New Series: Soundwave's campaign
Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers or any of the fictional characters (besides the whales) below. They're the propety of Hasbro/Takara. This is just for entertaiment.
Titel: Soundwave's campaign
Beta: Starfire201 (note: the first version uploaded, was not the betaed one - this has been corrected)
Warnings: None
Genre: Humour, Adventure
Prompt:
tf_bunny_farm, April 18th 2011 by kemetic_feline
6. [G1] Soundwave hears some whales singing near the Nemesis. When he spontaneously reads their minds, he is surprised to discover they are
much more intelligent than he first thought, and are acutely aware of current events (and are very gossipy to boot). Seeing whales as a potential source
of useful information, he decides to learn whale-speak.
a. When he succeeds, he suddenly becomes a kind of celebrity among the whales, being the first non-whale to speak their language.
b. The other Decepticons, meanwhile, are ready to strangle him when his "conversations" with his new friends cause them all to lose recharge.
c. I wonder if Soundwave would become fond of the whales (intelligent AND able to make beautiful music). If he did, and he learned how endangered
whales are becoming, would he make any efforts to help in their conservation? *is suddenly seeing Rumble and Frenzy grumpily holding signs that say "Save the Whales" because Soundwave forced them to*
Soundwave's campaign
Chapter 1: About humans, whales and intelligence
The first time Soundwave noticed them was around a joor after their ship, the Nemesis, crashed into the ocean. The noise resulting from the ship, from his fellow screaming soldiers, from exploding and shattering equipment - all of this made it impossible to recognize the song straight away. But when it all quieted down, after the Decepticons realised that they would live, his inbuilt highly sophisticated microphones recorded the small vibrations in the hull caused by the sound of a deep song that seemed to go on forever and came from many directions at once.
However, Soundwave was good with priorities and he was needed nearly everywhere on the Nemesis at the same time after this disaster, and had at the moment 56 more important projects than the strange sounds of an unknown ocean in an organic world.
He ignored them.
It soon became apparent that they wouldn't manage to get away from this planet, Earth the natives called it, without some serious repairs that could take more than a vorn. Their broken ship was turned into a permanent base and Soundwave began building a surveillance system in the water around it. It was a challenge to him, never before had he worked underwater, but he didn't let it stop him.
This was his job, it was what he excelled it, and no Autobot would enter the base without his notice.
Of course, that was after the surveillance system was completed. Until then, far too often they found evidence that an Autobot spy had been there after it was too late. Soundwave counted every single one of these incidents and sent his cassettes to spy just as heavily on the Autobot base.
But in the meantime Soundwave built and changed the surveillance so that it would work the best in salt water, making it more and more difficult for Mirage and Jazz and whoever this small yellow bot was sneaking aboard.
The main part of this surveillance system was sound, his speciality. Thankfully, nothing could move here without moving the water and that meant without making a sound. Soundwave loved this fact and improved the mircrophones until he knew how many humans on this planet were swimming near the coast at any given time.
There were surprisingly many. He didn't understand humanity's need to spend the precious free time of their ridiculously short lives in a substance that could kill them. For organics, they really didn't show much interest in keeping themselves alive, a fact that was only made clearer when he curiously analysed the information on fast food and those big yellow Ms that seemed to be everywhere. It turned out to be a symbol for the most loved food on the planet. And the most unhealthy, slowly killing them through obesity and lack of nutrients.
It made him thankful that he was a member of a logical race and a superior faction, and he turned back towards his job. Of course, working on the microphones meant that he heard the strange noise from the ocean again, which interfered with the data. He scoured the internet, probably the only good thing humans had ever created, and quickly found the source.
Whales. Big, swimming organics, most of them harmless. Their size was impressive, if nothing else.
He took those whale songs into his calculations and went on with his duties. There were many things to be done on the Nemesis, many things to be repaired and to be built, but as the deca-orns passed, it got quiet more and more often and Soundwave eventually found himself with nothing to do.
He observed that his fellow soldiers started to take up their old hobbies again, which varied from sports, to arts, to interfacing. He never liked sports and had no desire to see photography as anything more than intelligence gathering. And while he wasn't averse to the last option, he knew that as an officer it wouldn't be professional to lay with a common soldier.
And to think of Starscream, or - Primus forbid - Megatron, in this way?
No. Just no.
He needed nearly an orn to erase the pictures in his overly helpful processor.
So he concentrated on the microphones and their records and tried to improve them further while he felt the song moving through the hull and his frame, becoming an endless background melody of his life underwater.
As he realized that he was actively listening to the song, he had to admit it quietly to himself that it was probably the most soothing music he had heard in a long time. The war hadn't been a good time for music and he had stopped counting a long, long time ago how often his personal collections had been burned, melted, disintegrated, corrupted through incompetent thieves, stolen through competent thieves with the designation of Jazz, stolen back through his own cassettes, copied, lost in space, or left behind on another tactical retreat.
Maybe it was time to start a new collection. He was already recording the song, wasn't he?
One orn, he came back to the Nemesis quietly humming, creating a mass panic among the Decepticons as they all tried to find a valid reason to be far away, before whatever made Soundwave happy happened. Even Megatron heard about the unusual behaviour and spontaneously decided to make a control visit on the new Constructicon base a few hundred kilometres south.
The Nemesis had never been more peaceful and silent than that evening, a fact that improved the mood of an oblivious Soundwave immensely.
After realising what had happened, his cassetticons laughed themselves sick. Soundwave, who eventually caught on after Rumble threatened Astrotrain with whatever had made “Soundwave happy”, was less than amused.
Normally, Soundwave liked his reputation of being feared and didn't really care that most only saw him as an excellent spy, a dangerous telepath, a ruthless Decepticon or a loyal drone to Megatron (or the puppetmaster of Megatron, but that rumour was quelled very quickly and very brutally) and believed he had no true emotions. Few knew that, before they had all decided to go collectively insane, he had been a musician. It had been a different, peaceful life and he had been so very young... it was with an exasperated fondness that he remembered believing in lasting peace between different alien races and true love. The young Soundwave had been so very naïve, vulnerable and hadn't known Cybertron's true and ugly face.
Hadn't known his own true character.
He didn't miss this now foreign mech and of his creations only Ravage remembered him as the reclusive musician with the shy smiles. The cassetticon, though, had never mentioned a regret and Soundwave had never asked.
But what they both missed was the music and the appreciation so many had for his art then.
Nowadays, he was a communication expert. The best of them. And his skills were respected and feared, but never loved.
He listened to his developing new collection, mixed the songs and parts and compared them, soon noticing significant differences in cadence and melody that couldn't be explained away by calling it just another whale race. High points, low passages and structured combinations made him wonder if there was intent behind it. But intent meant intelligence and those human records had been very clear that these organic whales weren't sentient.
Still, he recorded and kept on listening. Let himself be carried away on those deep songs full of meaningless words.
His creations didn't remain oblivious to his new hobby. Buzzsaw and Laserbeak, though, were uninterested. They had inherited ambition and logic and intelligence from him, but none of his artistic tendencies.
Sometimes, Ratbat simply listened with him, then flew away and did something else, and afterwards came back, maybe, to listen again. He was young, but liked the songs very much and Soundwave saw a spark of interest that his other creations didn't have. Ratbat had always been slightly different from his other creations, softer, warmer and nicer. Soundwave suspected that his youngest had the spark of an Autobot or an artist, but he never said that aloud. But it worried him, especially on those orns when Ratbat wanted to do something 'good' to make his siblings happy without expecting anything in return.
His twins, always running and fighting and laughing, were puzzled by his new old hobby, but enjoyed the vibrations while sitting in his chest. It was more than their creator had expected of them, normally they only liked music that was about victory and destruction.
Ravage, the oldest, understood his fascination and listened quietly next to him. Two times so far, he had brought another recording for Soundwave, both exquisite in their beauty.
“Creator?” Ratbat, who sat on his shoulder, shuffled a bit. “Why are they doing this?”
Soundwave stopped in repairing the cables in the wall, and looked at his youngest. “Query: Who?”
“The whales! Why are they singing all the time?”
The Decepticon wanted to answer, but found he couldn't. Not really. Stupid, non-sentient animals often sang because they wanted to attract a partner, but for this the songs were too varied, too different from each other and showed no pause, which there surely should be if they had found a mate.
“Soundwave: Will find out.”
He started searching in the humans archives around the world, but found no good answers. Really, food and partners, that was all? Hadn't the humans listened to the songs and realized how long they were, how much more information they obviously kept?
After a week of searching, Soundwave came to two conclusions:
1) Whales are more intelligent than he previously thought.
2) Humans are more stupid than he previously thought.
But he wasn't a communications expert for nothing and he had deciphered foreign languages before. But first of all, he would have to find out if the whales were really sentient.
“A scouting mission, you say?” Megatron looked at him surprised. They were in his office, and the Slagmaker sat behind the gigantic desk which was full of reports that had the tendency to multiply if you looked away. Soundwave would know this, as he had put most of the reports there.
“Affirmative.”
“In the deep sea?”
This time he only nodded.
“Soundwave, there is nothing there.”
“Mission: Testing of microphones.” And it was true. He would test them, and he would record, but that wasn't where his true interest lay. “Sub-Mission: Search for intelligent species.”
Megatron lifted an optic ridge. “There are no humans in the deep sea, only sand and a few small organics.”
Again Soundwave only nodded.
“And you want to... All right.” Megatron made a bored hand wave. “Then go. You deserve your holiday. But next time ask directly, I don't like hearing strange, if amusing excuses from you. For this, I have Starscream.”
The communications expert bristled. He didn't want a holiday, he wanted a very serious mission in the deep sea. Still, maybe a holiday wasn't too bad. He could do what he wanted, and had only to report back every orn. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. And really, when was the last holiday he had? Did being imprisoned by the Autobots on Fortress Maximus count? If you ignored the interrogation, it was the most quiet deca-orn he had in a long while. Being the only creator of six cassettes made for a turbulent life. And it was exactly those cassettes he would be able to leave behind.
Holiday. Oh, yes. He would be alone without his cassettes, annoying thoughts, sky-crazy seekers, ever dysfunctional gestalt teams that came to him for counselling, traitorous Air Commanders and angry Autobots that tried to kill him, spies of both sides that thought they were the coolest thing since Prima, a Lord that only expected the impossible yesterday....
He bowed, maybe a bit faster than necessary. “Thank you, my Lord.”
~silber
Titel: Soundwave's campaign
Beta: Starfire201 (note: the first version uploaded, was not the betaed one - this has been corrected)
Warnings: None
Genre: Humour, Adventure
Prompt:
tf_bunny_farm, April 18th 2011 by kemetic_feline
6. [G1] Soundwave hears some whales singing near the Nemesis. When he spontaneously reads their minds, he is surprised to discover they are
much more intelligent than he first thought, and are acutely aware of current events (and are very gossipy to boot). Seeing whales as a potential source
of useful information, he decides to learn whale-speak.
a. When he succeeds, he suddenly becomes a kind of celebrity among the whales, being the first non-whale to speak their language.
b. The other Decepticons, meanwhile, are ready to strangle him when his "conversations" with his new friends cause them all to lose recharge.
c. I wonder if Soundwave would become fond of the whales (intelligent AND able to make beautiful music). If he did, and he learned how endangered
whales are becoming, would he make any efforts to help in their conservation? *is suddenly seeing Rumble and Frenzy grumpily holding signs that say "Save the Whales" because Soundwave forced them to*
Soundwave's campaign
Chapter 1: About humans, whales and intelligence
The first time Soundwave noticed them was around a joor after their ship, the Nemesis, crashed into the ocean. The noise resulting from the ship, from his fellow screaming soldiers, from exploding and shattering equipment - all of this made it impossible to recognize the song straight away. But when it all quieted down, after the Decepticons realised that they would live, his inbuilt highly sophisticated microphones recorded the small vibrations in the hull caused by the sound of a deep song that seemed to go on forever and came from many directions at once.
However, Soundwave was good with priorities and he was needed nearly everywhere on the Nemesis at the same time after this disaster, and had at the moment 56 more important projects than the strange sounds of an unknown ocean in an organic world.
He ignored them.
It soon became apparent that they wouldn't manage to get away from this planet, Earth the natives called it, without some serious repairs that could take more than a vorn. Their broken ship was turned into a permanent base and Soundwave began building a surveillance system in the water around it. It was a challenge to him, never before had he worked underwater, but he didn't let it stop him.
This was his job, it was what he excelled it, and no Autobot would enter the base without his notice.
Of course, that was after the surveillance system was completed. Until then, far too often they found evidence that an Autobot spy had been there after it was too late. Soundwave counted every single one of these incidents and sent his cassettes to spy just as heavily on the Autobot base.
But in the meantime Soundwave built and changed the surveillance so that it would work the best in salt water, making it more and more difficult for Mirage and Jazz and whoever this small yellow bot was sneaking aboard.
The main part of this surveillance system was sound, his speciality. Thankfully, nothing could move here without moving the water and that meant without making a sound. Soundwave loved this fact and improved the mircrophones until he knew how many humans on this planet were swimming near the coast at any given time.
There were surprisingly many. He didn't understand humanity's need to spend the precious free time of their ridiculously short lives in a substance that could kill them. For organics, they really didn't show much interest in keeping themselves alive, a fact that was only made clearer when he curiously analysed the information on fast food and those big yellow Ms that seemed to be everywhere. It turned out to be a symbol for the most loved food on the planet. And the most unhealthy, slowly killing them through obesity and lack of nutrients.
It made him thankful that he was a member of a logical race and a superior faction, and he turned back towards his job. Of course, working on the microphones meant that he heard the strange noise from the ocean again, which interfered with the data. He scoured the internet, probably the only good thing humans had ever created, and quickly found the source.
Whales. Big, swimming organics, most of them harmless. Their size was impressive, if nothing else.
He took those whale songs into his calculations and went on with his duties. There were many things to be done on the Nemesis, many things to be repaired and to be built, but as the deca-orns passed, it got quiet more and more often and Soundwave eventually found himself with nothing to do.
He observed that his fellow soldiers started to take up their old hobbies again, which varied from sports, to arts, to interfacing. He never liked sports and had no desire to see photography as anything more than intelligence gathering. And while he wasn't averse to the last option, he knew that as an officer it wouldn't be professional to lay with a common soldier.
And to think of Starscream, or - Primus forbid - Megatron, in this way?
No. Just no.
He needed nearly an orn to erase the pictures in his overly helpful processor.
So he concentrated on the microphones and their records and tried to improve them further while he felt the song moving through the hull and his frame, becoming an endless background melody of his life underwater.
As he realized that he was actively listening to the song, he had to admit it quietly to himself that it was probably the most soothing music he had heard in a long time. The war hadn't been a good time for music and he had stopped counting a long, long time ago how often his personal collections had been burned, melted, disintegrated, corrupted through incompetent thieves, stolen through competent thieves with the designation of Jazz, stolen back through his own cassettes, copied, lost in space, or left behind on another tactical retreat.
Maybe it was time to start a new collection. He was already recording the song, wasn't he?
One orn, he came back to the Nemesis quietly humming, creating a mass panic among the Decepticons as they all tried to find a valid reason to be far away, before whatever made Soundwave happy happened. Even Megatron heard about the unusual behaviour and spontaneously decided to make a control visit on the new Constructicon base a few hundred kilometres south.
The Nemesis had never been more peaceful and silent than that evening, a fact that improved the mood of an oblivious Soundwave immensely.
After realising what had happened, his cassetticons laughed themselves sick. Soundwave, who eventually caught on after Rumble threatened Astrotrain with whatever had made “Soundwave happy”, was less than amused.
Normally, Soundwave liked his reputation of being feared and didn't really care that most only saw him as an excellent spy, a dangerous telepath, a ruthless Decepticon or a loyal drone to Megatron (or the puppetmaster of Megatron, but that rumour was quelled very quickly and very brutally) and believed he had no true emotions. Few knew that, before they had all decided to go collectively insane, he had been a musician. It had been a different, peaceful life and he had been so very young... it was with an exasperated fondness that he remembered believing in lasting peace between different alien races and true love. The young Soundwave had been so very naïve, vulnerable and hadn't known Cybertron's true and ugly face.
Hadn't known his own true character.
He didn't miss this now foreign mech and of his creations only Ravage remembered him as the reclusive musician with the shy smiles. The cassetticon, though, had never mentioned a regret and Soundwave had never asked.
But what they both missed was the music and the appreciation so many had for his art then.
Nowadays, he was a communication expert. The best of them. And his skills were respected and feared, but never loved.
He listened to his developing new collection, mixed the songs and parts and compared them, soon noticing significant differences in cadence and melody that couldn't be explained away by calling it just another whale race. High points, low passages and structured combinations made him wonder if there was intent behind it. But intent meant intelligence and those human records had been very clear that these organic whales weren't sentient.
Still, he recorded and kept on listening. Let himself be carried away on those deep songs full of meaningless words.
His creations didn't remain oblivious to his new hobby. Buzzsaw and Laserbeak, though, were uninterested. They had inherited ambition and logic and intelligence from him, but none of his artistic tendencies.
Sometimes, Ratbat simply listened with him, then flew away and did something else, and afterwards came back, maybe, to listen again. He was young, but liked the songs very much and Soundwave saw a spark of interest that his other creations didn't have. Ratbat had always been slightly different from his other creations, softer, warmer and nicer. Soundwave suspected that his youngest had the spark of an Autobot or an artist, but he never said that aloud. But it worried him, especially on those orns when Ratbat wanted to do something 'good' to make his siblings happy without expecting anything in return.
His twins, always running and fighting and laughing, were puzzled by his new old hobby, but enjoyed the vibrations while sitting in his chest. It was more than their creator had expected of them, normally they only liked music that was about victory and destruction.
Ravage, the oldest, understood his fascination and listened quietly next to him. Two times so far, he had brought another recording for Soundwave, both exquisite in their beauty.
“Creator?” Ratbat, who sat on his shoulder, shuffled a bit. “Why are they doing this?”
Soundwave stopped in repairing the cables in the wall, and looked at his youngest. “Query: Who?”
“The whales! Why are they singing all the time?”
The Decepticon wanted to answer, but found he couldn't. Not really. Stupid, non-sentient animals often sang because they wanted to attract a partner, but for this the songs were too varied, too different from each other and showed no pause, which there surely should be if they had found a mate.
“Soundwave: Will find out.”
He started searching in the humans archives around the world, but found no good answers. Really, food and partners, that was all? Hadn't the humans listened to the songs and realized how long they were, how much more information they obviously kept?
After a week of searching, Soundwave came to two conclusions:
1) Whales are more intelligent than he previously thought.
2) Humans are more stupid than he previously thought.
But he wasn't a communications expert for nothing and he had deciphered foreign languages before. But first of all, he would have to find out if the whales were really sentient.
“A scouting mission, you say?” Megatron looked at him surprised. They were in his office, and the Slagmaker sat behind the gigantic desk which was full of reports that had the tendency to multiply if you looked away. Soundwave would know this, as he had put most of the reports there.
“Affirmative.”
“In the deep sea?”
This time he only nodded.
“Soundwave, there is nothing there.”
“Mission: Testing of microphones.” And it was true. He would test them, and he would record, but that wasn't where his true interest lay. “Sub-Mission: Search for intelligent species.”
Megatron lifted an optic ridge. “There are no humans in the deep sea, only sand and a few small organics.”
Again Soundwave only nodded.
“And you want to... All right.” Megatron made a bored hand wave. “Then go. You deserve your holiday. But next time ask directly, I don't like hearing strange, if amusing excuses from you. For this, I have Starscream.”
The communications expert bristled. He didn't want a holiday, he wanted a very serious mission in the deep sea. Still, maybe a holiday wasn't too bad. He could do what he wanted, and had only to report back every orn. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. And really, when was the last holiday he had? Did being imprisoned by the Autobots on Fortress Maximus count? If you ignored the interrogation, it was the most quiet deca-orn he had in a long while. Being the only creator of six cassettes made for a turbulent life. And it was exactly those cassettes he would be able to leave behind.
Holiday. Oh, yes. He would be alone without his cassettes, annoying thoughts, sky-crazy seekers, ever dysfunctional gestalt teams that came to him for counselling, traitorous Air Commanders and angry Autobots that tried to kill him, spies of both sides that thought they were the coolest thing since Prima, a Lord that only expected the impossible yesterday....
He bowed, maybe a bit faster than necessary. “Thank you, my Lord.”
~silber