Chapter Text
The sun was setting for the thousand-thousandth time in the shadowzone.
Soundwave took note and called Laserbeak back. He leaned against the cliff wall, cataloging his pile of scavenged parts. It was a redundant task: he had not found new parts in months. He'd scanned this precious pile countless times, committing its broken shapes to memory. Soundwave couldn't build anything functional from them, though he had tried.
In the absence of action, he observed. The shadowzone's rules were fickle and strange. Sometimes he found objects half in and half out, the barrier between dimensions sizzling and crackling. He would grip the objects and pull as hard as he could. Sometimes they dislodged from the real world and rocketed back into his fragile fingers. Sometimes they wouldn't budge and he was forced to abandon them. Soundwave had found a correlation between the magnetic field of the Earth and the shadowzone's strength. He could walk through most walls and all living beings- mechanical or otherwise- yet would not phase through the ground. Even in places where the ground and the walls were composed of the same substance. It was a curiosity that he had ample time to ponder over, but no specialized scanners or computing equipment with which he could test his thoughts. He missed the glowing consoles of the Nemesis.
The Nemesis...
Soundwave had witnessed Megatron's last battle with the Autobots. Stuck in the shadowzone, he had been useless, shooting the enemy with phantom blasts. He had seen his leader fall from the Omega Lock. Soundwave had jumped after him. The ionized layers of Earth's atmosphere screamed past his sensitive antennae, pelted his plating, overwhelmed his processor. Unlike Megatron, he did not burn as he fell. But unable to transform, he couldn't follow his leader. He had fallen. And awoken. In the sepia dust. Alone.
Some days the silence was overwhelming. He would send Laserbeak as far as it could go, then ping its return on every frequency and map each data point in three dimensions, just for something to do.
Until energy became a problem. Soundwave had deactivated the non-essential biolights in his body, had mourned the loss of the use of his tentacles. He'd drained them of energon and coiled them up years ago. He missed them as much as he missed transforming... in as much as he could miss something. The emotion-suppressing protocols he had installed before the war were still in place.
When he found the dead, he cannibalized them with no compunctions.
Laserbeak crested over the canyon wall, catching the dulled light of sunset on its wings. Soundwave prepped his torso for its docking.
bweerrrrrrzzzz
Soundwave cocked his head. The sound was familiar.
bwwfffzzzzzz
Soundwave shot upright, fingers twitching.
Something was disturbing the hazy architecture of the shadowzone. He felt it like an earthquake through the frequencies. He sent Laserbeak a soundless order:
find the source
He waited, the fine sensors of his helm quivering with energy. He scanned every incoming vibration. It was unlike anything the Decepticons had, or the Autobots, or even the humans.
aliens?
Soundwave didn't wait for Laserbeak's return. He half-climbed, half-phased through the cliff wall until he reached the plateau above. His plating crackled with the rising energy. It shuddered through his lines. The tightly coiled tentacles inside him rattled in their housing.
portal...?
Green light flashed overhead.
He knew it. The energy profile was very similar to the space bridges he once commanded. Laserbeak sent him a warning pulse. Soundwave should've ducked down but his frame was sizzling with so much electricity, it stripped the wariness from him. After years of dull nothingness, the prospect of the unknown spun through his processor.
The portal stretched and widened. It split with an audial-searing sound, revealing a shining expanse of swirling green lightning. Dust whipped through the air. Soundwave shielded his visor with his forearms.
energy pattern: recognized. object coming through.
The portal flashed again. Something fell from it-
“AHHHHH!”
-and crashed to the ground. Dust sprang up, obscuring it.
Another object, much smaller, fell out of the portal and hit the first object with a metallic tink!
Before Soundwave could properly register what he had observed, the energy shuddering his plating changed. It tuned to a familiar sour note. The portal darkened and sizzled and-
no!
-closed.
Soundwave cursed the fact that he had been here for so long and hadn't been able to collect the equipment he needed to take advantage of that portal.
The thing in the dust groaned.
Laserbeak transmitted a recording, a replay of the portal opening from an aerial view. A mech-shaped thing had fallen out of it.
mech-shaped thing
Soundwave assessed his situation. Unless it was a very competent Decepticon, he was inclined to cannibalize it. He was, however, painfully aware of his limitations. His weapons and tentacles were offline. His arms were good for defense, but his fingers were fragile and ineffective for offense. Soundwave had all his fighting skills, still, but he hadn't practiced them on another living being in a long time.
“-frickin' Brainstorm-”
Soundwave's helm snapped up. That was Neocybex! Or... a variant of it. It was an accent he had never heard before and that didn't match anything in his database. Laserbeak swooped down and docked.
The dust settled. Soundwave stepped closer. He was not afraid.
He was never afraid.
It was a Cybertronian, albeit the strangest one Soundwave had ever seen. It lay on the ground, back to him. It was red and gold and had a spoiler and wheels. Its proportions were bizarre. Its biolights were red and there was pink dripping from the wounds it had sustained in its fall. Its field was expressed as shifting, nebulous clouds instead of the usual pulses.
“-swear I'm gonna lose it if this is another dimension where everything is made of anti-matter sharks-”
Soundwave double-checked the wordage of the sentence. It was so strange, he thought at first it might be in code.
Finally, the thing raised itself up from the ground enough to turn around and-
It was an Autobot. An Autobrand was emblazoned on its flame-shaped yellow chest.
And it had a nose. Just like the humans did.
Soundwave assumed a defensive stance.
The Autobot pushed itself up unsteadily to its knees, then its feet. It teetered, shaking its head.
Soundwave prepared to siphon Laserbeak's energy away to power up a tentacle. He would've struck immediately, but cataloging the Autobot's strange field, blood, and features had distracted him.
“Hey!” The Autobot smiled up at him.
Oh, it definitely must be an alien, to smile at him.
“Hey, where is this place? Can you tell me what planet this is?” The Autobot strode over.
Soundwave raised his hand. The Autobot stopped.
“Whoa. You are creepy. You're Cybertronian, aren't you? Can you understand me?”
Its body moved with many interlocking pieces, instead of the long, smooth panels Soundwave was used to. He had never seen anything like it. Not even in the humans' creations: their television fantasies spun through his sensors occasionally. They hadn't dredged up anything like this.
“Hello?”
After another moment of calculated silence, Soundwave nodded.
“So, you can understand me. Excellent. Where are we? Is this Earth? It looks kinda Earthy.”
Soundwave nodded again. He initiated the energy transfer from Laserbeak. The little drone whined quietly, powering down against his chest. He didn't like to do it, but in a moment, they would both have all the energon they needed.
Energy flowed down the length of one of his coiled tentacles. Only one, that's all he could afford to activate.
The Autobot chattered as it neared, meaningless words that Soundwave recorded in case he could use them later. It gestured to the sky, and when next laid its eyes on Soundwave, stopped short.
“Oh,” it said. “You're a Decepticon.”
The tentacle was almost fully operational. Soundwave sent an activation command. As it stirred, Laserbeak went still.
“Well, that's alright. The war's been over for ages, you know.”
What kind of diversionary tactic was that?! Soundwave had heard more dignified lies from Starscream. Which was saying a lot.
“What's your name? I'm Rodimus.” The Autobot bowed with a flourish. “Proud inter-dimensional adventurer and co-captain of the Lost Light!”
Soundwave sampled Rodimus's voice and repeated it back to him. Twisted. “In-in-inTER-dimens-ens-sional.”
Rodimus startled at that. “Yeah,” he said uncertainly. “There are a lot of dimensions. Looks like I've stumbled into yours.”
Soundwave picked one of Rodimus's words and looped it. “Lost lostlost l-lllllost lost lost l-”
“Okay, I get it.” Rodimus stooped and picked something up from the ground. “I don't suppose you're some kind of evil, Decepticon Bumblebee? Nine out of ten Bumblebees lose their vocalizers and loop sound when they're being annoying.”
Soundwave bristled.
“Whoa!” Rodimus stepped back. “What a field flare. Guess you didn't like tha-”
Soundwave shot his tentacle out at Rodimus. The sight of its biolights made Soundwave feel like he was his old self again. Before Rodimus could react, Soundwave looped it around him tightly, aiming its tip at the juncture of his knee, where energon leaked through. Soundwave opened its prongs and unleashed its smaller, flexible tendrils. They dug into the wound.
“OW! What the hell!” Rodimus struggled against him. The Autobot was shorter, but quite a bit more stocky, in a very strange and angled way that Soundwave was unaccustomed to. His tentacle pinched in the sharp corners of the Autobot's flame-shaped chest.
The tendrils rooted around. They channeled energon back to Soundwave's body, where his line filters promptly sent a gigantic screaming NO to his processor. Just as the tendrils started to burn and pain flared down the tentacle, Rodimus wrenched his arms apart and freed himself.
Soundwave stumbled back, anti-poison protocols activating. The tentacle flailed pathetically.
what is that substance
not energon
pain
“That's fuckin' creepy!” shouted Rodimus. “I come in peace, goddammit!” He reared back and punched Soundwave in the face.
Initializing reboot protocols.
Warning: energy levels at 13%
Warning: Autobot in proximity
Warning: Laserbeak offline
Warning: restraints detected
Warning: unable to contact Megatron
Warning: unable to locate the Nemesis
Warning: unable to connect to geosynchronous satellites
Warning: location unknown
Warning: emotion-suppression protocols 1 - 14 fail-
Soundwave cut off the deluge of warnings filling his processor. After the first four, they were repeats. He had seen them every day since he had been forced into the shadowzone. As the warnings faded, latticework structures materialized from the darkness.
Soundwave had had this dream several times since coming to the shadowzone.
The structures were made of stars connected by thin lines, pure and vibrant, as if from a spool of thread made from his spark. They towered like constellations over the landscape of his processor. They vibrated like plucked strings, each note filling the space between the stars with... data...
data he couldn't define...
The only thing he understood about this dream was that the structures and the sounds they produced were linked. Not just linked, they were one and the same. They were visual and auditory representations of data in his processor, flowing together and coming apart again. Their mixing produced a third type of data that he couldn't define. It manifested itself viscerally as something like a field pulse, hovering between the latticework.
Soundwave knew that because he couldn't grasp that third data set, he was unable to piece together the object before him properly. It was like trying to transform without a T cog. If he could just decode that nebulous data, everything would fall into place. The stars before him brightened, their sounds growing louder, urging him to solve the puzzle. Soundwave's processor ached.
His reboot protocols finished. The constellations and their song and their fields vanished, and Soundwave felt the weight of his frame and the ground beneath him pull him back to the waking world.
Soundwave stirred, onlining his visor, the dream forgotten. He sent pings to his frame, assessing his position.
He was sitting, wrapped up in his own offline tentacle, propped against a wall. Annoyance flickered through him and he sent a command to Laserbeak. The little drone was silent, dead against his chest.
He forced himself to take another moment and evaluate.
“Oh? You awake now?”
The Autobot sauntered up, holding a device. The device was emitting signals. Soundwave focused on it. Just like the Autobot's Neocybex, it had an accent of sorts. Not a code to decrypt, but enough of a different flavor to it that he had to concentrate to understand. His visor displayed data and spinning reticles as he evaluated its output.
“You know, back in the old days, I would've punched more than once,” said Rodimus. “But things are different now.”
Soundwave ignored Rodimus, concentrating on the device.
“If you were hungry, you could've just said so. I have a supply of energon. You don't have to suck it out of me like a vampire.”
Soundwave recognized the Earth word. But he dismissed it just as quickly, as he'd worked out what the device was.
A beacon.
A way out of the shadowzone.
As Rodimus neared, Soundwave seriously considered the new options before him. Destroy the Autobot and take the beacon? Feign alliance and follow the Autobot out of the shadowzone and then destroy him?
“As far as I can tell, we're in a... pocket? Universe?” Rodimus squinted at his device. “Something like that? It's the Earth for this dimension, but it's slightly off from the one I was just on.” He shrugged. “Magnus always tells me not to walk into the glowy green portals but I don't know why. I always do it anyway.” Rodimus gestured to Soundwave's precious pile of scavenged parts. “Though I take it, by your hunger and these scraps, that you've been stuck here for a long time. You didn't intend to be here.” He looked around. “Hmm. Maybe here isn't a good place to be.”
“E-earth. P-pocket. Un-universe,” Soundwave confirmed, with Rodimus's voice. “St- stuck here for a- for a- l-long time.”
“Finally. Some useful information.” Rodimus poked at the device again and sat down. He remained a healthy distance from Soundwave. He set the beacon on the ground next to him. “Let me guess. You're Soundwave?”
The faintest, tiniest hint of surprise washed through Soundwave. “Soundwave,” he repeated.
“Thought so. You've got that weird echo-y, rainbow-y thing going on with your vocalizer. What's up with that, anyway? Our Soundwave had it, too.”
had it, noted Soundwave. past tense
“You look so weird, though. No offense.”
“Y-you look so-SO- weird.” Soundwave didn't repeat the, “No offense.”
Rodimus snorted. “Can you talk? Or just repeat things? How did you get here? What is this place?”
Soundwave considered the questions. Then he simply repeated, “Hunger.”
“Hah. If I give you fuel, can I trust you won't attack?”
“T-trust.” Soundwave flashed a smilie face up on his visor. “Won't won't at-tack?”
Rodimus laughed. He pulled something from what Soundwave assumed was his subspace compartment. “Here. I'm guessing, since you're so different-looking, the energon your frame works with is also different from mine. This is the most neutral energon Brainstorm is able to make. We've run into a few other alt-dimensioners who can't ingest what we have on tap.”
Soundwave, still tied up in his own tentacle, stared.
“What? I figured you could at least unwind yourself.”
Soundwave displayed his fuel gauge.
“Oh.” Rodimus set the energon down and slowly unwound Soundwave. “This thing is freaky. It's cold, too. You conserving resources? Damn, look at all these dead biolights...”
Soundwave twitched, loathing the touch of the Autobot. When at last he was freed, he manually wound up his tentacle and stored it in his torso, the tip hanging out. Rodimus made a face at that. Soundwave ignored him. He took the energon and scanned it with his limited capabilities.
Not promising.
He extracted his tendrils from his tentacle with his fingers. He placed them in the energon. They twitched and jerked, shunting it to his main lines. His biolights flickered.
His line filters sent him unhappy feedback. It wasn't poison, but it wasn't going to feel nice.
Soundwave took in just enough of it to relight all his biolights and restore Laserbeak to half power. He handed it back to Rodimus.
“Too- too. Different,” he said, sampling Rodimus's words and placing them together. “N-n-not. Pure.”
“Hmm. Too bad.” Rodimus knocked the container back and drank the rest. “Come back to the Lost Light with me. We have the equipment there to make what you need. Probably.”
Soundwave glanced around. The sun had set. The night sky was brown, dull as rust, starless. He had considered returning with the Autobot, if only to get out of the shadowzone. But what dimension would he be led to? Would he be able to resume his loyal work to the Decepticon cause?
“You'll like the Lost Light. Everyone gets a second chance, there. You wanna stay here forever?”
Soundwave's antennae twitched.
“It's got Megatron as co-captain.”
megatron
Soundwave straightened.
megatron!
He displayed a video of Megatron saying, “Excellent!”
Rodimus stared into his visor. “Holy moly. Is that your Megatron?”
“Megatron,” Soundwave repeated.
“Hah. Ol' Megs is gonna love to see that one. I swear, every dimension we go to, he's got crazier eyes than the last.”
Something approaching emotions flooded through Soundwave. Megatron was alive! And... with Autobots? Commanding their ship? No, that couldn't be right. His years of dullness and hunger must be clouding his logic circuits. He analyzed the conversation.
This wouldn't be his Megatron. He had witnessed his Megatron fall in battle, unable to reach out, unable to shoot, unable to help. This would be the Autobot's Megatron.
But...
All Megatrons would have started the war. Would be proud Decepticons. That the one called Rodimus wore the Autobadge at all was proof of a war in his dimension.
Soundwave could not conceive of a situation wherein Megatron would ally himself with the Autobots. Unless... unless he was lying in wait. That Megatron had lost his Soundwave. And had been surrounded by Autobots. He must be biding his time, pretending to be an Autobot, until his true allies returned to him.
Soundwave was suddenly a lot more interested in the Lost Light.
“Lost Light,” he replayed.
“Cool.” Rodimus laid back with his hands behind his head. “Shouldn't be more than a few hours before they find me. Wait til you see the Lost Light's long range sensors. Heh.”
Soundwave said nothing.
“So, where's Ravage?”
Soundwave displayed a huge question mark on his visor. “R-ravage?” he repeated.
“Yeah. You know. Black cat. Cassetticon. Where are your cassetticons?” Rodimus looked him up and down. “Do you not turn into a radio-type thing? That'll be a first. All Soundwaves do.”
Soundwave did not understand a word of what Rodimus was saying. It irritated him. He manually overrode the hopeful pings from his empty weapons systems.
patience
“N-not turn into into r-radio-type thing,” Soundwave repeated. He flashed up a video of Starscream shouting, “Laserbeak!” and pointed to his chest.
Rodimus gaped. “What the hell? That's Laserbeak?”
Soundwave pointed again.
“She's... where is she?”
Soundwave wondered how even an Autobot could be so stupid. He was as annoyed as he could possibly get, his processor straining with the taxing emotion. He overrode his useless weapons systems again and rebooted his emotion-suppressing protocols.
patience
escape shadowzone
then destroy
“Laserbeak,” Soundwave repeated. The drone disengaged from his chest and hovered, its red sights settling between Rodimus's eyes.
Rodimus squinted. “Six wings? Why's she got six wings?”
Soundwave spliced a recording of Shockwave. “Autobots. Illogical.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Rodimus shrugged. “Bet that's your Shockwave. Good ol' one eye. He a cyclops here, too?”
Laserbeak returned to Soundwave's chest. Soundwave played a Shockwave quote, something the scientist had said to Starscream. It had been one of the more enjoyable conversations Soundwave had been party to. “You just like to hear yourself talk.”
“Got that right,” said Rodimus lazily.
Soundwave's fingers twitched. He turned his back to Rodimus.
patience
He directed his intense focus on the data he had taken from the beacon. It would give him an introduction to the type of software he was sure to encounter on the Lost Light. Once he was free of the shadowzone, Soundwave would crush this Autobot, take his ship, and return to Earth to retrieve whatever remained of Megatron.