I asked the person in morse. Suddenly the beeping I'd been receiving in my headphones abruptly stopped and restarted after a moment, this time with a different message.
It took me a minute to translate it, but soon the message was written down "Ground bridge in Autobot base required. Jasper Nevada."
"Nevada…" I wondered
California is only a state over, I could probably make it to Jasper over the next few days… but it seems a bit suspicious.
"How can I trust you?" I responded.
"You can not, your empathy or that of another person who receives my message is my only saving grace." The person answered, this message took much longer to translate on account of its length.
I hummed to myself as I had turned off my music to hear the beeps properly, now that it was my turn to respond it was silent.
I felt like a conspiracy theorist, it reminded me of when dad went insane.
If this person really needed help, who am I to refuse them?
"Verywell. While I don't know what any of the stuff you mentioned is, I'll do my best."
"Understood."
It seemed like that was the end of the conversation, and I had it all recorded down on the notebook. So I turned and went to bed with some soft music playing.
…
When I awoke I found that my headset was beeping once again, either I had gotten so tired that I couldn't care less and fell asleep anyway or I had grown so used to the beeping over the 2 hour long conversation that I didn't even notice it. Or the person only began adding to the conversation after I'd fallen asleep
I stood up and went to the desk to begin translating the new message. I had to wait until the long pause so I knew where the start was. Then I began translating it into gibberish, unfortunately I don't know how to translate it into different languages, so for all I know the person could be sending the same message just in spanish
But I kept at it in case there was a meaning that I was missing in English and my morse skills were lacking. Then I wondered, what if it isn't english. What if it's numerical?
So I had to wrack my brain a bit to remember morse numbers. But eventually I came up with a series of coordinates. Entering them into my ratty computer I found that it was a place in Jasper Nevada as the person mentioned. I then looked up ways to get there. By car it would be a nice 6 hours… Sadly, I don't have a car. Train seemed to not even be an option at my disposal(3) that left the bus. Looking at the commute by car at 6 hours, I assumed it'd be something like 8 just because it's a bus.
I gathered up the cash in my little safe, stuffed it into my ruined hole ridden wallet that I placed into my backpack along with a few other oddities like a notebook and some pencils, grabbed my keys and headphones with its iPod, and raced out the door and locked it behind me. Once downstairs I posted a sign saying that the club would be closed until further notice. Then I raced down to the nearest bus stop and waited for ten minutes.
When the bus finally arrived, I got on and took an open seat at the front right behind the driver.
And so over the course of roughly half an hour I just listened to my music.
Currently the song playing is "The Kids Aren't Alright" by the band Fall Out Boy. (4)
But I noticed a faint beeping interspersed with the beat.
I turned down my music, but the beeping remained at the same volume. I reached into my backpack and pulled out my notebook and pencils, then waited impatiently for the pause that signified the message was repeating. Then I began to translate.
"Are you in transit?"
I struggled to find a way to respond as I could only respond with my DJ booth back home. I looked around the bus to see if anything could be used to transmit morse codes. My first idea was the stop button on the pole to my left, but I realized how irritating that would quickly become for everyone on board. Thankfully before I began conversing with this individual.
Soon my attention turned to my iPod, possibly it could be used. I scrolled far down in my playlist to one song in particular. 'Around The World.' by 'Daft Punk.' and I played that in tandem with my response so it said "yes."
I highly doubted the person could receive this message if they were originally sending out the morse code back near my house and since my DJ booth would be much more powerful than a simple iPod muffled by headphones.
I was surprised to find that they could in fact receive messages.
After a moment of translation I found the new message to be
"Efficiency is greatly appreciated."
I was a bit confused by that, but I responded anyway.
"I'm coming, hold in there."
Over the next hour or so I began to look over our conversations. I soon realized neither of us had really revealed anything to the other.
I sent another message to the person asking if they were alright.
"Do you require medical attention?" I inquired.
It was a few minutes before my answer came.
"I am losing fluids." the person answered.
"Will I arrive in time?" I asked.
"Depends, what is your ETA?" the phantom asked.
"Probably 8 or 9 hours till I reach the coordinates you sent."
"Yes, however do hurry." was the quick response.
"Shall I call the paramedics when I get there?" I offered.
"That will not be necessary." was the seemingly hurried reply.
"Are you sure? you said you were bleeding out?" I asked after a moment to contemplate my answer.
Suddenly there was a thump from a man behind me.
"Ya got a fetish with pressing buttons, because you're beginning to press mine with all of yours." he glowered.
I ripped the headphones off my ears and turned to face him.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I snapped.
"It means, all your button pressing is bothering some of the others on the bus." he retorted.
"If you haven't noticed, I'm a young girl on the bus without her father, that's because said father got in an accident a state over and is in critical condition. So you can either deal with my nervous clicking, or deal with my nervous clicking on the only other button in arms reach." I gestured at the stop button. "Or if neither of those interest you, I can jiggle my knees and shake the entire bus."(5) I added.
The man grumbled but turned and didn't bother answering.
With that dealt with I turned and put my headphones back on.
I had to wait a minute before I heard the beginning of the message.
"I never said such a thing." the person had said.
I had to think about what was last sent, it seems I'd forgotten to write it down. The last thing I remembered to record was 'will I arrive in time?'
I quickly jotted down the gist of what I'd forgotten to record.
"I thought you were losing fluids?" I asked.
"I am." was the simple response.
"So, you're dehydrated? How long have you been there?"
There was hesitation in the next answer.
"Four months."
"FOUR MONTHS?!" I almost shouted aloud, I looked around thinking I had, but no one was paying me any mind.
"Affirmative." was the reply.
"But… the body can only go a few weeks without food… and water is needed every couple days!"
"I assume that since almost everything is intangible in this realm that even basic human necessities are null and void."
"Maybe instead of calling the paramedics when you get through I should call the scientists." I joked.
"I DO NOT INTEND TO BE EXPERIMENTED UPON." The answer came immediately.
"I apologize, I was simply intending to make a joke to soften the situation."
"I understand then." it took the person a moment to respond.
"Knock Knock." the person said after a few minutes.
"Who's there?" I asked surprised.
"Beware the silent ones."
"Beware the silent ones who?"
"..."
"Why aren't you laughing?"
…
Eventually the conversation died off and I grew bored. I'd already hopped off and on so many buses I couldn't count. And without the phantom to talk to I quickly grew restless. So I turned my notebook to try and piece together this phantom's story.
Looking over my notes I found that I didn't even know this person's gender or even their name. I also found that my notes were becoming less and less dialogue between the two of us and more of me just paraphrasing the conversation
From what I've gathered they seem to have once had a bad experience with scientists, presumably this was how they ended up in the "shadow realm" as they called it. And they said they've been in the shadow realm for four months now without the necessity of food or water.
Which… that really isn't much to go off of. I really wished to put a voice to the words and a face to the voice. But obviously that was impossible to do so through morse code. I soon opened my iPod and after hours of listening to nothing but "around the world around the world around the world" for 3 hours so I changed it to Echosmith's "cool kids."
In an attempt to reignite the conversation to make it less awkward, I asked "What are you going to do, or where are you going to go when you get out?"
"I am unsure." Was the person's reply.
"Would you like to keep in touch, kind of be like friends?"
"I intend to remain hidden from the government."
"Well I'm hiding from an evil organisation, and the government rarely contacts me. I wouldn't mind a government secret roommate."
"I do not intend to assimilate myself with society, but the notion is appreciated."
"If you ever need a place to stay you always know how to contact me. At least I think you do?"
"Affirmative, and appreciated."
Then the conversation died off again and I continued bus hopping and flipping to different musical tracks.
Soon, with bleary eyes as the sun was just on the edge of rising the bus brought me to my destination.
I stumbled off the bus and stood on the side of the road outside a random burger king… before realizing I can't just walk into this "Autobot base" that the phantom had mentioned. Especially since I had no idea where it was.
"Phantom, I don't exactly have a way of directing me towards those coordinates." I explained through use of my iPod, this time the song was "legends never die", a sparing grace to my ears that have heard "around the world" far too many times.
In my head I translated all the beeps to form the word south.
So I headed that way, and after walking for a few minutes the beeps started again, this time telling me to go east.
Eventually after following the extremely suspicious timing of the directions I found myself before a large fenced off military base. The beeps said one final message before going silent.
"Hanger E."
Getting into the base itself was a struggle, filled with a lie filled explanation that I was called to help the government with decoding a signal that was interfering with some of their equipment. The man pulled out his device and tried calling his boss. He didn't actually say anything into the device but then put it back in his pocket and opened the gate without a word.
I waltzed in and turned back to him. "Where can I find Hanger E?" I asked.
"Which Hanger E, the one that was bombed or the one that still stands?"
"Do you think a bombed hanger is gonna be the source of a signal that interferes with your phone?" I asked.
"There's a lot of things I think. And a lot of them have just been proven wrong in the last few months." He grumbled. Then he pointed at one hanger that was labelled as Hanger F, but looking at the still standing hangers on either side being D and G With a charred gap between F and G it seems they'd converted hanger E into Hanger F.
I turned and began to walk towards the hidden in plain sight hanger "E" and entered the side door. Surprisingly there was almost no one inside. There was a random ambulance here though, I'd have to explain to the Phantom that I didn't call them. At the back was a large circular ring, with several other rings behind it. And a large switch right next to it. Attached to the switch was a small laptop, currently it was closed, and judging by how thin it was it certainly looked very modern. I opened it up and saw that a password was required.
'Autobot' I typed in, which it denied.
'Shadow realm.' I tried.
It also denied that one.
I was about to type more when I heard frantic beeping in my headphones.
I quickly translated it as "The password is 'Team 1xn'"(6) I was advised by my new phantom friend.
I quickly entered the 8 characters that apparently comprised the password.
And with a little swirling white circle the computer started up.
I scanned over the desktop for anything that may allow me to help my phantom friend. And my mind instantly locked on the term 'Ground bridge.' it was something the Phantom had mentioned before.
I opened the application and scanned for anything that might help me to release him from this shadow realm. There was a box to enter coordinates, but I wasn't even sure if the Shadow realm had coordinates, and if it did I didn't know them, so I didn't bother with that. Then my eyes landed on it. there it was. 'Shadow realm.' I clicked it and the system automatically entered nearly the exact same set of coordinates as the phantom had used to direct me here.
All it needed was a simple click of the mouse. I dragged it over to the button, and clicked.
To my left a large green vortex opened in the rings, and right in front of it a second vortex opened facing it. In the middle it seemed that the energy and light that made up each portal was beginning to be pulled into the other. Directly in the middle a bright white light began to form and it slowly expanded till it became a blinding white aura between the two warring vortexes.
Squinting I looked at the bottom of the white aura, expecting to see a person come running out. Instead my eye was caught by something roughly 8 meters above where I originally looked. But before I could get a good look at what it was, there was an explosion at the doors to the hanger. I whipped my head to see a giant black robot. Eerily similar to dad's conspiratory sketches. It stood amidst the smouldering wreck that was the door. Then it's beady eyes locked on me and the person coming out of the vortexes.
(1) 'The Siren' refers to a mythilogical siren, as she is a DJ who plays music it fits. althought I guess it's ironic that she could be a Siren in that her awful playing is also a help to other people (on her iPod that is) whereas her DJ skills are good and she manages to get herself in danger from it. I only noticed how Ironic and perfect this name is for her as I write this lol!
(2) I'm not gonna lie, y'know those stupid crushes we all had as a child? like on characters from animated movies or video game characters? yeah... honestly Sig I picture to look a little similar to two of mine. if you guys have ever played the MySims series, specifically the MySimsAgents on the wii then you might know where this is going. Signey is heavily based on DJ Candy from the Industrial district, as well as Summer from the Beach... and only after a nostalgic play through a few months ago did I realize they aren't the same character as 6 year old me had thought.
(3) me and Isaacplayz looked it up, from Jasper Nevada to where I picture her in North California is a 6 hour car drive, as she has no car. she has to use the bus. and so as it's a bus I chocked on an extra few hours. originally the plan was for her to take the train. but google maps literally didn't even give an option for that. so I don't know if there really isn't any tracks even close to there or what. but yeah.
(3+) so, this is a Footnote, about a Footnote. while researching how long the transit would be. but to make it simple I said Sig was coming from North California. and the whole time while talking with Isaacplayz he kept saying North Carolina. and I had to correct him probably about 5 times in line 2 minutes. then he asked someone in the background for help thinking about the distance and estimating the time it would take even she said North Carolina but she was thinking of Northern California, it was just really funny.
(4) basically all the music that is mentioned in this is gonna be songs in my own playlist, now obviously I don't have 5000, but I do have a lot.
(5) this is something I tend to do a lot. I've been told many times to stop shaking my knees/ bouncing them/jiggling my leg. and I have shaken the car before (obviously not something like a bus, but I have shaken a minivan.)
(6) this one's kinda hard to explain, but you know what a prime number is right? when it can only be divided by the number 1, and itself. so when Raf has his password set as 'Team' and then '1xn' (x=times) (n=the symbol for an unknown value) he has essentially made his password 'Team Prime'